Auguste Comte Research Paper

1. Life And Main Works

The son of a minor bureaucrat, Comte was born on January 19, 1798 in Montpellier, France. Growing up in this center of counter-revolutionary activity, he was deeply affected by the chaos stemming from the French Revolution. By age 14, he renounced both the monarchy and God, alienating his royalist, Catholic parents. Comte’s rebelliousness was shared by many members of his generation, who longed for a sense of community and new principles of legitimacy that would stabilize moral and political life. His insubordinate behavior led to his expulsion from the Ecole Polytechnique, the prestigious Parisian engineering school, which had admitted him in 1814. After his dismissal in 1816, he committed himself to fulfilling the radical revolutionaries’ dream of erecting a secular republic.

Living in Paris, in 1817 he accepted the position of secretary to Henri de Saint-Simon. They became close collaborators in many journalistic enterprises. How-ever, in 1824 they parted ways after Comte accused him of trying to take credit for his ‘fundamental opuscule,’ the Plan des Tra aux Scientifiques Neces-saires pour Reorganiser la Societe, which outlined his social ideas. Although Comte later denied Saint-Simon’s influence, the older reformer showed him that they were in an era of transition that had to be completed by constructing a new society founded on industry and a new system of scientific know-ledge—the ‘positive philosophy.’ This philosophy centered on the scientific study of society. Using his talent for synthesis and system building, Comte brought to fruition the seminal ideas strewn haphazardly throughout Saint-Simon’s often-incoherent works.

In 1826 Comte launched a course in positive philosophy in his apartment. Yet he soon went mad and spent eight months in an asylum. He struggled against manic depression and paranoia the rest of his life. After working as a mathematics tutor and journalist, he secured a lowly teaching and administrative position at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he worked from 1832 to 1851.

Between 1830 and 1842 he wrote his most important work, the Cours de Philosophie Positive. It covered the history of the sciences, demonstrating that it was time for the study of society to become a science as well. The Cours attracted the attention of several famous writers, including John Stuart Mill, but they eventually became estranged from him.

Another person who experienced a bitter rupture with Comte was his wife, Caroline Massin. A penniless director of a reading room, she married him in 1824. They had a tumultuous marriage and separated in 1842. To punish her, he later called her a prostitute.

Comte fell in love in 1845 with Clotilde de Vaux, who was 17 years younger than he. Having been abandoned by her husband, this aspiring writer grew close to Comte but resisted his sexual advances. After she died of tuberculosis in 1846, Comte made her into his muse.

The Revolution of 1848 spurred Comte to activism. He established his own club, the ‘Positivist Society,’ to launch the positivist movement, and he wrote a manifesto, the Discours sur l’ensemble du Positivisme, which was a more extensive introduction to this work than his Discours sur l’esprit Positif of 1844. Dis-appointed that scientists and other intellectuals neglected him, he targeted two new groups, workers and women, whose social roles were highlighted in the Systeme de Politique Positi e. Published in four volumes between 1851 and 1854, this work expressed his political and social ideas. It promoted the importance of the emotions, established the Religion of Humanity, and made morality the seventh science. Many scholars blame his relationship with de Vaux for Comte’s alleged decline into religious, sentimental thinking. Yet there was no sudden break in his career, for from the start he distrusted the purely scientific spirit, committed himself to moral reform, and sought to create a new belief system to replace traditional religion.

The last years of Comte’s life were marked by increasing seclusion and conservatism. Afraid of anarchy, Comte supported Louis Napoleon in 1851. Disappointed in workers’ allegiance to socialism, he tried to gain the support of women, for whom he wrote the Catechisme Positi iste (1852). His Appel aux Conser ateurs (1855) aimed to persuade conservatives to join the positivist movement. Finally, in 1856 Comte published the Synthese subjecti e, which explored the importance of images and the emotions in the context of mathematics and logic. Dependent financially on a small group of followers, he died in Paris on September 5, 1857.

Auguste Comte was a brilliant visionary. However, his paranoia, egoism, and dogmatism impaired on his personal relations and on his ability to launch a political and intellectual movement. In effect, he sought to create in society the harmony and stability that he could not find in his private life.

2. Positivism And The History Of Science

Comte’s original version of positivism, which is far from the scientism with which it is often associated, had both a theoretical component and a practical, or political, aspect. It did not celebrate the sciences for their own sakes or seek to be value-free as scientific systems claim to be. Instead, positivism promoted a new republic imbued with ‘altruism’—a word he coined—in order to counteract the sense of dis-connectedness coming from the French Revolution.

An idealist, Comte believed that intellectual con-fusion was at the root of the post revolutionary anarchy because ideas always determined the social structure. Rejecting the conventional abstractions and practices of religion and politics as useless, he sought to create an intellectual revolution that would first lead to a moral revolution and then to a political and social revolution. An intellectual revolution would occur if one could place knowledge of society on a sure foundation to attain more control over it. To this end, he recommended the application of the scientific, or ‘positive,’ method to the study of politics and society.

The ‘positive’ method designated the certain, precise, useful, relative (as opposed to the absolute), and constructive (as opposed to the negative) method. Positive laws must avoid references to first and final causes or substances, which were incomprehensible. These laws had to show relationships between phenomena that would allow scientists to make predictions affecting the world of action. Indeed, each science should eschew pure empiricism and replicate as much as possible the deductive, rational approach of mathematics. Criticizing isolated facts as useless, Comte sought to free people from the tedious task of direct observation to enable them to construct abstract laws and theories. Individuals could not even make observations and retain facts without first formulating a theory to guide their perceptions. Provisional hypotheses were especially important to advance scientific understanding when concrete, observed facts were missing. Furthermore, scientists should use their imagination to create ‘scientific fictions,’ or hypothetical cases, to fill in poorly understood areas. Comte also recognized the role of esthetics and the subjective in formulating scientific hypotheses. To avoid giving reason excessive importance in scientific research, he refused to offer universal logical rules of scientific procedure and scientific proof. His only injunction was that every positive theory had to ultimately refer on some level to real, concrete phenomena that could be observed directly or indirectly.

Reflecting the impact of nineteenth-century historic-ism, Comte asserted, moreover, that one could not truly understand a phenomenon without grasping its history. To comprehend the positive method, one had to see its development in the major sciences, each of which had to be considered in relation to its own history, the history of the other sciences, and the history of society in general. The Cours highlighted the history of science, which Comte believed was the most neglected and important part of the development of humanity.

The Cours outlined Comte’s famous ‘classification of the sciences’ and his equally renowned ‘law of three stages.’ This law demonstrated that as the mind went from one mode of thinking to another, it generated a different theoretical system, which in turn shaped the political and social system. There were three stages of development. In the theological stage, people used supernatural ideas, such as God, to link their observations. (There were three phases of this stage: fetishism, where gods were located in phenomena, polytheism, and monotheism.) In a theological society, priests and military men ruled. The theory of divine right was the reigning political doctrine, while con-quest was the principal material activity. In the transitional, metaphysical stage, God was replaced by a personified essence or abstraction, like Nature or Reason. Lawyers and metaphysicians dominated society. The doctrines of popular sovereignty and natural rights were important in politics. More material activities were geared toward production. Finally, in the positive stage, supernatural and abstract forces would be replaced by scientific laws describing how, not why, phenomena functioned. Industrialists and positive philosophers would run the republic. Production would replace conquest as the goal of society.

According to the ‘classification of the sciences,’ each science went through the theological and metaphysical stages and finally became positive according to the simplicity of its phenomena and the distance of these phenomena from humans. Mathematics, which was not a ‘direct’ natural science, demonstrated the characteristics of the positive method. The positive method was then established in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology in that order. Each science depended on the simpler sciences that came before it in the hierarchy of sciences and could not advance to the positive stage until the preceding ones did. Comte argued against reducing one science to another, for each had its own distinctive subject matter and methodology. More-over, Comte warned against the widespread use of mathematics in scientific investigation, especially in biology and sociology.

The point of Comte’s laws of three stages and classification of the sciences was to demonstrate the inevitable triumph of the positive method in every area of study because all aspects of knowledge were interrelated and the mind sought homogeneity. Now that mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology were positive, it was time for the positive method to be extended to the study of politics and society, the last stronghold of theology and meta-physics.

3. Sociology

Comte named his science of society ‘sociology’ in 1839, giving it a distinctiveness and importance in his system that it never had in Saint-Simon’s work. Once it was established, the positive philosophy, which encompassed all of the sciences, would be completed and unified. All our ideas would be scientific and homogenous. In addition, sociology would help unite knowledge by making the sciences focus on improving humanity. Because everyone would agree on the most significant intellectual and moral principles, the establishment of sociology would lead to the intellectual consensus required to build a stable industrial society. Sociology would also provide the rational principles necessary to reform society.

Comte’s sociology had two parts, social statics and social dynamics. They stressed the interconnectedness of the members of the human species in space and time in order to counter the egoism and selfishness of the modern age. While social statics gave people a sense of solidarity with other members of contemporary society, social dynamics provided people with a feeling of connection with past and future generations of the human species. Social statics was the study of the social order. It explored forces, such as the family, that held society together. Social dynamics focused on historical progress. Its main principle was the ‘law of three stages.’

4. Positive Politics And The Religion Of Humanity

According to the ‘law of three stages,’ the unique characteristics of the human species—intelligence and sociability—became more dominant through exercise within both the individual and society. This theory reflects Comte’s multi-dimensional view of human nature, which was reinforced by romanticism. To him, the emotions were closely connected with the intellect, which they simulated. Because social needs were both intellectual and emotional, social reorganization had to involve the heart as much as the mind. In the first phase of his development, Comte emphasized the importance of creating a system of ideas that could be shared by all people. In this positivist system, sociology led everyone to focus their thoughts on the needs of society, or humanity. In his second phase, Comte stressed the necessity of reinforcing the intellectual consensus by encouraging emotional ties among individuals through the Religion of Humanity. Everyone should not simply think about humanity but love it as well. In short, an increase in intellectual well roundedness would lead to a growth of altruism.

Comte’s promotion of universal love was inspired by his horror of the abuses of modern industrial and capitalist society. He believed that the division of labor, which was necessary for progress, increased specialization and made people egotistic, narrow-minded, and selfish. The lower classes suffered the most from the indifference of the rest of society. Existing political parties, tied to the old theological and metaphysical principles, could not solve social problems.

Comte created a secular religious culture to bring individuals together. He designed new sacraments and a calendar of secular saints, called on the arts to aid in the process of continual socialization, and insisted that public schools offer boys and girls of all classes a broad education that cultivated feelings of sociability. The cult of Humanity, including a cult of ‘Woman,’ would honor individuals who had contributed to civilization. The ‘Religion of Humanity’ also assumed features of fetishism, the most emotionally intense and concrete form of religion. Everyone had to respect the earth, the ‘Great Fetish.’ Positivism, the most advanced stage of history, would lead full circle to the beginning of civilization, reflecting Comte’s doubts about the benefits of science and progress.

Although Comte’s doctrine was scientific in nature, he insisted on the limits and dangers of the sciences and recognized the importance of practical activity to which most people were drawn. To prevent the emergence of a dictatorship of scientists, Comte recommended that there be two separate powers that would hold each other in check. The temporal power would be composed of industrialists, who would control the practical, material activities of society. The spiritual power would consist of positive philosophers, who would govern the world of ideas, opinions, and feelings. The philosophers’ chief assistants would be workers, who would be finally incorporated into society, and women, who would make nurturing the goal of public life.

5. Assessment And Influence

Comte’s system was a grand synthesis designed to appeal to diverse philosophical and political positions. It incorporated ideas from many European thinkers, including Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Montesquieu, Condorcet, the Ideologues, the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, Maistre, Gall, Kant, and Herder. In terms of politics, Comte supported the moral concerns associated with the counter-revolutionaries and remained committed to the leftist tradition that political authority must aid the people. In searching for a synthesis—a synthesis that was both objective and subjective in nature—Comte pursued the middle way between extremes in all realms. He sought to balance the needs of the heart and those of the mind, rationalism and empiricism, materialism and idealism, religion and science, feminism and patriarchalism, democracy and authoritarianism, and individuality and sociability.

Comte’s philosophy is authoritarian, dogmatic, and grandiose. Many of his so-called scientific assertions, including the law of three stages, are replete with assumptions. Paradoxically, the very diffuseness of his endeavor caused him to lose support in his own day. The left found him illiberal and religious, while the right considered him blasphemous and anarchical.

Nevertheless, Comte’s thought was extremely influential. Because it was vast and complex, people took from it what they wanted. Mill and Emile Littre made positivism into a manifesto for the scientific age. Politicians of the Third Republic used positivism in their campaign against the Church. Charles Maurras employed positivist principles to enhance the proto-fascist doctrine of the Action Francaise. Elsewhere, positivism attracted support from both liberals and conservatives in the UK, the USA, and Latin America. The Brazilian flag displays Comte’s motto ‘Order and Progress.’

Comte also influenced the humanities and social sciences. Philosophers of science have been interested in his approach to hypotheses. Logical positivists shared Comte’s concern with problems of verification. Positivism long dominated European historiography. Lucien Levy-Bruhl introduced many of Comte’s ideas into anthropology. Through Emile Durkheim, positivism influenced sociology. Other social scientists affected by Comte include Alfred Espinas, Herbert Spencer, Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, Charles Booth, and Patrick Geddes. Comte’s thought remains relevant today, when people still grapple with many problems that he highlighted, such as the role of affectivity in education and the sciences, the roots of moral crises, and the significance of collective memory. Particularly at a time when global interests are paramount, Comte’s call for a commitment to humanity as a whole and the environment bears renewed examination.

Bibliography:

1. Comte A 1998 Cours de Philosophie Positive, 2 Vols. Hermann, Paris
2. Comte A 1929 Systeme de Politique Positive, 4 Vols. Societe positiviste, Paris
3. Gouhier H 1997 La Vie d’Auguste Comte. 2nd rev. edn. Vrin, Paris
4. Grange J 1996 La Philosophie d’Auguste Comte: Science, Politique, Religion. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris
5. Kremer-Marietti A 1982 Entre le Signe et l’histoire: L’Anthropologie d’Auguste Comte. Klincksieck, Paris
6. Petit A (forthcoming) Le Systeme positi iste: La Philosophie des sciences d’Auguste Comte et de ses Premiers Disciples (1820– 1900). Vrin, Paris
7. Pickering M 1993 Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
8. Scharff R C 1995 Comte after Positivism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
9. Wernick A 2001 Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK