Thinking the responsibility with Paul Fauconnet: The theoretical foundations of the solidarity

We owe Paul Fauconnet (1874-1938), one of the leading sociologists of the first generation of the Durkheimian school, an unheralded yet innovative theory of responsibility, which allows to address in a singular way the functioning of judgments of responsibility in modern societies. We have tried to show in this article that it is possible to make use of it in order to understand the different imputations of responsibility that emerge before the social question, since inequalities, no longer legitimized by birth, are supposed to result from individual merit. In so doing, it has been possible to indicate the radicality of the concept of solidarity – understood as a modality of collective imputation of social problems – unfolding in the French Welfare State. Such a welfare state appears henceforth as the symbol of a socialist policy based on a sociological vision of the world.