At the international level, in the last years, the theme of the body has become more and more relevant for those scholars who deal with the Durkheimian sociology of culture. From the sociological point of view, the body is strictly connected with the duality of human nature as it is represented in culture. This paper shows that this duality is expressed in four cultural polarities body and soul, male and female, individual and society, sacred and profane and that in the definition of these polarities proposed by Durkheim in his works, in particular in the description of the male and of the female, the body plays a fundamental role.