AUGUSTE COMTE

The founder of positivism and sociology

b. January 19, 1798, Montpellier, France
—d. September 5, 1857, Paris
 Auguste Comte
• French philosopher
• the founder of sociology and of positivism.
• he coined the term sociology
• The first to attempt its establishment as a
science
LIFE
 A rebellious son of a Catholic-royalist
family
• Comte’s father, Louis Comte, a tax official, and his
mother, Rosalie Boyer, were strongly royalist and
deeply sincere Roman Catholics. But their
sympathies were at odds with the republicanism
and skepticism that swept through France in the
aftermath of the French revolution.
• Comte resolved these conflicts at an early age by
rejecting Roman Catholicism and royalism alike.
 Studies
• intellectually precocious
• 1814 - École Polytechnique
• Two years later, the Bourbons closed that institution, and its
students were dismissed.
• Comte soon took up permanent residence in Paris, earning a
precarious living there by the occasional teaching of mathematics
and by journalism.
• He read widely in philosophy and history and was especially
interested in those thinkers who were beginning to discern and
trace some order in the history of human society. The thoughts of
several important French political philosophers of the 18th
century—such as Montesquieu, the Marquis de Condorcet, A.-R.-J.
Turgot, and Joseph de Maistre—were critically worked into his own
system of thought.
 August 1817-April 1824:
Henri de Saint-Simon’s Secretary
• Comte’s most important acquaintance in Paris
• a French social reformer and one of the founders
of socialism, who was the first to clearly see the
importance of economic organization in modern
society
• Comte’s ideas were very similar to Saint-Simon’s,
and some of his earliest articles appeared in
Saint-Simon’s publications.
• There were distinct differences in the two men’s
viewpoints and scientific backgrounds, however,
and Comte eventually broke with Saint-Simon.
 1826 – Course of Positive Philosophy
• In 1826 Comte began a series of lectures on
his “system of positive philosophy” for a
private audience, but he soon suffered a
serious nervous breakdown.
• He made an almost complete recovery from
his symptoms the following year.
• and in 1828/29 he again took up his projected
lecture series.
 1829-1842
• The resumption of the Course of Positive
Philosophy in January 1829, marks the beginning
of a second period in Comte's life that lasted 13
years and included the publication of the six
volumes of the Course of Positive Philosophy
(Cours de philosophie positive 1830, 1835, 1838,
1839, 1841, 1842).
• In addition, during this period, more and more of
his ties with the academic world were severed.
 1843-1844 – a period of transition
• Elementary Treatise on Analytic Geometry (1843) his only
mathematical work
• Philosophical Treatise on Popular Astronomy (1844), the
fruit of a yearly course, begun in 1830, for Parisian workers.
• The Discourse on the Positive Spirit, also from 1844, which
he used as the preface to the treatise on astronomy,
marked a sharp change of direction by its emphasis on the
moral dimension of the new philosophy: now that the
sciences had been systematized, Comte was able to return
to his initial interest, political philosophy. Public recognition
of the positivist Comte, as opposed to the saint-simonian,
twenty years earlier, came with Émile Littré's articles in Le
National.
 1844 – the first encounter with
Clotilde de Vaux
• the ‘year like none other’ that launched what
Comte himself called his ‘second career’
• ‘continuous dominance of the heart’
• After Clotilde's death, in April 1846, Comte began
to idolize her, to such an extent that it became a
true cult.
• This sentimental episode exerted a considerable
influence on his later thought and writings,
particularly with regard to the role of women in
the positivist society he planned to establish.
 1851-54
• 1851-54 System of Positive Polity (Système de
politique positive, 4 vols.)
• interrupted for a few months in order for him
to write the Catechism of Positive Religion
(1852)
5 main contributions

POSITIVIST PHILOSOPHY
• Comte’s particular ability was as a synthesizer
of the most diverse intellectual currents. He
took his ideas mainly from writers of the 18th
and early 19th centuries.
 A rigorous adoption of the scientific
method
• We are to give up the metaphysical serach for
first and final causes
• Positivism as a method of study based on
observation and restricted to the observable
• Denying the possibility of knowledge of
unobservable physical objects
• The methods of natural sciences should be
applied to the objective study of society
 The Law of three states or stages of
intellectual development/thinking
• = humanity passes through three successive stages:
• 1) the ʽtheologicalʼ stage (interpreting phenomena
theologically - the world and human dsetiny explained in
terms of gods and spirits; society = an expression of God’s
will)
• 2) the ʽmetaphysicalʼ stage (the Renaissance; a transitional
stage; interpreting phenomena metaphysically –
explanations in terms of essences, final causes, and other
abstractions; society seen in natural terms)
• 3) the positive stage (interpreting phenomena
positivistically-knowledge bases on the evidence of the
senses)
 classification of the sciences;
• the hypothesis = the sciences had developed from the
understanding of simple and abstract principles to the
understanding of complex and concrete phenomena
•  the sciences developed as follows: from
mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry to
biology and finally to sociology
• According to Comte, this last discipline not only
concluded the series but would also reduce social facts
to laws and synthesize the whole of human knowledge,
thus rendering the discipline equipped to guide the
reconstruction of society.
 conception of the incomplete
philosophy of each of these sciences
anterior to sociology
 synthesis of a positivist social
philosophy in a unified form
• Positivim = a belief that the world can best be
undesrtood through scientific inquiry
• 2 dimensions of positivism:
• 1) methodological (the application of scientific
knowledge to both physical and social
phenomena)
• 2) social and political (the use of sych knowledge
to predict the likely results of different policies so
that the best one can be chosen)
 The Influence of Positivism
• Comte’s influence on 19th century thought, in
general, was immense
• the period which falls between 1850 and 1880
was "uniquely positivist"
• George Eliot, John Stuart Mill
SOCIOLOGY
 The Father of Sociology
• He organized and classified the social though
prevailing before his times
• A specific methodoly
 2 fields of sociology
• 1) social ʻstaticsʼ (laws of order) = the study of
the forces that hold society together
• 2) social ʻdynamicsʼ (laws of progress) = the
study of the causes of social change
• ʻlaw of stagesʼ
 A law of social development
• Social organisation in a particular society is correspondent to the
stage of human thinking through which it happens to be passing.
• It is only with change in the level of human thinking that there
occurs a change in the social oorganization.
• 1) the ʽtheologicalʼ stage and social organization (the social laws,
political laws etc unquestioned, accepted as absolutely valid ;
society = an expression of God’s will; most societies in the
theological stage ruled by monarchs; superstitions)
• 2) the ʽmetaphysicalʼ stage and social organization (the
constitutional szstem of government – some power passes into the
hands of people; society seen in natural terms)
• 3) the positive stage (industry and technology predomintaes;
reason; the application of scientific techniques to the social world)
 Goal = the reformation of the social
order
• "The object of all my labor has been to re-establish in society
something spiritual that is capable of counter-balancing the
influence of the ignoble materialism in which we are at present
submerged."
• The post-1789 crisis of industrial society-A CRISIS OF TRANSITION:
• society had broken down as a result of the French Revolution
• The Revolution was a good thing -- the Revolution had also been
necessary because the ancien regime -- based as it was on obsolete
theological knowledge -- no longer served as a respectable basis for
shared opinions. It was the progress of the sciences that had
undermined this basis.
• The Revolution offered no grounds for the reorganization of society
because it was negative -- that is, the Revolution destroyed the old
without creating the new.
 A NEW RELIGION
• Comte revealed his conception of the ideal positivist
society in his System of Positive Polity.
• He believed that the organization of the Roman Catholic
church, divorced from Christian theology, could provide a
structural and symbolic model for the new society, though
Comte substituted a “religion of humanity” for the worship
of God.
• A spiritual priesthood of secular sociologists would guide
society and control education and public morality. The
actual administration of the government and of the
economy would be in the hands of businessmen and
bankers, while the maintenance of private morality would
be the province of women as wives and mothers.
• Sociology in Our Times: The Essentials
By Diana Kendall
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/130750/
Auguste-Comte
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/#Bio
Cambridge Dict. Of Philosophy
Sociological Theories (gb)
• Sociological theory: an introduction to the classical
tradition By Richard W. Hadden
• http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture25a.html
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