ALAN R.KING COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857)

ALAN R.KING COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857)

The French philosopher and pioneer sociologist was born Isidore-Auguste-Marie- François-Xavier Comte. Comte was the author of the ‘positive philosophy’, or Positivist approach to science, and the study of society and its history. The foundation of this philosophy was empiricist, in that all knowledge had to be based on observation and experience. From empirical evidence Comte formulated general laws of intellectual change and progress, in the manner of Condorcet’s Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795). The most important branch of positivism with

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respect to ‘social philosophy’, as opposed to astronomy, physics, chemistry or biology, was termed ‘political science’ in the early 1820s, ‘social physics’ and in 1838 ‘sociology’.

Sociology derived from the law of historical development termed the ‘law of the three stages’, stating that humanity was progressing from the theological stage to the metaphysical stage and on to the final positive stage of social organization. While the first stage was characterized by monarchical-theological-military power, and the movement from fetishism and polytheism to monotheism in religion, the second was a stage of revolutionary transition. The metaphysical stage substituted abstractions in place of divine will. It was characterized by the sovereignty of the people in politics and the sovereignty of individual reason in intellectual culture. The goal of humanity was to speed the arrival of the third positive stage in which the vain search for first causes would

be abandoned in favour of laws ‘of relations of succession and resemblance’. In this stage science became a vocation; government would be under-taken by scientists and industrialists. With respect to politics and religion, the positive stage was the culmination of thousands of years of historical development. It would be an age of peace and rationality, and of consensual economic progress. Comte’s aim was to restore the sense of community lost when individuals abandoned themselves to the dictates of independent reason and the unregulated market. At the same time he accepted that the clock could not

be turned back to the old moral communion of the pre-Reformation pax Christiana. Industry, production and science had to be embraced not as forces for social division but as sources of social harmony.

These ideas were first outlined in a work supervised by the unorthodox philosopher SAINT-SIMON in 1822–4, the Plan of the Scientific Work Necessary for the Reorganisation of Society (Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société) and were developed in the Course of Positive Philosophy (Cours de philosophie positive) . The latter work commenced as a series of lectures in 1826. It was suspended during Comte’s mental breakdown and attempted suicide, continued from 1829, and finally published in six volumes between 1830 and 1842. Many writers, led by J.S.MILL, have argued that Comte’s later work, exemplified by the System of Positive Politics (Système de politique positive, 1851–4), must be distinguished from his earlier Course because it raised imagination and sentiment above reason. Positivism became a spiritual rather than a philosophical doctrine. The best evidence of this was Comte’s attempt to replace Christianity with the worship of humanity: Comte was the self-appointed high priest presiding over a clerical hierarchy, a calendar of positivist saints, new sacraments and festivals celebrating aspects of the positive society. Comte’s focus on spiritual power did mark his later years. Many commentators have traced this to the fact that after the age of 40 he disdained the reading of anything other than poetry, describing this decision as ‘cerebral hygiene’. Studies of Comte in the 1990s have focused on the unity of his early and later writings. It is certainly the case that the role of the spiritual power was emphasized in his first work, which was indebted to Saint-Simon’s related musings on the possibility of social unity through religious innovation, teaching the universal love of mankind.

Of a bourgeois, Catholic and royalist family, Comte was born in Montpellier and attended the local lycée before entering the École Polytechnique at Paris in 1814. With the rest of the student body he was expelled in 1816 for criticism of the Restoration Of a bourgeois, Catholic and royalist family, Comte was born in Montpellier and attended the local lycée before entering the École Polytechnique at Paris in 1814. With the rest of the student body he was expelled in 1816 for criticism of the Restoration

Placing Comte’s ideas in historical context requires scrutiny of the intellectual consequences of the French Revolution. By 1799 it was evident that the attempt to create

a republic in a large state had failed. The instability of the Directory, and its fall with Bonaparte’s Brumaire coup d’état, itself the prelude to the establishment of the first French Empire, convinced many intellectuals that endless constitutional innovation was of little use if reform was to be lasting. The enjoyment of liberty, it was now argued, was not necessarily directly related to the form of government. Rather, it depended on political culture more generally, the mæurs or manners of the leading citizens, and the capacity of this elite to transform the culture of the people in general. The revolutionaries of 1789 had failed to maintain the liberties they had enshrined in constitutional law because the culture of the nation had been corrupted by monarchy, Church and aristocracy. Reversing the tendency of the French people to involve themselves in political violence, to venerate demagogues and to foster political division was not the work of a national convention as PAINE believed. Instead, the people had to be made more rational, or persuaded to make the practice of certain positive social virtues habitual, by education, civic instruction, public festivals and the example of their leaders. Such arguments had first been made in the early 1790s by Rœderer, Condorcet, SIEYÈS and other critics of the constitution of 1791 and later of the Terror. Under the Directory and the Consulate, their ideas were embraced by the Idéologues, the prominent intellectuals of the National Institute, the STAËL salon and the numerous scientific and educational institutions gracing Paris at this time.

Two particular themes of Idéologue discussion particularly influenced Saint-Simon, who was then avidly attending public lectures given by leading scientists. In turn they influenced Comte. The first was the physician Cabanis’s claim that if human well-being was precisely defined then it would be possible to prescribe forms of living to different

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types of individuals, with the certain knowledge that it was in their best interest to follow such social practices. His most important statement was that liberty would be safeguarded because such interests were capable of scientific definition. Cabanis called the subject that defined healthy human living physiology; one of its central branches was hygiene. Many other scientists, physicians and philosophers of the day were working towards the same goal, including Bichat, Pinel and Tracy. The second theme was whether forms of religious practice could be discovered that might bring the French nation together, challenging the divisions that had characterized the nation under Catholicism, and also the time since 1789 when religious toleration had been established in law but reversed in practice. It was recognized by all writers that the Revolution had inaugurated a period of spiritual uncertainty, without directly intending to do so, from the time of the enactment of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Opponents of Revolution, such as BONALD and MAISTRE, argued that the Revolution represented the abandonment of Christianity, and explained the turbulence of the 1790s by reference to the social collapse that was bound to accompany divine wrath. For survival and redemption it was essential to return to political and religious orthodoxy. The revolutionaries agreed that religion was a social glue vital to national unity in a war-torn republic. Under the Directory many of the Idéologues were involved in attempting to establish the rational religion of Theophilanthropy. By the early nineteenth century across the political spectrum, from CONSTANT to CHATEAUBRIAND, it was recognized that modernizing the French state necessitated that attention be paid to the contribution of religion to social order. Few writers, such as SAY, argued that religion could be replaced as a social force. A greater number were content to see Napoleon reintroduce the Catholic governance of education and popular mores with the Concordat.

The other significant intellectual development of the revolutionary years that influenced Comte centred on the science of political economy. The revolutionaries had accepted that increasing commerce was important for any state intending to improve the economic conditions of its populace while defending itself against aggressive commercial monarchies. At the same time they did not want to follow the British example and create

a mercantile state devoted to fostering kinds of commerce at odds with republican morality, which they believed ultimately explained why the British spent so much time at war. The leading political economists of the Empire and Restoration, such as Say and SISMONDI, accepted that the project of tying commercial progress to republican government had to be abandoned. The French republics had been able to defend themselves against external challenge but could not guarantee domestic order. At the same time the political economists adhered to the view that commerce, if it was to avoid becoming a force for social division and moral corruption, had to be made conducive to social harmony. Laws could be used to forbid the most dangerous forms of commerce, such as slavery. But government was not to be allowed to involve itself in production. Rather, the moral education of the populace became the key to combating luxury and prodigality. In addition, it was necessary to foster the skills of the working classes in wider trades, in order to create a commercial society characterized by moderate wealth, rather than by the extreme inequalities typified by British experience. Say’s great hope was that the advancement of industry could be rationally organized to ensure its maximum benefit to the citizens and also to a French state revivified to vanquish the British arch-enemy.

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Entries A-Z 127 Approaching Comte from these perspectives makes clear that he was in many ways

continuing the revolutionary debates of the 1790s, in the wake of his tutor Saint-Simon. There was certainly little original in attacking excessive commerce for creating social disharmony and inequality, or in seeking solutions to the problems of the French state in the reform of religious belief and practice. Too many historians have made liberalism into the straw man of Restoration intellectual life, when in fact liberals such as Constant shared Comte and Maistre’s fascination with the possibility that religion could restore the moral communion lost with unbridled social and economic development. Like Constant and the political economists, Comte accepted that the division of labour was an irreversible aspect of the modern world, and that the upheavals of the previous generation could be traced to the emancipation of the communes and the consequent rise of the middle classes. It was from these classes that the leaders of science and industry were most likely to arise. Most Restoration writers also shared Comte’s opposition to democracy, accepting that the Terror had proved that the people must play a passive and sub-ordinate role in political life. He differed from them, however, in his view that representative government was not the end-point of the Revolution of 1789, because it was no more likely to bring stability than the experiments in republicanism of the revolutionary decade. Terminating the Revolution could only be achieved by formulating

a determinate common purpose for humanity. The liberal ideal of a society characterized by a multitude of ends and opinions was to Comte a recipe for anarchy and unhappiness.

The division of labour in politics that Comte favoured maintained the technocratic management of individuals favoured by the Saint-Simonians. In the new industrial world people were to be directed rather than commanded. The self-evident rationality of scientists and industrialists was a key to the positive order. Where he differed from the Saint-Simonians was in the absolute separation of temporal from spiritual power. While politics became management, the spiritual power guaranteed social order. It ensured this by the control of education, part of which was to assert the dogma of the religion of humanity in an absolute and unquestionable form. While many accused Comte of erecting a dictatorship of self-perpetuating oligarchs, his counter-argument was that the bankers or industrialists in politics had limited authority because of the existence of the spiritual power. This was why in later life he argued that sociology was better termed ‘sociocracy’ or ‘sociolatry’. Its aim was to provide an education for the modern priesthood, the countervailing institution that prevented the rich or intelligent from exercising despotism. Distinguishing between the two spheres of social life was Comte’s improvement upon the separation of the legislative and executive so pronounced in republican and liberal theory.