This essay examines Durkheim’s conception of society as a subject (agent) and social fact as a thing. What makes this idea worth investigating is that almost all of the founding fathers of sociology, including Ibn Khaldun, Marx, Weber, and Tönnies, talk about society as if it has attributes of a true or real subject capable of agency that are comparable to attributes of an individual human being, but they never provide a precise definition of society through which its agency can easily be identified as a concrete phenomenon rather than a metaphoric expression. Instead, their concept of society and the nature of its agency must be construed from the content of their writings. This may be considered an insignificant issue since, in many cases, sociologists deal with a specific aspect of society conceived of as a group of people living within the boundaries of a given territory under the authority of a single political entity, as is the case in Durkheim’s definition of horde as the simplest form of society. This lack of a precise definition is odd because Durkheim himself makes a strong methodological claim for the need to begin sociological investigation with clear and precise definitions of the objects under scrutiny by concentrating on their external traits and then proceeding to their inner essential natures. One such construction of Durkheim’s conception of society has been provided by Poggi (2000), who argues that, for Durkheim, society begins where instinct ends, which means that it is cultural in nature and thus not a material thing to be observed existing in nature; therefore, it is, in essence, something that is both external to individuals’ consciousness and finding its place of residence in the very thing to which it is external. It is this conception of a dual form of existence that, according to Poggi (2000, pp. 85-87, 96), leads Durkheim in his later works to an increasing awareness of the contingent nature of society stemming from the fact that it depends upon the individuals’ willingness to act according to the rules or norms of that same society. According to Poggi (2000, p. 96), society in Durkheim’s thought is the totality of collective representation guiding interactions between individuals by creating feelings of moral obligations. This paper argues that although this conception of society exists in Durkheim’s thought, there is still room for an alternative interpretation of his concept of society not as contingent in its nature and not involving representations exercising authority over individuals; this alternative interpretation suggests that, for Durkheim, society is a moral being that is able to manifest itself and exercise its authority through these representations. This argument presents a different conception of society available in Durkheim’s thought, which is that it exists and that its agency manifests itself in the act of turning this contingency into real action at the level of individuals. Durkheim’s conception of society as a real agent-subject and collective representations in the forms of rules and norms for conduct, currents of thought and action, and forms of organization is not given at once but seems to develop gradually in his major works. In its essence, society is the name of and the answer given by human beings for their survival in nature. This concept finds its first expression in the Division of Labour (Durkheim, 1893; Lukes, 1973), where the forms of division of labor are examined by Durkheim as the manifestation and representations that give this survival its more concrete forms. The forms are not the society itself, but the external traits of its struggle for survival, and they provide the door to penetrate into society itself. In the Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim, 2004), society is conceived of as an emergent moral being or a “moral density”, transcending individuals and represented by forms of collective action for common or collective survival and also guiding and directing its members’ efforts to this common goal. In Suicide (Durkheim, 2002), its agency is perceived through currents and norms of over- and under-performance in providing its members with guidance for a life balanced between responding to the demands of collective existence and the demands and requirements of becoming of an individual. These pressures are produced by and inserted into the minds and hearts of individuals by the society itself. The agency of society is also perceived through its over- and under-performance in providing its members with strong and weak attachments to the collective body. These states of performances and strengths of attachment, in turn, are considered as the causes of suicide and represented in material life by qualitatively different forms and rates of suicide. It is in the Elementary Forms of Religious Life that perhaps not a final but a last perception of society as an agent is presented by Durkheim (2005, p. 27) in his definition of religious phenomena and ceremonies as collective representations arising from actions of individuals in a group (in an over-exited state) that has come together to create and recreate itself and thus leads to the annihilation of all forms and states of individuality that its members might have had and maintained in their ordinary and mundane lives, with their efforts heightened in the hot spirit arising from feelings of group unity and solidarity. The question of how to imagine and conceptualize society as a true subject capable of agency is not unique to Durkheim. On the contrary, there are many similarities between his approach to this issue and Marx’s struggle to provide a precise definition of social class as an agent, and between his approach and Tönnies’ conception of Public opinion. A short comparison of these ideas sheds some light on Durkheim’s stance. For Marx (1983, pp. 173–182, 189–195, 212–217), social classes do not exist simply by being in a definite and objective position in the social relations of production, and this is expressed by the metaphor of peasants being like potatoes in a sack: although they look like a class with regard to their objective conditions of existence, they lack the quality of being a social class until they create for themselves a common consciousness, organization, and perform collective actions for the sake of their collective interests. Class formation and agency for now, and to change the course of history, can and should only be created with some intellectual input from outside—but only in the very conditions of existence that exist mostly in work places with the coming together of people who are objectively in the same class position. Similarly, for Tönnies, according to Heberle (1948, pp. 155–157), “Public opinion” (which differs from public opinion with lower case p) does not simply mean a gathering of many diverse forms and currents of opinions about matters relating to public affairs. It must be created by intellectuals and should unify the energies, thoughts, and actions of all members of society as if it were the will of a single individual, and it has to be put in the service of or against the implementation of a particular policy relating to public affairs. There is, however, one essential difference that separates Durkheim’s conception of society from Marx’s conception of social class and Tönnies’ conception of public opinion. The latter two forms of existence and agency have a temporal character: they have to be created and abandoned or annihilated when the objective is achieved. When created, they look like the moments in which a society feels itself and reinvigorates its collective consciousness. But Durkheim would consider these moments as secondary or lesser forms of existence and agency that do not necessarily attest to the existence of a full society in its single moral unity. On the contrary, these moments may arise simply because of group life somehow lacking the quality of being a society and looking more like a network of relations and exchange of atomic units, each trying to achieve its own objectives. This is because, in Durkheim’s conception, society as a true and real subject exists insofar as it directs the efforts of all its members toward securing its own collective survival as a single moral being, in the socialization of its members who are committed to this objective, and the application of corrective sanctions against actions that threaten its survival. All efforts and actions other than these are but manifestations of a subject that is lesser than a society.