For a quarter of a century now, and more particularly over the last decade, Maurice Halbwachs has inspired a growing literature embodied by many sociologists and historians of social sciences, published for the most part in scientific journals, focusing on the sociological thought that Halbwachs developed in his writings. Then come many studies that emerge from the history of ideas and epistemology: these are entirely devoted to a particular facet of Halbwachs’ work, either to place it in its scientific context or to discuss it on the basis of fundamental cognitive issues.
Our task is not to summarize or synthesize the thinking of Halbwachs, which would be far too vast an undertaking for an exercise of this kind. He was keenly aware of the most pressing epistemological and methodological questions surrounding the nascent sociology. He thought about the place of demography in the study of social life; he posed the problem of the role of psychology; and he considered the application of statistics. Better yet, he asked what a society really is: a kind of “organization” trying to last and preserve itself, adapting to the conditions of its environment. There is no doubt that Halbwachs contributed to the emergence of sociology especially after World War I. His studies have always been innovative, part of the intellectual debates at the moment. In particular, his work invests the question of knowing if it was possible to study in a positive way human spirit, and especially intellectual faculties.
