Auguste Comte

Florentino Ameghino was probably the most important naturalist in nineteenth-century Argentina, being a self-taught palaeontologist, whose theories rivalled the most advanced of the time in Europe and the United States. On top of his vast palaeontological discoveries, Ameghino’s fame came from his theory of the origin of the human species in the Argentine Pampas, published in 1880. The idea of Ameghino’s followers was to create a place of secular pilgrimage for the new Argentine nation to honour their own secular hero (...) or saint, as Ingenieros had called him. A few accusations by the local Catholic Church were posed with Ameghino’s followers denying them. The education of the nation was one of the greatest concerns that Catholics had, and some saw in the positivist liberal position a rejection of the education on the virtues required for the building of a nationally educated society in Argentina for the twentieth century. -/- . (shrink)

Tome I : 2. L'introduction fondamentale -- tome II. [No special title].

This article compares and contrasts the reception of Comte’s positivism in the works of William Whewell, John Stuart Mill and Franz Brentano. It is argued that Whewell’s rejection of positivism derives from his endorsement of a constructivist account of the inductive sciences, while Mill and Brentano’s sympathies for positivism are connected to their endorsement of an empiricist account. The mandate of the article is to spell out the chief differences between these two rival accounts. In the last, conclusive section, Whewell’s (...) anti-positivist argument is briefly assessed, and rebutted. (shrink)

Before now, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the multiple relations between A. Comte’s and J.S. Mill’s positive philosophy and Franz Brentano’s work. The present volume aims to fill this gap and to identify Brentano’s position in the context of the positive philosophy of the 19th century by analyzing the following themes: the concept of positive knowledge; philosophy and empirical, genetic and descriptive psychology as sciences in Brentano, Comte and Mill; the strategies for the rebirth of philosophy in these (...) three authors; the theory of the ascending stages of thought, of their decline, of the intentionality in Comte and Brentano; the reception of Comte’s positivism in Whewell and Mill; induction and phenomenalism in Brentano, Mill and Bain; the problem of the "I" in Hume and Brentano; mathematics as a foundational science in Brentano, Kant and Mill; Brentano’s critique of Mach’s positivism; the concept of positive science in Brentano’s metaphysics and in Husserl’s early phenomenology; the reception of Brentano’s psychology in Twardowski; The Brentano Institute at Oxford. The volume also contains the translation of the most significant writings of Brentano regarding philosophy as science. I. Tănăsescu, Romanian Academy; A. Bejinariu, Romanian Society of Phenomenology; S. Krantz Gabriel, Saint Anselm College; C. Stoenescu, University of Bucharest. (shrink)

This article focuses on Auguste Comte’s understanding of the organism–environment relationship. It makes three key claims therein: Comte’s metaphysical position privileged materiality and relativized the intellect along two dimensions: one related to the biological organism, one related to the social environment; this twofold materiality confounds attempts to reduce cognition to either nature or nurture, so Comte’s position has interesting parallels to the field of ‘epigenetics’, which sees the social environment as a causative factor in biology; and although Comte ultimately diverged (...) from the ‘postgenomic’ view in crucial ways, he remains a forerunner of the trend towards viewing the social and biological as entangled. Tending to these dimensions challenges the view that Comte is notable from a classical standpoint but ignorable from a contemporary one. It consequently invites renewed attention to his theoretical system. (shrink)

Considered in its historical context, conventionalism is quite different from the way in which it has been caricatured in more recent philosophy of science, that is, as a conservative philosophy that allows the preservation of theories through arbitrary ad hoc stratagems. It is instead a liberal outgrowth of Comtean positivism, which broke with the Reidian interpretation of the Newtonian tradition in France and defended a role for hypotheses in the sciences. It also has roots in the social contract political philosophy (...) of Renouvier, who explicitly drew the analogy between conventions in political life and the conventional acceptance of hypotheses in the sciences, and conceived a philosophy that permits scientists to set aside foundational worries and explore new ideas. Although Poincaré and Renouvier may have hesitated to accept certain then recent developments in mathematics and the sciences such as non-Euclidean geometries, this conservatism cannot necessarily be attributed to their conventionalism. It may instead reflect the engineering background they shared with Comte, which emphasizes practical applications. Although Renouvier and Poincaré may have seen no practical use for these new ideas, unlike Comte they did not prohibit others from pursuing them, reflecting conventionalism’s more liberal attitude toward recent developments in the sciences. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

En la segunda mitad del siglo XIX la filosofía positiva se consolidó como la corriente de pensamiento dominante en México, muchos pensadores la utilizaron como marco teórico para interpretar los acontecimientos pasados y proyectar elfuturo de la nación. Por su análisis, explicación e interpretación de la historia nacional México: su evolución social es la obra culminante del positivismo mexicano, pero para sorpresa nuestra ha sido poco estudiada por los especialistas, de ahí que sea necesario recuperarla. En este artículo nos damos (...) a esa tarea y para ello nos enfocaremos en analizar el método de investigación que emplea la obra así como el papel que cumple la historia dentro de la misma. Con ello se busca contribuir a los estudios sobre el positivismo mexicano al abordar, en una obra crucial, algunos de sus aspectos metodológicos, históricos y filosóficos. -/- In the second half of the nineteenth century the positive philosophy was consolidated as the dominant current of thought in Mexico, many thinkers used it as the theoretical framework to interpret past events and project the future of the nation. Because of its analysis, explanation and interpretation of the national Mexican history México: su evolución social is the culminating work of Mexican positivism. To our surprise, the work has been little studied by scholars hence it is necessary to recover it. In this article we want to do that task and for that we will focus on analyzing the research method used in the work as well as the role played by history within it. The aim then is to contribute to studies on Mexican positivism by approaching, in a crucial work, some of its methodological, historical and philosophical aspects. (shrink)

Auguste Comte! Ce nom ne dit plus rien à personne. Ceux qui le connaissent encore parlent de lui comme d'un grand philosophe : concepteur de la sociologie, du positivisme et de la théorie des trois états. On oublie cependant qu'il fut aussi à l'origine d'une religion personnelle, un culte des morts destiné à relier et rallier l'Humanité tout entière. Mais au fond, que reste-t-il de son oeuvre? Un vestige lointain d'un cours de philosophie? Une rue connue des seuls Parisiens du (...) Quartier latin?... Voilà un bien maigre héritage pour ce curieux prophète de l'ère contemporaine! Si l'influence quasi mondiale de la philosophie positive n'est plus à démontrer, comment expliquer l'échec de sa religion? Cette question, longtemps boudée par l'historiographie, trouve ici sa réponse, notamment grâce aux diverses références que l'auteur convoque tout au long de son enquête. Parmi elles : Régis Debray, Don Quichotte, Milan Kundera, Philip Roth, Dante, Marcel Jousse, Salvador Dali, Joseph Campbell, Homère, saint Paul, Michel Onfray, Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Anatole France ou encore Star Wars... (shrink)

Auguste Comte's doctrine of positivism was both a philosophy of science and a political philosophy designed to organize a new, secular, stable society based on positive or scientific, ideas, rather than the theological dogmas and metaphysical speculations associated with the ancien regime. This volume offers the most comprehensive English-language overview of Auguste Comte's philosophy, the relation of his work to the sciences of his day, and the extensive, continuing impact of his thinking on philosophy and especially secular political movements in (...) Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Contributors consider Comte's reasons for establishing a Religion of Humanity as well as his views on domestic life and the arts in his positivist utopia. The volume further details Comte's attempt to apply his "positive method," first to social science and then to politics and morality, thereby defending the continuity of his career while also critically examining the limits of his approach. (shrink)

Ce premier tome de Essais et conférences de Franz Brentano comporte seize études qui, pour la plupart, paraissent pour la première fois en traduction française. Ces textes sont regroupés dans quatre sections qui portent respectivement sur l'état de la philosophie et ses principes, sa philosophie de l'histoire et sa théorie des quatre phases, ses réflexions sur les philosophes Auguste Comte, Plotin, Schelling et Thomas d'Aquin, et finalement son débat avec Édouard Zeller, l'auteur de La philosophie des Grecs, autour de l'interprétation (...) de la philosophie d'Aristote. Ce volume comprend en outre une introduction substantielle visant à contextualiser chacune des contributions du philosophe viennois. (shrink)

My aim in this study is to show that the philosophical program elaborated by Brentano in his Psychology is largely indebted to the research conducted by Brentano on British empiricism and Comte's positive philosophy at Würzburg. This research represents the starting point of, and backdrop to, the project for philosophy as science, which is at the heart of his Psychology, and sheds new light on the philosophical stakes of many debates he leads in that work. Furthermore, Brentano's research informs us (...) about his philosophical preoccupations during the Würzburg period, and simultaneously provide us with a new perspective on the evolution of his thought from his habilitation at Würzburg in 1866 to his arrival in Vienna in 1874. In this study, I propose to examine some of the factors that motivated Brentano's interest in Comte's philosophy and to evaluate the influence that the latter exerted on Brentano's thought during the Würzburg period and beyond. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

"Après la proclamation de la république, en 1848, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), le fondateur du positivisme, remanie son système et fonde la religion de l'Humanité. Considérant que le moment est venu de terminer la révolution et de donner à la société son organisation définitive, il expose son programme, de 1849 à 1851, dans des leçons publiques sur l'histoire de l'Humanité destinées à rallier le peuple parisien, où il dresse le tableau de l'avenir d'après l'ensemble du passé et prépare ce qui allait (...) devenir le Système de politique positive (1851-1854). Aucune trace écrite de cet enseignement ne nous était parvenue jusqu'à la découverte récente du manuscrit de César Lefort, un document unique qui nous renseigne sur la forme et les enjeux de ce que Comte appelait lui-même ses « prédications hebdomadaires ». L'édition critique de ce cours comporte une introduction dans laquelle L. Fedi restitue le contexte et étudie les transformations doctrinales et organisationnelles du positivisme."--Back cover. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

1. Empirisme positivisme : deux philosophes anthropologiques des limites et du devenir -- L'homme des origines -- Fétichisme et dysharmonie avec le monde -- La tension instinctive au connaître -- Contrer la mort : action et réussite : l'homme chasseur et l'homme prévoyant -- Histoire : " probabilitaire " ou science de l'histoire -- Périodisation et quête de la causalité -- Promesse ou loi -- Les discontinuités de l'histoire -- La rupture du loyalisme : partialité et universalité -- Comte ou (...) la double rupture : épistémologique et Historique -- 2. Certitudes et pensée causale -- Un ordre causal déstabilisé et ses fondements -- Malebranche et la ruine de la causalité naturelle -- Attraction newtonienne et connexions causales -- Causalité : certitudes et fictions -- Similitude, succession, inférence et loi -- 3. Passions, morale et raison -- La dynamique des passions -- De l'orgueil et de l'humilité -- Physiologie, penchants et sentiments -- Raison, passion et obligation morale -- Affectivité, individualité, sociabilité et synthèse -- 4. Société, politique et religion -- Politique, lois et moeurs -- Politique est-elle une science ? -- Religion et politique -- Le positivisme n'est pas un emnirisme. (shrink)

To many contemporary scholars, Émile Meyerson is a footnote in an obscure history: early twentieth-century French philosophy of science. While the traditions of épistémologie are beginning to enjoy the scrutiny they deserve, Meyerson’s role remains overlooked. This article provides an overview of Meyerson’s philosophical project to help sow the seeds for a more systematic recuperation of its legacy. By orienting his work historically, I elucidate the nature of Meyerson’s critique of positivism, his distinctive method, and the implications these have for (...) the relation between science and philosophy. In particular, I show that for Meyerson positivisme refers not only to the doctrine of Auguste Comte but to a general philosophical tendency. Inseparable from Meyerson’s critique of this tendency is his implementation of a new methodology—épistémologie—according to which reason must be understood through the historical development of science. Épistémologie reveals that positivism not only is an incomplete account of science but is detrimental to its progress. Accordingly, Meyerson hopes to secure science’s right to function according to its own immanent principles, thereby providing prolegomena to all future metaphysics through a historical determination of the nature and limits of human reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the work of several positivists involved with the "Metaphysical Club" of Cambridge, MA in the early 1870s -- John Fiske, Chauncey Wright, and Francis Ellingwood Abbot. Like the logical positivists of the 1930s, these philosophers were forced to answer a key question: with so many of its traditional domains colonized by science and so many of its traditional questions dismissed as metaphysical or useless, what is left for philosophy to do? One answer they gave was (...) that philosophy could unify the sciences. As Fiske put it, "positive philosophy is science organized.". (shrink)

Mon objectif dans cette étude est de montrer l'influence que la philosophie positive d'Auguste Comte a exercée sur la pensée du jeune Brentano durant la période de Würzburg (1866-1874). J'examine d'abord quelques-uns des facteurs qui ont amené Brentano à s'intéresser à la philosophie de Comte et je résume, dans un deuxième temps, les grandes lignes de l'article de Brentano sur Comte dont la version française est reproduite dans ce numéro. Dans la troisième partie de cette étude, je commente brièvement quelques (...) passages de la Psychologie d'un point de vue empirique où Brentano discute de thèmes comtiens. Je conclue cette étude par quelques remarques sur les traces laissées par le positivisme de Comte dans l'œuvre de Brentano. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1891 Edition.

Il est indéniable que Comte a été influencé par Hume depuis sa jeunesse, l'influence de Comte sur Hume se manifeste de façon claire dans un article de 1819 intitulé "Séparation générale entre les opinions et les désirs" qui se trouve dans les Ecrits de jeunesse (1819-1828), et nous voyons aussi que Hume ressurgit à la fin du Système de politique positive (1851-1854), texte dans lequel Auguste Comte affirme qu'il appartient à l'école de Hume. Nous avons deux philosophies anthropologiques qui établissent (...) les fondements d'une vie sociale et d'une théorie morale ancrées dans la nature humaine, dans les désirs et les instincts incontrôlés et qui exigent une régulation par la médiation de la sociabilité et du temps. La question des passions, des penchants et des sentiments se dégage d'une problématique classique celle qui l'intégrait au sein d'un subjectivisme rationaliste, qui soumettait le corps à l'emprise de l'âme. (shrink)

The intention of the present paper is to resettle the importance of the Comte’s thought to the philosophy of science. To do so, we discard certain prejudices about positivism and reassess certain comtean’s concepts, such as the three states law, the science’s classification and the role of hypotheses in order to restore its relevance in the background of the history of the philosophy.

Nos sociétés tendent spontanément vers un compromis social-démocrate, entre liberté totale et contrainte sociale, entre individualisme et solidarisme. Bizarrement, les forces politiques porteuses de ce projet sont plutôt en recul, ne parviennent plus à conquérir les peuples, les opinions, le pouvoir. Le projet de ce livre est de montrer que des éléments essentiels de cette idéologie réformiste et socialiste peuvent être trouvés chez Auguste Comte.

Abstract No one doubts the radically transformative power of contemporary technologies and technoscientific practices over the material dimensions of our experience. Yet with the coming of all the exciting changes and the promise of ever better material conditions, what kinds of lives are we implicitly being encouraged to live? One would think that current philosophical studies of technology would make this a central question, and indeed, a few have done so. But many do not. Following the lead of thinkers who (...) have made the so-called “empirical turn,” many demur, usually with some remarks about the question being too abstract and general—too likely to suck us into utopian or dystopian speculations—when what is called for are truly informative and “concrete” studies of what it is like to be with actual technologies. My paper considers the good life question—and the philosophical price one pays for not asking it—in light of Auguste Comte’s theory of the three stages of intellectual development. Comte’s depiction of the third, positive scientific stage is much less dated than one might assume. In fact, it is useful to think of our own era as arriving with a Comtean story attached, that is, a story of life in the “developed” world becoming ever better thanks to modern science and technology. Because this story now seems less deserving of the unqualified optimism Comte had about it, I argue that thinking of our own experience as permeated by Comte’s conception of third-stage life gives us a fresh way to consider our misgivings about this default position without either lapsing into utopian or dystopian speculation, or confining one’s focus to purely postphenomenological or pragmatic studies of technoscientific life as it now “appears.” Content Type Journal Article Category Research Article Pages 1-25 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0047-2 Authors Robert C. Scharff, Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3574, USA Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

George Gemistos Plethon’s work in all its dimensions has attracted many scholars across the ages. One of those scholars was Alexandre Joseph Hidulphe Vincent, a French mathematician and erudite, who in the first and the only critical edition of Plethon’s Book of Laws by C. Alexandre in the nineteenth century, added three notes on his calendar, metrics and music, as he could reconstruct them from the ancient text. Vincent’s calculations were dictated by the main scientific thought of his time, which (...) was Positivism, and through this he thus contributed to the elucidation of some practical aspects of Plethon’s metaphysics. The results of meticulous calculations of the Plethonian calendar, metrics and musical modes show that the scientific spirit, which started appearing in the last days of Byzantium and during the Renaissance, was not only a revival of Antiquity, but an innovative attempt at explaining and being in accordance with the social demands and the physical reality of the time, both being understood as an extension of the metaphysical order. Vincent’s positivistic approach allows considering the impact of Plethon’s system in a postmodern perspective. (shrink)

Renouvier criticized Comte’s positivist philosophy of science and proposed a social contract approach for dealing with normative questions in philosophy of science as well as moral philosophy. Renouvier then questioned Kant’s distinction between practical and theoretical reason and argued that judgments concerning epistemic warrant must be freely made in the same way that moral judgments are made. What counts as scientific knowledge depends on a consensus within the scientific community that develops over time through critical inquiry in much the same (...) way that a legitimate contract governing society at large must. But a scientific contract consisting of conventionally held theories and methods depends for its justification on a larger social contract that guarantees freedom of inquiry. (shrink)

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) is the founder of positivism, a philosophical and political movement which enjoyed a very wide diffusion in the second half of the nineteenth century. It sank into an almost complete oblivion during the twentieth, when it was eclipsed by neopositivism. However, Comte's decision to develop successively a philosophy of mathematics, a philosophy of physics, a philosophy of chemistry and a philosophy of biology, makes him the first philosopher of science in the modern sense, and his constant attention (...) to the social dimension of science resonates in many respects with current points of view. His political philosophy, on the other hand, is even less known, because it differs substantially from the classical political philosophy we have inherited. -/- Comte's most important works are (1) the Course on Positive Philosophy (1830-1842, six volumes, translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau as The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte); (2) the System of Positive Polity, or Treatise on Sociology, Instituting the Religion of Humanity, (1851-1854, four volumes); and (3) the Early Writings (1820-1829), where one can see the influence of Saint-Simon, for whom Comte served as secretary from 1817 to 1824. The Early Writings are still the best introduction to Comte's thought. In the Course, Comte said, science was transformed into philosophy; in the System, philosophy was transformed into religion. The second transformation met with strong opposition; as a result, it has become customary to distinguish, with Mill, between a “good Comte” (the author of the Course) and a “bad Comte” (the author of the System). Today's common conception of positivism corresponds mainly to what can be found in the Course. (shrink)

In A General View of Positivism French philosopher Auguste Comte gives an overview of his social philosophy known as Positivism. Comte, credited with coining the term 'sociology' and one of the first to argue for it as a science, is concerned with reform, progress and the problem of social order in society. In this English edition of the work, published in 1865, he addresses the practical problems of implementing his philosophy or doctrine, as he also refers to Positivism, into society. (...) He believes that society evolves through a series of stages that are ruled by social laws and culminate in a superior form of social life. During this reorganisation of society, which will find its greatest supporters among women and the working class, a 'new moral power' will emerge. Under the motto 'love, order and progress' Comte wishes humanism to replace organised religion as the object of spiritual worship. (shrink)