World of Sociology on Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, Comte
Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, is perhaps best known as the author of The New Christianity, published in the year of his death, 1825. Having spent many years studying the potential of science and the need for a new rationally-based leadership for society, Saint-Simon focused on theology. Religion, he said, offered the best hope for the poor. The precepts of Christianity should serve as a guide by which society works to improve as quickly and effectively as possible the lot of its less fortunate members, he argued. It was this idea that led to the subsequent movement that came to be known as Saint-Simonianism, which began soon after his death. During the 1830 "July Revolution," Saint-Simonians issued proclamations demanding common ownership of property, the abolition of inheritance, and the enfranchisement of women. Both Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Engels claimed a debt to Saint-Simon, and his ideas have indeed influenced much subsequent Marxist, socialist, and reform capitalist thinking.
Saint-Simon was born in Paris in 1760 to an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times. His uncle had served at the court of Louis XIV and his memoirs of his life there is a French classic. Saint-Simon himself claimed descent from Charlemagne.
Educated in a haphazard fashion by private tutors, Saint-Simon entered military service in 1777 and was sent to aid anti-British revolutionary forces in North America. He was present as a captain of artillery at the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. Returning to his homeland, Saint-Simon made a fortune speculating in former religious and royal lands nationalized by the government during the French Revolution, although he was also jailed during the Reign of Terror in 1794. With his newly-minted wealth, Saint-Simon lived a life of excess and splendor for a time but soon spent himself into bankruptcy. At that point he turned to the study of science, enrolling briefly at the prestigious École Polytechnique and meeting with the greatest scientists of his day. Still, he never truly escaped from poverty, a fact which led him to such despair that he attempted to end his own life in 1823 but only succeeded in putting out an eye.
His first published writings Letters of an Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries (1803) was not so much a work of science as a study of science's role in society. Specifically, he advocated that scientists should assume the role of priests and that they should be subsidized in this endeavor by the wealthy. In later writings such as On the Reorganization of European Society (1814) and Industry (1816-18, co-written with Auguste Comte), Saint-Simon laid out a series of simple ideas about social organization. Reacting to the violence of the French Revolution and the dictatorial militarism of Napoleon, he advocated science and technology as solutions to the world's problems. In doing so, he anticipated the Industrial Revolution and a future political order dominated by businessmen and technocrats. His ideas on social and economic planning greatly influenced future Marxists, while his analysis of the looming industrial order would have an enormous influence on all of the social sciences.
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