Henri de Saint-Simon, in full Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte (count) de Saint-Simon, (born Oct.

17,
1760, Paris, Fr.—died May 19, 1825, Paris), French social theorist and one of the chief founders of
Christian socialism. In his major work, Nouveau Christianisme (1825), he proclaimed a brotherhood of
man that must accompany the scientific organization of industry and society, was a French social
theorist and the founder of French socialism. In the wake of the French Revolution, Saint-Simon
proposed a new and positive reorganization of society, controlled by the chiefs of industry, with
scientists in the role of priests. The aim of this society would be to produce things useful to life, and
peace would be assured by universal association. Saint-Simon’s call for a “science of society” influenced
the development of sociology and economics as fields of scientific study. Saint-Simon’s vision influenced
French and European society throughout the nineteenth century.

Additional Info:

Christian socialism: movement of the mid-19th century that attempted to apply the social principles of
Christianity to modern industrial life. The term was generally associated with the demands of Christian
activists for a social program of political and economic action on behalf of all individuals, impoverished
or wealthy, and the term was used in contradistinction to laissez-faire individualism. Later, Christian
Socialism came to be applied in a general sense to any movement that attempted to combine the
fundamental aims of socialism with the religious and ethical convictions of Christianity.

French socialism: Not found

Life

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, was born in Paris, France, October 17, 1760, to an
impoverished aristocratic family. His grandfather’s cousin, the duc de Saint-Simon, had written a famous
memoir of the court of Louis XIV. Henri was fond of claiming that he was a descendant of Charlemagne.
At an early age Saint-Simon showed a certain disdain for tradition; at thirteen he refused to make his
first Communion and was punished by imprisonment at Saint Lazare, from which he escaped. He
claimed his education was directed by D'Alembert, though no proof of this exists; likely Saint-Simon
himself invented this intellectual pedigree. After being educated by private tutors, he entered military
service at the age of seventeen. From his youth Saint-Simon was highly ambitious. He ordered his valet
to wake him every morning with; "Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do." His
regiment was among those sent by France to aid the American colonies. He served as captain of artillery
at Yorktown in 1781, was later taken prisoner and freed only after the Treaty of Versailles. Before
leaving America, he presented to the Viceroy of Mexico a plan to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific by
a canal, and he devised another scheme to construct a canal from Madrid to the sea.

He remained in France during the French Revolution (1789), and bought up newly nationalized land with
funds borrowed from a friend. During the Reign of Terror, he was imprisoned in the Palais de
Luxembourg, and emerged extremely wealthy because the value of Revolutionary currency had
depreciated. Saint-Simon lived a life of luxury, entertaining prominent people from all walks of life at his
lavish and glittering salons. Within several years he was on the point of bankruptcy, and began to study
science, taking courses at the École Polytechnique and acquainting himself with distinguished scientists.
His first published work, Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporains (1803; Letters of an
Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries), proposed that scientists should replace priests in the
social order, and that the property owners who held political power could only hope to maintain
themselves against the propertyless if they subsidized the advance of knowledge.

In August 1801, he married Mlle. de Champgrand. Less than a year later he divorced her, hoping to
marry Mme. de Staël, who had just become a widow, but she refused. In 1805, completely ruined by his
disordered life, he became a copyist at the Mont de Piété, working nine hours a day for £40 a year. He
relied on his activities as a writer for his livelihood; failing in this, he lived on the generosity of a former
valet, and finally solicited a small pension from his family. In 1823, he attempted suicide in despair. Late
in his career, he made the acquaintance of Olinde Rodrigues, who became inspired by Saint-Simon’s
social ideas and provided him with a living. When dying, Saint-Simon said to Rodrigues, "Remember that
to do anything great you must be impassioned."

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, died on May 19, 1825, and was interred in Le Père
Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Thoughts and works

As a thinker Saint-Simon was not particularly systematic, but his influence on modern thought is
undeniable, both as the historic founder of French socialism and as the origin of many ideas that were
later elaborated into Comtism. In 1817 he began to propound his socialistic views in a treatise entitled
L'Industrie, which he further developed in L'Organisateur (1819), a periodical on which Augustin Thierry
and Auguste Comte collaborated. The first number caused a sensation, though it brought few converts.
Du système industriel appeared in 1821, and in 1823–1824 Catéchisme des industriels. The last and
most important expression of his views is the Nouveau Christianisme (1825), which he left unfinished.

The ideas of Saint-Simon for the reconstruction of society were conditioned by the French Revolution
and by the feudal and military system still prevalent in France. In reaction to the destructive liberalism of
the Revolution, he insisted on the necessity of a new and positive reorganization of society, and went so
far as to appeal to Louis XVIII of France to initiate a new social order.

In opposition, however, to the military and feudal system, which had been strengthened by the
restoration, Saint-Simon advocated an arrangement by which the industrial chiefs should control
society. In place of the medieval church, the spiritual direction of society should fall to the men of
science. Saint-Simon envisioned an industrialist state directed by modern science, in which universal
association should suppress war. He believed that the men who are successfully able to organize society
for productive labor are entitled to govern it. The social aim was to produce things useful to life. The
conflict between labor and capital so much emphasized by later socialism was not present to Saint-
Simon, who assumed that the industrial chiefs, to whom the control of production was to be committed,
would rule in the interest of society. Later on, he gave greater attention to the cause of the poor, until in
his greatest work, The New Christianity, it took the form of a religion. This development of his teaching
resulted in Saint-Simon’s final quarrel with Comte.

Saint-Simon’s call for a “science of society,” similar to the natural sciences, influenced his disciple
Auguste Comte and the development of sociology and economics as fields of scientific study. Thomas
Carlyle, Michel Chevalier, John Stuart Mill, Napoleon III, and the young Léon Walras were all inspired by
Saint-Simonism. Saint-Simon’s vision influenced French and European society throughout the nineteenth
century. Saint-Simon’s “scientism” also influenced the development of Marxist theory.

An excellent edition of the works of Saint-Simon and Enfantin was published by the survivors of the sect
(47 vols., Paris, 1865–1878).

Additional Info:

Comtism- Auguste Comte's positivistic philosophy that metaphysics and theology should be replaced by
a hierarchy of sciences from mathematics at the base to sociology at the top.

L’industrie - was launched in 1819 by Henri de Saint-Simon (together with Augustin Thierry and Auguste
Comte). The magazine's aim was to provide a forum for criticism of the French administration, allow a
clear understanding of the past, and provide a basis for future policy.

Nouveau Christianisme

Saint-Simon’s positivist and scientific studies directed him to found a purely practical and demonstrable
moral code, while his sentimental and mystical tendencies led him to understand the need for a religion.
He believed that Christianity had advanced human morality, but he thought that the reign of Christianity
was at an end. His religious tendencies became gradually stronger, until he announced that the world
had arrived at the crisis, predicted by the Old Testament, which was to end in the establishment of a
truly universal religion, the adoption by all nations of a pacific social organization, and the speedy
betterment of the condition of the poor. This vision was developed in "Le Nouveau Christianisme,"
which was unfinished at Saint-Simon’s death.

Saint-Simon had not concerned himself with theology previous to the writing of Nouveau Christianisme.
He began with a belief in God, and set out to reduce Christianity to its simple and essential elements. He
cleared away the dogmas and other excrescences and defects which had developed in the Catholic and
Protestant interpretations of Christianity. He proposed, as the precept of the new Christianity, that, “The
whole of society ought to strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the
poorest class; society ought to organize itself in the way best adapted for attaining this end.”

Saint-Simonism

The views of Saint-Simon had little influence during his lifetime, and he left only a small number of
disciples, who regarded him as a prophet and continued to advocate his doctrines. The most important
of these followers were Olinde Rodrigues, the favored disciple of Saint-Simon, and Barthélemy Prosper
Enfantin, who together had received Saint-Simon's last instructions. Their first step was to establish a
journal, Le Producteur, but it was discontinued in 1826. The sect, however, had begun to grow, and
before the end of 1828, had meetings not only in Paris but in many provincial towns.
In 1828, Amand Bazard gave a "complete exposition of the Saint-Simonian faith" in a long course of
lectures in Paris, which were well attended. His Exposition de la doctrine de St Simon (2 vols., 1828–
1830) won more adherents. The second volume was chiefly by Enfantin, who along with Bazard stood at
the head of the society, but who was more metaphysical in his orientation, and prone to push his
deductions to extremes. The revolution of July (1830) brought a new freedom to the socialist reformers.
A proclamation was issued demanding the community of goods, the abolition of the right of inheritance,
and the enfranchisement of women.

Early the next year, the school obtained possession of the Globe through Pierre Leroux, who had joined
the school. It now numbered some of the ablest and most promising young men of France, many of
whom were pupils of the École Polytechnique which had caught its enthusiasm. The members formed
themselves into an association arranged in three grades, and constituting a society or family, which lived
out of a common purse in the Rue Monsigny. Before long, however, dissensions began to arise in the
sect. Bazard, a man of logical and more solid temperament, could no longer work in harmony with
Enfantin, who desired to establish an arrogant sacerdotalism and had lax notions about marriage and
the relation of the sexes.

After a time Bazard seceded, followed by many of the strongest supporters of the school. A series of
extravagant entertainments given by the group during the winter of 1832 reduced its financial resources
and greatly discredited its public reputation. The group finally moved to a property owned by Enfantin in
Ménilmontant, where they lived in a communistic society, distinguished by a peculiar dress. Shortly
afterward the leaders were tried and condemned for proceedings prejudicial to the social order; and the
sect was entirely broken up (1832). Many of its members became famous as engineers, economists, and
men of business.

The school of Saint-Simon advanced and clarified the vague and confused views of the master. They
identified two types of epochs in the philosophy of history; the critical, or negative, and the organic, or
constructive. The critical epochs, in which philosophy is the dominating force, are characterized by war,
egotism, and anarchy. The organic epochs are dominated by religion, and marked by a spirit of
obedience, devotion, and association. The two spirits of antagonism and association are the two great
social principles, and the character of an epoch is determined by the one which prevails. The spirit of
association, however, tends more and more to prevail over its opponent, extending from the family to
the city, from the city to the nation, and from the nation to the federation. This principle of association
is to be the basis of the social development of the future. Under the present system the industrial chief
exploits the proletariat, the members of which, though nominally free, must accept his terms under pain
of starvation. The only remedy for this is the abolition of the law of inheritance, and the union of all the
instruments of labor in a social fund, which shall be exploited by association. Society thus becomes sole
proprietor, entrusting to social groups and social functionaries the management of the various
properties. The right of succession is transferred from the family to the state.
The school of Saint-Simon strongly advocated a social hierarchy in which each person would be placed
according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. Government would be a kind of spiritual
or scientific autocracy. The school of Saint-Simon advocated the complete emancipation of women and
her entire equality with men. The "social individual" is man and woman, who are associated in the
exercise of the triple function of religion, the state and the family. In its official declarations, the school
maintained the sanctity of the Christian law of marriage. Connected with these doctrines was a theory of
the "rehabilitation of the flesh," deduced from the philosophic theory of the school, which rejected the
dualism emphasized by Catholic Christianity in its mortification of the body, and held that the body
should be restored to its due place of honor. This theory was unclear, and its ethical character differed
according to various interpretations given to it by different members of the school of Saint-Simon.
Enfantin developed it into a kind of sensual mysticism, a system of free love with a religious sanction.

REFERENCES

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henri_de_Saint-Simon

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-de-Saint-Simon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Organisateur

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Comtism