Abstract

The essay deals with a foundamental experience in the social tie, community through eyes, as expressed in Halbwachs' seminal meditation on collective memory. Glance, language, memory are basical components in the author's sociological theory, as basical as they are in Spinoza's "Ethica" and Wittgenstein. One of the aims of the essay is to show, then, some of the common features which characterize such thinkers at the epistemological level: a sort of sociology of knowledge "ethica", if such an approach does exhist. Here go under review some classical points particularly at stake in Halbwachs' sociology: "social frameworks of memory", "collective memory", "collective representation", connection between dream and waking life, psychological approach vs. sociological obiectivity. Last but not least, the essay stresses the authonomy of Halbwachs' sociology with regard to Durkheim's: it is especially the "ethico"-phenomenological approach operating in Halbwachs which allows him to last longer and deeper than his maestro in the collective eye.