Auguste Comte
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Auguste_Comte.jpg
His life
Known as the 'Father of Sociology', he was born in Montpellier, in southwestern France. After attending school there, Comte was allowed to study at the École Polytechnique in Paris. The École Polytechnique was a place adhering to the French republican ideals and to progress. In 1816, the École closed for re-organization. Students could apply for readmission at a later date. Thus Comte had to leave the École and continued his studies at the medical school in Montpellier. When the École was reopened, he did not try to gain readmission.
Soon he saw unbridgeable differences with his Catholic and Monarchist family and left again for Paris, earning money by small jobs. Then he became a student and secretary for Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, who brought Comte into intellectual society. In 1824, Comte left Saint-Simon, again because of unbridgeable differences.
Comte now knew what he wanted to do: work out the philosophy of positivism. This plan he published as Plan de traveaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société (1822). But he failed to get an academic position. His day-to-day life depended on sponsors and financial help from friends.
He married Caroline Massin, but divorced in 1842. Comte was known as an arrogant, violent and fiery man. In 1826 he was brought into a mental health hospital, but left it without being cured -- only stabilized by Massin -- so that he could work again on his plan. In the time between this and their divorce, he published the six volumes of his Cours.
From 1844, Comte loved Clotilde de Vaux, a relationship that remained platonic. After her death in 1846 this love became quasi-religious, and Comte saw himself as founder and prophet of a new "religion of humanity". He published four volumes of Système de politique positive (1851 - 1854).
He died in Paris on September 5th, 1857.
His legacy
One universal law that Comte saw at work in all sciences he called the 'law of three phases'. It is by his statement of this law that he is best known in the English-speaking world; namely, that society has gone through three phases: Theological, Metaphysical, and Scientific. He also gave the name "Positive" to the last of these because of the polysemic connotations of the word.
The Theological phase was seen from the perspective of 19th century France as preceding the Enlightenment, in which man's place in society and society's restrictions upon man were referenced to God. By the "Metaphysical" phase, he was not referring to the Metaphysics of Aristotle or any other ancient Greek philosopher, for Comte was rooted in the problems of French society subsequent to the revolution of 1789. This Metaphysical phase involved the justification of universal rights as being on a vauntedly higher plane than the authority of any human ruler to countermand, although said rights were not referenced to the sacred beyond mere metaphor. What he announced by his term of the Scientific phase, which came into being after the failure of the revolution and of Napoleon, was that people could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force despite the proclamations of human rights or prophesy of the will of God. In this regard he was similar to Karl Marx and Jeremy Bentham. For its time, this idea of a Scientific phase was considered up-to-date, although from a later standpoint it is too derivative of classical physics and academic history.
The other universal law he called the 'encyclopedic law'. By combining these laws, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification of all sciences, including inorganic physics (astronomy, earth science and chemistry) and organic physics (biology and for the first time, physique sociale, later renamed sociologie).
This idea of a special science—not the humanities, not metaphysics—for the social was prominent in the 19th century and not unique to Comte. The ambitious—many would say grandiose—way that Comte conceived of it, however, was unique.
Comte saw this new science, sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences, and which would integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole.
He coined the word "altruism" to refer to what he believed to be a moral obligations of individuals to serve others and place their interests above one's own.
Although influential within his own lifetime and for a short while afterwards, Comte's work fell into disrepute rapidly after that. Comte coined the term "sociology", is usually regarded as the first sociologist, and his emphasis on the interconnectedness of different social elements was a forerunner of modern functionalism. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, his work is now regarded as eccentric and unscientific, and his grand vision of sociology as the queen of all the sciences never came to fruition.
See also
bg:Огюст Конт bn:অগুস্ত কোঁত cs:Auguste Comte de:Auguste Comte es:Auguste Comte fi:Auguste Comte fr:Auguste Comte ko:오귀스트 꽁트 it:Auguste Comte ms:Auguste Comte nl:Auguste Comte ja:オーギュスト・コント pl:Auguste Comte pt:Auguste Comte ru:Конт, Огюст sv:Auguste Comte tr:Auguste Comte zh:奥古斯特·孔德