PasichnykVictoria
Institute
of Sociology, Psychology and Social Communications,
(Ukraine, Kyiv)
Pet’ko Lyudmila
Ph.D., Associate Professor,
Dragomanov
National Pedagogical University (Ukraine,
Kyiv)
AUGUSTE COMTE AND SOCIOLOGY
Auguste Comte was
born in Montpellier (Jan. 19, 1798) died of stomach cancer on September 5, 1857
in Paris, France. He was buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetry, Paris. Best known
for: 1) Founder of positivism; 2) Coined the term sociology; 3) His emphasis on
systematic observation and social order [5]. And now his apartment, where he
lived from 1841 to 1857, has been preserved as the Maison d’Auguste Comte which
is a private museum.
After attending
the Lycée Joffre and then the University of Montpellier, Comte was
admitted to the École Polytechnique in Paris. The École closed in
1816 at which time Comte took up permanent residence in Paris, earning a
precarious living there by teaching mathematics and journalism [5]. In 1817, he
met Henri de Saint-Simon, a social theorist, and became his secretary and
collaborator. Owing to a dispute of the authorship of their writings, this
partnership ended in 1824 [2]. The relationship between Saint-Simon and Comte
grew increasingly strained for both theoretical and personal reasons and
finally degenerated into an acrimonious break over disputed authorship.
Saint-Simon was an intuitive thinker interested in immediate, albeit utopian,
social reform. Comte was a scientific thinker, in the sense of systematically
reviewing all available data, with a conviction that only after science was
reorganized in its totality could men hope to resolve their social problems.
Though Comte did
not originate the concept of sociology or its area of study, he greatly
extended and elaborated the field. Comte divided sociology into two main
fields: social statics, or the study of the forces that hold society together;
and social dynamics, or the study of the causes of social change. While the
concept of sociology was around before Comte, he is credited with coining the
term sociology [5]. His major
publications are: The Course on
Positive Philosophy (1830–1842), Discourse
on the Positive Sprit (1844), A General View of Positivism (1848) [1],
Religion of Humanity (1856) [5]. His works had great influence on
renowned social thinkers like Karl Marx, George Eliot to a great extent. His
concept of social evolutionism acted as a great inspiration for the development
of modern academic sociology [2]. His influence on 19th century thought,
in general, was immense, although he is almost always overshadowed by Marx and
Darwin. His ideas influenced John Stuart Mill (who supported him financially
for many years), Emile Durkheim, Herbert Spencer, and Edward Burnett Tylor.
Comte coined the
term "sociology", and is usually regarded as the first sociologist.
His emphasis on the interconnectedness of different social elements was a
forerunner of modern functionalism [7].
Auguste Comte or Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte was
a prominent French philosopher. He introduced a new discipline namely Sociology
and divided this subject in two categories – "social statics", which
denotes the forces holding society together and "social dynamics", which
indicates the forces responsible for social change. He, for the first time,
proposed the idea of positivism, a philosophy of science that gained wide
recognition in the second half of the nineteenth century. Most of his works
reflect the influence of the utopian socialist Henri Saint-Simon with whom he
worked as a secretary. He endeavoured to cure the social maladies of the French
Revolution with the help of his newly developed positive philosophy. His law of
three stages is an attempt to describe the historical sequence of human mind in
three steps - theological, metaphysical and positive [2].
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 polysemous 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
prophecy 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) [7; 3].
Comte
formulated the law of three stages, one of the first theories of the social
evolutionism: that human development (social progress) progresses from the theological stage, in which nature was
mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from
supernatural beings, through metaphysical
stage in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and
man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them until the final positive stage in which all abstract and
obscure forces are discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their
constant relationship. This progress is forced through the development of human
mind, and increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the
understanding of world.
A.Comte offered
an account of social evolution account, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth
according to a general 'law of three stages'. The idea bears some similarity to
Marx’s view that human society would progress toward a communist peak. This
is perhaps unsurprising as both were profoundly influenced by the early Utopian
socialist, Henry de Saint-Simon, who was at one time Comte's teacher and
mentor. Both Comte and Marx intended to develop, scientifically, a new secular
ideology in the wake of European secularization [4].
The final science which Comte claimed to have discovered and one which
had not yet entered its positive stage, was sociology. It was sociology, he
claimed, that would give ultimate meaning to all the other sciences – it was
the one science which held the others together. Only sociology would reveal
that man is a developing creature who moves through three stages in each of his
sciences. With this profound assertion, Comte argued that we could finally
understand the true logic of mind. And in the 47th lesson of the fourth volume
of the Course of Positive Philosophy, Comte proposed the word sociology
for this new science rather than the current expression, physique sociale
(or social physics) [6].
Sociology was divided into two distinct parts. On the one hand, there
was social statics, that is, the study of socio-political systems relative to
their existing level of civilization. On the other hand, there was social
dynamics which entailed the study of the three stages. Statics and dynamics
then, are branches of the science of sociology. Comte also added a division
between order and progress. Order exists when there is stability in fundamental
principles and when the majority of the members of society hold similar
opinions. Progress, on the other hand, was identified with the period following
the Protestant Reformation up to the French Revolution. What was now needed,
Comte told his readers, was a synthesis of order and progress in a higher,
scientific form. Once a science of society had been developed, opinions would
once again be shared and society would be stable. Once there was true social
knowledge, people would not be as willing to fight over religious or political
opinions. Liberty of conscience, Comte declared, is as out of place in social
thought as in physics, and true freedom in both areas lies in the rational
submission to scientific laws. The gradual awareness and understanding of these
laws is what Comte meant by the word progress.
Comte’s sociology
was overly intertwined with his own ideas of the correct polity. In his view,
society had broken down as a result of the French Revolution. The Revolution
was a good thing – the Revolution had also been necessary because the ancient
regime – based as it was on obsolete theological knowledge – no longer
served as a respectable basis for shared opinions. It was the progress of the
sciences that had undermined this basis. The Revolution offered no grounds for
the reorganization of society because it was negative – that is, the Revolution
destroyed the old without creating the new [6; 8].
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Auguste Comte (1856). A General View of Positivism: from Chapter I: Its
Intellectual Character [Web site]. – Access mode: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/comte/1856/general-view.htm
4. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Isidore- Auguste-Marie-Franois-Xavier Comte
[Web site]. – Access
mode: http://www.answers.com/topic/auguste-comte
6. Lecture
25. The Age of Ideologies
(3): The World of Auguste Comte [Web site]. – Access mode: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture25a.html
8. Hahn. Introduction to
Sociology Auguste Comte (Video) [Web site]. – Access
mode: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture25a.html