Comte, Auguste
COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857), French philosopher, founder of positivism. Born into a Roman Catholic, royalist family in Montpellier, France, Comte completed his early education by preparing for the École Polytechnique under the direction of Daniel Encontre, from whom Comte learned that philosophy is a complete view of reality. Comte ranked high in the Polytechnique entry competitions, but he studied there only a few years. Republican political opinions, later expressed in his memoirs, moved him to participate in the student rebellions that were instrumental in causing the royalist government to close the school for reorganization.
In 1817 Comte became secretary to Claude-Henri de Rouvroy Saint-Simon, the social philosopher. Comte's writing appeared in numerous publications edited by Saint-Simon. Indeed, Comte's Sommaire appréciation de l'ensemble du passé moderne (Summary Evaluation of the Impact of the Recent Past; 1820) came out under Saint-Simon's signature. In this work Comte describes the ancien régime as having two poles, or capacities, the theological and the military; these are being superseded by two new poles: the scientific and the industrial.
In Prospectus des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour reorganiser la société (Prospectus of the Scientific Tasks Necessary for the Reorganization of Society; 1822), Comte presented a law of three states through which human history and each of the sciences must pass in their development; he gave one hundred examples. Revised as Système de politique positive (System of Positive Polity; 1824), this theory appeared with one thousand examples, unsigned, in a publication of Saint-Simon's. After he left Saint-Simon, Comte gave lessons in mathematics. In 1825 he married Caroline Massin.
Considérations philosophiques sur les sciences et les savants (Philosophical Considerations concerning Sciences and Scientists; 1825) and Considérations sur le pouvoir spirituel (Considerations concerning Spiritual Power; 1826) were published while Comte prepared his Cours de philosophie positive (Course on Positive Philosophy). He gave the first lesson in this course on April 2, 1826. Among those present were the zoologist Henri-Marie de Blainville, the scientist Louis Poinsot, the economist Charles Barthelemy, and the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. The course ended with its third meeting because of Comte's mental problems. Melancholic, he attempted to drown himself in the Seine, but was rescued. He took up his work again in the spring of 1828.
The course resumed, and the first volume based on these lectures was published in 1830. In this same year, Comte inaugurated a free public course on astronomy that continued for seventeen years. Beginning in 1832, he served as assistant master at the École Polytechnique, but the minister of instruction offered no reply to Comte's queries about a chair at the Collège de France. In 1842, the sixth and concluding volume of the Cours appeared, followed by Discours sur l'esprit positif, which appeared as part of his treatise on popular astronomy. Although his request for a chair in the history of positive sciences met with no success, publication of his Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme (Discourse on the Unity of Positivism; 1848), and the creation of a subsidy by Émile Littré through Comte's Société Positiviste (founded 1848), provided financial support for the philosopher.
Comte's four-volume Système de politique positive (System of Positive Polity) appeared during 1851–1854. In the preface to his Catéchisme positiviste (Positivist Catechism; 1852), Comte presented himself as founder of the religion of humanity. Littré, unable to follow in this new development, broke with him. Also in 1852, the second volume of the Système was issued, which contained an important chapter on religion: "General Theory of Religion, or Positive Theory of Human Unity."
The two aims of religion, according to Comte, are regulation of the individual and unification of individuals. For him, the etymology of the Latin religio is religare: to connect and unite. This unity depends upon both an intellectual and a moral condition; the first determines dogma, the second cult. Beyond individual and social unity lies an external world, here considered as the foundation of faith, as the aim of activity, and as an object of affection. "Faith is but an auxiliary of love" (Système, vol. 2, p. 48). Moral unity rests entirely in sociability prevailing over personality (Catéchisme positiviste, in the dialogue between the priest and the woman). Positivism is a religion of relation and does not propose a merely individual synthesis. It is rather the great being, or humanity as a whole, that is loved for its perfectibility. Humanity, the positivist God, is behind and before us as the progressive realization of the ideal that reveals itself in reali-zation.
Positivism.
Bibliography
The writings of Comte can be found in his Œuvres, 12 vols. (Paris, 1968–1970). The works available in English translation include The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 2 vols., a condensation of the Cours by Harriet Martineau (London, 1853); The System of Positive Polity, 4 vols., translated by J. H. Bridges et al. (London, 1875–1877); and The Catechism of Positive Religion, translated by Richard Congreve (London, 1858). Henri Gouhier's La vie d'Auguste Comte, 2d rev. ed. (Paris, 1965), and Joseph Lonchampt's Précis de la vie et des écrits d'Auguste Comte (Paris, 1889) are informative biographies.
New Sources
Comte, Auguste, Oscar A. Haac, and John Stuart Mill. The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte. New Brunswick, 1995.
Harp, Gillis J. Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American. Liberalism, 1865–1920. University Park, 1995.
Kennedy, Emmet. "The French Revolution and the Genesis of a Religion of Man, 1760–1885." In Modernity and Religion. Notre Dame, Indiana, 1994.
Pickering, Mary. Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge, U.K., 1993.
Scharff, Robert C. Comte after Positivism. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.
Wernick, Andrew. Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory. Cambridge, U.K., 2001.
Wright, T. R. The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britian. Cambridge, U.K., 1986.
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