Auguste Comte: biography, works and main ideas

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Auguste Comte was one of the most important French philosophers and sociologists.

He is credited with creating the discipline Sociology, as well as the philosophical, political and scientific current known as Positivism.

His theoretical contribution is still important, with the political concept of the "Three States Law".

Biography

Bust of Auguste Comte in Paris, France

Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte was born in Montpellier (Hérault), France, on January 19, 1798. He was the son of tax officer Louis Comte and Rosalie (Boyer) Comte, a devout monarchist of Catholicism.

In 1814, he entered the "Polytechnic School of Paris", and, at just fifteen years old, he distinguished himself as a brilliant apprentice.

Between 1817 and 1824 he was secretary to Count Henri de Saint-Simon, the great name of the socialism utopian, which had a decisive influence on Comte's work.

Later, in 1822, he published "Scientific Work Plan to Reorganize Society". Shortly thereafter, he suffered a nervous breakdown (1826), from which he only recovered in 1830.

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In the meantime, he published the six volumes of the "Positive Philosophy Course".

Between 1832 and 1842, Comte was tutor and examiner at the "École Polytechnique"; as late as 1842, he separates from his wife and begins a platonic relationship with Clotilde de Vaux.

In this context, Auguste Comte already lived on the financial favor of his friends and admirers. In 1848, he created a "Positivist Society" and between 1851 and 1854, he wrote the "Positive Policy System", in which he proposes an interpretation for human society.

In the year 1856 he published the first volume of "Subjective Synthesis", which he did not complete, as he died of cancer in Paris on September 5, 1857.

Main Ideas

It is important to note that Comte lived under the aegis of the French Revolution, as well as modern science and the Industrial Revolution.

Therefore, their sayings and writings refer to intense social, economic, political, ideological, technological and scientific transformations resulting from the consolidation of capitalism.

In this context, he realized that social phenomena should be perceived like other natural phenomena.

This is because they were just a specific kind of theoretical reality, which implies that they must be stated in social terms.

He coins the term "sociology" to designate a social doctrine based on scientific principles, dividing it into two camps:

studies of social statistics to understand the forces that maintain social cohesion;
the social dynamics themselves, for the study of the causes of social change.

Therefore, "Social Physics" or "Sociology" would start from the principles of observation, experimentation, comparison and classification as methods.

It aimed at everything that is "positive", that is, the real, the useful, the right, the precise, the relative, the organic and the sympathetic.

Hence the other contribution by Comte: Positivism. That is, the view by which the analysis of facts abandons the consideration of the causes of phenomena and researches their laws, since they are observable phenomena.

O positivism he preached a model of organized society, in which spiritual power would no longer prevail, the government being left to the sages and scientists.

This new general method for science is characterized by observation in alliance with the imagination. They are systematized, in turn, according to principles adopted by the exact and biological sciences.

However, it is also worth noting the fact that Comte perceives that each type of phenomenon has its particularities. This implies saying that there is a specific method of observation for each phenomenon.

Another important creation of Auguste Comte was the "Religion of Humanity", with theological and metaphysical bases. All this, recognizing the preponderance of the historical role played by the provisional stages of Humanity, foreseen in the "Law of the Three States".

His thought influenced thinkers of the greatness of Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Harriet Martineau, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim.

Creator of the term "altruism” (autruism), Comte's philosophy for humanity would be summed up in "live pour autrui" (live for others).

Read too:

What is Sociology?
What is Philosophy?

Three States Law

The "Three State Law" represents the phases necessary for human evolution, where each one of them would have its own abstractions, observations and imagination.

The observation of the evolution of the intellectual conceptions of humanity would follow the 'theological' or 'fictional' state, the 'metaphysical' or 'abstract' state and the 'scientific' or 'positive' state.

In the first, the observed facts would be explained by the supernatural, that is, entities (God or gods), which would command the factors that make up reality.

In the second stage, reality would be directly researched, but there would still be the presence of the supernatural (nature, ether, People, capital).

In the third and last evolutionary stage, the apogee of humanity, the facts would be explained according to abstract general laws, of an entirely positive order.

In this bias, the absolute factor is replaced by the relative factor, as everything would be relative except the absolute law of relativity.