Who was Auguste Comte?
Born in Montpellier, France, in the year 1798, Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte was a French philosopher who was known for being the first to synthesize the need for a science of society (Sociology) and for having founded, for the first time, the theory positivist.
Comte was the son of a traditional French monarchist and Catholic family. He studied in the city of Montpellier until moving to Paris, where he entered the Polytechnic School. After the temporary closure of the Polytechnic School, Comte returned to his hometown to study at the Faculty of Medicine.
In 1817, he returned to the Polytechnic School in Paris, but was expelled for leading demonstrations within the institution. Comte started writing for newspapers and giving private lessons, until he started working as secretary of the Count of Saint Simon, progressive French philosopher who proclaimed himself a socialist (as the scientific socialism, in Marx and Engels, he is classified today as socialist or utopian socialist).
Saint Simon introduced Comte into the French intellectual circle of his time and influenced him in many ways, the main one being the understanding that there would be a steady progressive march in the history of humanity, that is, that humanity would always walk towards development. It is also Saint Simon's ideas that influenced the young Comte: the notion that they exist social laws — just as nature obeys the laws of physics — and that the scientific knowledge perfects the human being.
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Comte began to devote himself to the formulation of his positivist doctrine is on 1822, published the Work plan required for the reorganization of the company. The philosopher began to write his Positive Philosophy Coursein 1830 and finished the last of the six volumes only in the year of 1842.
In his early writings, Comte was already planning an outline of the Sociology, which he named “Social Physics”, in reference to the similar organization by laws between the sciences of nature and the science of society. The term "sociology” appeared only in the volumes of the Positive Philosophy Course.
Comte had already broken off work with Saint Simon due to incompatibility of ideals. In 1947, the philosopher founded what he called the religion of humanity, or positivist religion. This would be a doctrine that would give way to common religion, placing man and the development of positive stage of humanity (science and the belief in scientism) in place of the common idea of God.
Comte's ideas gain supporters outside France, including in the Brazil - you military who led the First Republic they were inspired by the positivist doctrine. The philosopher died in the year of 1857, in Paris, to the 59 years old.
Video lesson about Auguste Comte
Sociology
Auguste Comte is considered the “father” of sociology. The philosopher is the first to theorize the need for a science that would study society in order to reorganize it and put it on the right tracks for the greatest possible development.
Even being from a royalist family, the philosopher bet on the correctness of the Revolution French: the end of the Ancien Régime. For him, republican ideals sounded like the awakening of a new time that would pave the way for science and technology to fully develop. However, the French Revolution had left a period of chaos and social instability in France.
THE Industrial Revolution, driven in the first half of the 19th century, mainly by the steam engine, was also crucial to development. No enso many problems had resulted from the big population explosion of urban centers resulting from the Industrial Revolution, withthe o unemployment, a misery and the strong social inequality. Comte saw that it would be necessary to create a science that could theorize all these factors to point out possible ways out for them.
Read too: Demographic explosion, high population growth in the world
The steam engine was the main innovation that propelled the Industrial Revolution.
Comte proposed a science called, at first, as Social Physics and after Sociology. was this who would be able to apply the method of observation and experimentntation of natural sciences in society. This method would find the same structures and laws that exist in physics, but in society. Sociology was born there, which would be better defined, later, with the thinker Emile Durkheim, which created its own method of operation for sociology.
Positivism
Comte was also the first theorist to establish the roots of positivism. According to the thinker, positivism was what human beings had created the most profound and organized: the observation and understanding of nature based on scientific work. Politically, positivism would be expressed by the integrated work between science and politics, aiming at the development of society. To explain his positivist theory, the philosopher established the Three States Law, which described the three stages of human development.
theological state: the human being, in its early days, needed to find explanations for natural phenomena. These explanations were provided by mythological and religious narratives, because, failing to explain nature, men created supernatural beings to support their explanations.
metaphysical state: this second point of development consists of the start of Philosophy. The human being was no longer content with religious explanations and started to formulate rational theories to conjecture the possible causes of the effects observed in nature. At this stage, there is still the prevalence of reasoning without the observation of nature itself.
positive state: this stage would be the most developed of humanity. The human being understood that, in order to find answers about nature, he should look for explanations in nature itself. At this point, there would be the development of science and a way of thinking about the world through the understanding of it as something that is physically given. O positive stage would be marked by Physics, for the Biology (a science that, together with Sociology, would be the most developed for Comte) and by the incessant search for the progress.
To learn more, go to: Positivism - origin, characteristics and Positivism in Brazil.
Influences
Auguste Comte was strongly influenced by Saint Simon, mainly because of his understanding of History as a sign of a constant march towards progress. He was also influenced by scientists, such as Newton and Galileo. Some positivist speculations may be related to evolutionary theory, from Darwin, but not like the ideas of Herbert Spencer (also one of the first postulators of sociology), who formulated the Social Darwinism. However, it cannot be said that Comte was influenced by Darwin, even for chronological reasons.
Comte influenced the sociological theory of Emile Durkheim, who elaborated a critique of Comtian thought. Positivism with the Dialectical Historical Materialism, in Karl Marx, they represent two antagonistic exponents, but which explain the two main directions along which 19th century Philosophy and historiography walked.
Read too: Classical thinkers of sociology
Positive Philosophy Course
Comte organized a course in Philosophy which resulted in the writing of the work Positive Philosophy Course, divided into six volumes and written between 1830 and 1842. The book deals with several subjects, such as the need to establish Sociology and the importance of resorting to science, as the entire and pulsating progress of humanity would be in the scientific knowledge.
In Comte's understanding, science should not be seen as a form of accumulation of knowledge by knowledge itself, but because this accumulation would result in the development of humanity. The human being manages, through science, understand nature, the complex society (with Sociology), develop the technologies that improve your life and change your political environment. Politics would be, in Comtian theory, strongly influenced by scientific knowledge, which would teach the need for order to obtain the glory It's from progress.
Sentences
"Love as a principle and Order as a basis; Progress at last."
"All good intellects have repeated, since the time of Bacon, that there can be no real knowledge but that based on observable facts."
"Living for others is not only the law of duty, but also the law of happiness."
"Knowing to predict in order to be able."
*Image credit: Lefteris Papaulakis / Shutterstock
by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor
