Beginning from the question "how to address the problems of the contemporary social sciences taking a specific work of an author as reference?", this article examines The elementary forms of religious life by Émile Durkheim. It refuses the alternative of regain his influence on relevant intellectuals in the area, and goes in another direction - namely, to inquire what the contemporary reader can obtain from that work - in which a retrospective look, immersed in the present, is privileged, because, in relation to the time in which this book was written, progressed the comprehension of how work the human societies. It shows that the discussion about the sacred is not confined to the topic of religion, to remember that, at the conclusion of the book under review, Durkheim makes a series of digressions about the problematic of symbolic. These symbols, which are necessary for the social creation and recreation, are incorporated on the development of this article.
Émile Durkheim; The Elementary Forms of Religious Life; Sacred and Profane; Symbolic; Social Recreation