That we cannot do without a homeland is what appears to me obvious: for we cannot live outside an organised society and the highest organised society that exists is the homeland. Therefore, in this sense, anti-patriotism has always seemed absurd to me. But there is another question with a less easy solution: it is knowing what kind of homeland we must want. Undoubtedly, we have obligations towards the already constituted homeland, of which we are a part in fact, from which we do not have the right to free ourselves. However, above this homeland, there is another that is being formed, that envelops our national homeland; it is the European homeland, or the human homeland. But to what extent should we want this homeland? […] There would be a theoretical solution to the problem; it is to imagine humanity itself organised as a society. Yet, is it necessary to say that such an idea, if not entirely unachievable, must be rejected in such an indeterminate future that there is really no need to consider it. […] Nevertheless, there is a way to reconcile these two feelings. It is that the national ideal merges with the human ideal; it is that particular states become themselves, each in their own strength, the organs by which this general ideal is realised.

DURKHEIM (1900–1908/2020, pp. 133, 241)

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The first part of the book showed that the work between sociology and philosophy, in the service of ETS, requires a simultaneous analysis of ideals, norms deriving from them and analytical tools of social reality. However, a common objection comes to mind: should social sciences not simply describe and explain people’s actions, as well as the subjective aspect of their representations, without being burdened with costly reflection on ideals?

We do not believe so, for two main reasons. On the one hand, as we have seen, sociology does not escape normative judgments based on the ideals of the researcher, as a member of a given society (or even a political community). On the other hand, we make our own Durkheim’s reflection according to which ideals are real objects, which can be analysed sociologically, though not soluble in the subjective judgment: “a value judgment expresses the relationship of a thing with an ideal. But the ideal is given just like the thing, albeit in a different manner” (Durkheim, 1924/2014, p. 98). Admittedly, the author is not always convincing, notably when he takes a step further by establishing a difference between the value judgments actually made by individuals, and those that fall under what values are in principle, in their objective aspect: “The gap is enormous between the way values are, in fact, estimated by the ordinary individual and this objective scale of human values on which, in principle, our judgments must be settled” (Durkheim, 1924/2014, p. 98). The pitfall here would be to attempt to persuade that the sociologist has access to this objective scale of human values.

Without going as far as this last Durkheimian claim, implicitly extended by Bourdieu, but strongly contested by Boltanski and Thévenot who anchor the debates on values at the centre of their analysis, we will continue on the path outlined in the first part, about collective entities in their inseparable sociological and political aspects. Furthermore, this way takes a particular meaning in ETS: far from being an arbitrary addition of academic disciplines, ETS explicitly articulate an aim of knowledge with a practical aim and a political ideal (Malet, 2021). All the more reason to revisit and update the position of Durkheim, professor of sociology and education science, who tried to articulate science and political action.