A Cross-Cultural Note on Durkheim's Theory of Suicide

ABSTRACT: A formulation of Durkheim's theory of suicide is tested using data from a sample of 55 societies covered by the Human Relations Area Files. The model predicts suicide rates in five “pure” conditions but only in one “mixed” condition. In addition, the rates differ in each of the four pure extreme conditions. It is concluded that “integration” may be more important than “regulation” in determining the suicide rate of societies, groups, or social conditions.     

Locke, McCann, and Voluntarism

Abstract: Locke scholars continue to disagree over how he analyzed natural laws, real essence-power relations in physical substances. Some say he regarded them as emanations, necessitated by the corpuscular structure of real essences; for others his laws are adventitious, imposed on substances by God and contingent on divine alterable will. The second view has been increasingly favored in recent years, assisted no doubt by Edwin McCann's potent case for it in "Lockean Mechanism" (1985). The present article, whose authors are sympathetic to the necessitarian reading of Locke, argues against McCann's exegesis.