Everything about Auguste Comte totally explained
Auguste Comte (full name:
Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte;
January 17,
1798 –
September 5,
1857) was a French thinker who is generally credited for having coined the term "sociologie" (French, meaning "
sociology") (from the Latin:
socius, "companion"; and the suffix
-ology, "the study of", from Greek λόγος,
lógos, "knowledge" ). It has recently been discovered that the term had already been introduced in 1780, albeit with a different meaning, by the French essayist
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836)..
Life
Comte was born at
Montpellier, in southwestern
France. After attending the
University of Montpellier, one of the oldest European universities, Comte was admitted to the
École Polytechnique in
Paris. The École Polytechnique was notable for its adherence to the French ideals of
republicanism and
progress. The École closed in
1816 for reorganization, however, causing Comte to leave and continue his studies at the
medical school at Montpellier. When the École Polytechnique reopened, he didn't request readmission.
Following his return to Montpellier, Comte soon came to see unbridgeable differences with his
Catholic and
Monarchist family and left again for Paris, earning money by small jobs. In August of 1817 he became a student and secretary for
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, who brought Comte into intellectual society. In
1824, Comte left Saint-Simon, again because of unbridgeable differences.
Comte now knew what he wanted to do - work out the philosophy of
positivism. This plan he published as
Plan de travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société (
1822) (
Plan of scientific studies necessary for the reorganization of society). But he failed to get an academic position. His day-to-day life depended on sponsors and financial help from friends.
He married Caroline Massin, but divorced in
1842. In
1826 he was brought into a mental health hospital, but left without being cured -- only stabilized by Massin -- so that he could work again on his plan. In the time between this and their divorce, he published the six volumes of his
Cours.
From
1844, Comte was involved with
Clotilde de Vaux, a relationship that remained platonic. After her death in
1846 this love became quasi-religious, and Comte saw himself as founder and prophet of a new "
religion of humanity". He published four volumes of
Système de politique positive (
1851 -
1854).
He died in Paris on September 5th, 1857 and is buried at the famous Cimetière du
Père Lachaise.
Legacy
One universal
law that Comte saw at work in all sciences he called the 'law of three phases'. It is by his statement of this law that he's best known in the English-speaking world; namely, that society has gone through three phases: Theological, Metaphysical, and Scientific.
To the last of these he also gave the name "
Positive," because of the
polysemous connotations of that word.
The
Theological phase was seen from the perspective of
19th century France as preceding the
Enlightenment, in which man's place in society and society's restrictions upon man were referenced to God. Man blindly believed in whatever he was taught by his ancestors. He believed in a supernatural power.
Fetishism played a significant role during this time. By the "Metaphysical" phase, he referred not to the
Metaphysics of
Aristotle or other ancient Greek philosophers. Rather, the idea was rooted in the problems of French society subsequent to the
revolution of
1789. This Metaphysical phase involved the justification of
universal rights as being on a vauntedly higher plane than the authority of any human ruler to countermand, although said rights were not referenced to the sacred beyond mere metaphor. This stage is known as the stage of investigation, because people started reasoning and questioning although no solid evidence was laid. In the Scientific phase, which came into being after the failure of the revolution and of
Napoleon, people could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force despite the proclamations of
human rights or prophecy of
the will of God. Science started to answer questions in full stretch. In this regard he was similar to
Karl Marx and
Jeremy Bentham. For its time, this idea of a Scientific phase was considered up-to-date, although from a later standpoint it's too derivative of
classical physics and
academic history. Comte's
law of three stages was one of the first theories of
social evolutionism.
The other universal law he called the 'encyclopedic law'. By combining these laws, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification of all sciences, including inorganic physics (
astronomy,
earth science and
chemistry) and organic physics (
biology and, for the first time,
physique sociale, later renamed
sociologie). Independently from
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès's introduction of the term in 1780, Comte re-invented 'sociologie', and introduced the term as a neologism, in 1838. Comte had earlier used the term 'social physics', but that term had been appropriated by others, notably
Adolphe Quetelet.
This idea of a special science—not the humanities, not
metaphysics—for the social was prominent in the 19th century and not unique to Comte. The ambitious—many would say grandiose—way that Comte conceived of it, however, was unique.
Comte saw this new science,
sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences, and which would integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole.
Comte’s explanation of the Positive philosophy introduced the important relationship between theory, practice and human understanding of the world. On page 27 of the 1855 printing of
Harriet Martineau’s translation of
The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, we see his observation that, “If it's true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it's equally true that facts can not be observed without the guidance of some theories. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we couldn't retain them: for the most part we couldn't even perceive them."
He coined the word "
altruism" to refer to what he believed to be a moral obligation of individuals to serve others and place their interests above one's own. He opposed the idea of individual rights, maintaining that they were not consistent with this supposed ethical obligation (
Catechisme Positiviste).
In Comte's lifetime, his work was sometimes viewed skeptically because he'd elevated
Positivism to a
religion and had named himself the Pope of Positivism. He coined the term "
sociology" to denote the new science of
society. He had earlier used the expression, "social physics," to refer to the positive science of society; but because others, notably the Belgian statistician
Adolphe Quetelet, had begun to use that term in a different sense, Comte felt the need to invent the
neologism, "sociology," a
hybrid of the
Latin "
socius" ("ally") and the Greek "λόγος" (
logos, "word").
Comte is generally regarded as the first Western sociologist (
Ibn Khaldun having preceded him in the East by nearly four centuries). Comte's emphasis on the interconnectedness of social elements was a forerunner of modern
functionalism. Nevertheless, as with many others of Comte's time, certain elements of his work are now viewed as eccentric and unscientific, and his grand vision of sociology as the centerpiece of all the sciences hasn't come to fruition.
His emphasis on a quantitative, mathematical basis for decision-making remains with us today. It is a foundation of the modern notion of Positivism, modern quantitative statistical analysis, and business decision-making. His description of the continuing cyclical relationship between theory and practice is seen in modern business systems of Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement where advocates describe a continuous cycle of theory and practice through the four-part cycle of plan, do, check, and act. Despite his advocacy of quantitative analysis, Comte saw a limit in its ability to help explain social phenomena.
Three Stages
"The law is this: -that each of our leading conceptions, -each branch of our knowledge, -passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive." -Comte
- Theological Stage
- Fetishism
- Polytheism
- Monotheism
- Metaphysical or Abstract Stage
- Positive Stage
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