Auguste Comte

Background

Auguste Comte was born on January 19, 1798, in Montpellier, France. He was born in the shadow of the French Revolution and as modern science and technology gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. During this time, European society experienced violent conflict and feelings of alienation. Comte’s father, Louis Comte, a tax official, and his mother, Rosalie Boyer, were strongly royalist and deeply sincere Roman Catholics.

Education

Comte got his early education at the Lycée Joffre and then the future philosopher attended the University of Montpellier.

Comte was intellectually precocious and in 1814 entered the École Polytechnique - a school in Paris that had been founded in 1794 to train military engineers but was soon transformed into a general school for advanced sciences. The school was temporarily closed in 1816, but 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, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, and Joseph de Maistre - were critically worked into his own system of thought.

When the École Polytechnique opened its doors, Comte did not request readmission.

Career

At 19 Comte met Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, and as a "spiritually adopted son," he became secretary and collaborator to the older man until 1824. The relationship between Saint-Simon and Comte grew increasingly strained for both theoretical and personal reasons and finally degenerated into an acrimonious break over disputed authorship. Saint-Simon was an intuitive thinker interested in immediate, albeit utopian, social reform. Comte was a scientific thinker, in the sense of systematically reviewing all available data, with a conviction that only after science was reorganized in its totality could men hope to resolve their social problems.

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 1828-1829 he again took up his projected lecture series. This was so successfully concluded that he redelivered it at the Royal Athenaeum during 1829-1830. The following 12 years were devoted to his publication (in six volumes) of his philosophy in a work entitled Cours de philosophie positive.

From 1832 to 1842 Comte was a tutor and then an examiner at the revived École Polytechnique. In the latter year, he quarreled with the directors of the school and lost his post, along with much of his income.

The years 1851-1854 were dominated by the publication of the four-volume System of Positive Polity, which was interrupted for a few months in order for him to write the Catechism of Positive Religion (1852). Relieved of all his duties at the École Polytechnique, Comte now lived off of the ‘voluntary subsidy’ begun by the followers of his in England and now also granted to him from various countries. In 1853, Harriet Martineau published a condensed English translation of the Course of Positive Philosophy.

Disappointed by the unenthusiastic response his work got from the workers, Comte launched an Appeal to Conservatives in 1855. The next year, he published the first volume of a work on the philosophy of mathematics announced in 1842, under the new title of Subjective Synthesis, or Universal System of the Conceptions Adapted to the Normal State of Humanity. Increasingly occupied by his function as High Priest of Humanity, he sent an emissary to the Jesuits in Rome proposing an alliance with the ‘Ignacians.’

Comte died on September 5, 1857, without having had time to draft the texts announced up to 35 years before: a Treatise of Universal Education, which he thought he could publish in 1858, a System of Positive Industry, or Treatise on the Total Action of Humanity on the Planet, planned for 1861, and, finally, for 1867, a Treatise of First Philosophy. He is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, where his Brazilian followers erected a statue of Humanity in 1983.

Achievements

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  Auguste Comte was a prominent French philosopher. He introduced a new discipline namely Sociology and divided this subject into two categories - "social statics," which denotes the forces holding society together and "social dynamics," which indicates the forces responsible for social change. Apart from enriching the field of Sociology, his social theories provided the basis for the formation of "Religion of Humanity."
  
  He is sometimes regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. His works had a great influence on renowned social thinkers like Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot to a great extent. His concept of social evolutionism acted as a great inspiration for the development of modern academic sociology.
  
  His apartment, where Auguste Comte lived from 1841 to 1857, has been preserved as the Maison d’Auguste Comte which is a private museum.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • A General View of Positivism

    (Auguste Comte, considered by some to be the first "philos...)

    1844
  • Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings

    (Although Auguste Comte is conventionally acknowledged as ...)

    1998
  • Comte: Early Political Writings

    (The French philosopher Auguste Comte is generally acknowl...)

    2003
  • The catechism of positive religion

    (The French philosopher Comte here outlines his progressiv...)

    1891

Religion

Auguste Comte created "Religion of Humanity," a secular religion meant to replace the traditional religions that people of the time were becoming disillusioned with.

Comte defined religion as "the state of complete harmony peculiar to human life […] when all the parts of Life are ordered in their natural relations to each other." Comte also defines religion as a consensus, analogous to what health is for the body. Religion has two functions, according to the point of view from which one considers existence: in its moral function, religion should govern each individual; in its political function, it should unite all individuals. Religion also has three components, corresponding to the threefold division of the cerebral table: doctrine, worship, and moral rule (discipline).

In the positivist religion, worship, doctrine, and moral rule all have the same object, namely Humanity, which must be loved, known, and served.

The principal novelty of Comte’s religion resides in worship, which is both private (taking place within the family) and public. The positivists set up a whole system of prayers, hymns, and sacraments (Wright 1986). As these were all largely inspired by Catholic worship, it was said that it was ‘catholicism without Christ,’ to which the positivists replied that it was ‘catholicism plus science.’ The best known and most original aspects of Comte’s religion are found in its public worship, and in the positivist liturgical calendar. As Humanity consists more of dead than living beings, positivism designed a whole system of commemorations, which were to develop the sense of Humanity’s historical continuity. Thus, the worship of Humanity takes is the worship of great men. Unlike the French revolutionary calendar, which followed the rhythm of the seasons, the positivist calendar takes its inspiration from history and pays homage to great men from all nations and all times.

The wish to maintain the distinction between temporal and spiritual powers led Comte and his followers to demand the separation of Church and State. It has been noticed less often, however, that the two forms of power stand in differing relations to space. The religious society is by its nature catholic, in the sense of universal, and therefore has no boundaries other than those of the planet; the surface of a State meets different demands, which impose rather strict geographic limits.

Politics

Auguste Comte was an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution of 1848: he founded the Positivist Society, modelled after the Club of the Jacobins.

In December 1851, Comte applauded the coup d’état by Napoleon III, who put an end to the parliamentary "anarchy." Soon disappointed by the Second Empire, Comte shifted his hopes to Czar Nicholas I, to whom he wrote.

Views

Comte took his ideas mainly from writers of the 18th and early 19th centuries. From David Hume and Immanuel Kant, he derived his conception of positivism - i.e., the theory that theology and metaphysics are earlier imperfect modes of knowledge and that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations as verified by the empirical sciences. From various French clericalist thinkers, Comte took the notion of a hypothetical framework for social organization that would imitate the hierarchy and discipline found in the Roman Catholic church. From various Enlightenment philosophers, he adopted the notion of historical progress. Most importantly, from Saint-Simon he came to appreciate the need for a basic and unifying social science that would both explain existing social organizations and guide social planning for a better future. This new science he called "sociology" for the first time.

Comte shared Saint-Simon’s appreciation of the growing importance of modern science and the potential application of scientific methods to the study and improvement of society. Comte believed that social phenomena could be reduced to laws in the same way that the revolutions of the heavenly bodies had been made explicable by gravitational theory. Furthermore, he believed that the purpose of the new scientific analysis of society should be ameliorative and that the ultimate outcome of all innovation and systematization in the new science should be the guidance of social planning. Comte also thought a new and secularized spiritual order was needed to supplant what he viewed as the outdated supernaturalism of Christian theology.

Comte’s main contribution to positivist philosophy falls into five parts: his rigorous adoption of the scientific method; his law of the three states or stages of intellectual development; his classification of the sciences; his conception of the incomplete philosophy of each of these sciences anterior to sociology; and his synthesis of a positivist social philosophy in a unified form. He sought a system of philosophy that could form a basis for political organization appropriate to the modern industrial society.

Comte’s "law of the three stages" maintained that human intellectual development had moved historically from a theological stage, in which the world and human destiny within it were explained in terms of gods and spirits; through a transitional metaphysical stage, in which explanations were in terms of essences, final causes, and other abstractions; and finally to the modern positive stage. This last stage was distinguished by an awareness of the limitations of human knowledge. Knowledge could only be relative to man’s nature as a species and to his varying social and historical situations. Absolute explanations were therefore better abandoned for the more sensible discovery of laws based on the observable relations between phenomena.

Comte’s classification of the sciences was based upon the hypothesis that the sciences had developed from the understanding of simple and abstract principles to the understanding of complex and concrete phenomena. Hence, 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.

Though Comte did not originate the concept of sociology or its area of study, he greatly extended and elaborated the field and systematized its content. Comte divided sociology into two main fields, or branches: social statics, or the study of the forces that hold society together; and social dynamics, or the study of the causes of social change. He held that the underlying principles of society are individual egoism, which is encouraged by the division of labor, and the combination of efforts and the maintenance of social cohesion by means of government and the state.

Though unquestionably a man of genius, Comte inspired discipleship on the one hand and derision on the other. His plans for a future society have been described as ludicrous, and Comte was deeply reactionary in his rejection of democracy, his emphasis on hierarchy and obedience, and his opinion that the ideal government would be made up of an intellectual elite. But his ideas influenced such notable social scientists as Émile Durkheim of France and Herbert Spencer and Sir Edward Burnett Tylor of Great Britain. Comte’s belief in the importance of sociology as the scientific study of human society remains an article of faith among contemporary sociologists, and the work he accomplished remains a remarkable synthesis and an important system of thought.

Quotations: "The dead govern the living."

"Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality."

"To understand a science it is necessary to know its history."

"Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge."

Personality

Comte was a rather sombre, ungrateful, self-centered, and egocentric personality, but he compensated for this by his zeal for the welfare of humanity, his intellectual determination, and his strenuous application to his life’s work. He devoted himself untiringly to the promotion and systematization of his ideas and to their application in the cause of the improvement of society.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Catholicism minus Christianity." - T. H. Huxley, on the ideas of Comte.
  
  "Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers." - John Stuart Mill

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Henri de Saint-Simon, David Hume, Immanuel Kant

Connections

In 1824 Comte began a common-law marriage with Caroline Massin when she was threatened with arrest because of prostitution, and he later referred to this disastrous 18-year union as "the only error of my life." They separated in 1842.

In 1845 Comte had a profound romantic and emotional experience with Clotilde de Vaux, who died the following year of tuberculosis. Comte idealized this sentimental episode, which 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.

Father:

Louis Comte

Mother:

Rosalie Boyer

Wife:

Caroline Massin

Mistress:

Clotilde de Vaux

teacher:

Claude Henri Rouvroy

References

• Auguste Comte
  1998
• Auguste Comte and Positivism
  1865
• Love, Order, and Progress: The Science, Philosophy, and Politics of Auguste Comte
  2018
• The Prophets of Paris
  1962