Auguste Comte: Positivism

What is Positivism?

Positivism is a philosophical movement in sociology, holding the view that social phenomena ought to be studied using only the methods of the natural sciences. Auguste Comte was known to be the “Father of Positivism”, brought up the need to keep society bound together as numerous traditions were diminishing. Positivism refers to “the doctrine formulated by Comte which asserts that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge which describes and explains the co-existence and succession of observable phenomena, including both physical and social phenomena.” On the other hand, Positivism denotes “any sociological approach which operates on the general assumption that the methods of physical sciences (example, measurement, search for general laws, etc.) can be carried over into the social sciences.”

Comte’s Use of Biology

In trying to justify sociology, Comte constructed his infamous “hierarchy of the sciences” to argue that the last and most complex science to emerge in the new era of what he termed positivism, or theoretically driven science, would be sociology. Sociology was now in the process of arising from biology and, in so doing, would complete the hierarchy with, not surprisingly, sociology being at the top. Indeed, in a fit of modesty, he termed sociology “the queen science.”

Biology was to be the study of organisms, while the new, emerging sociology was to be the study of social organisms or the analysis of the structured patterns of relations among organisms. In making his case for sociology, Comte began to analogize that society is a more complex organism. As a complex organism, societies are ultimately built not from individual human organisms but, rather, from other social organism families in societies, which were the functional equivalent of cells in biological organisms. He went on to assert that all other parts of groups, organizations, communities and other social structures were ultimately elaborations of the family as the most fundamental part of societies. And so, societies as social organisms could be distinguished from biological organisms by the fact, they were built from social organisms that were linked together by a common culture and political authority.

From this “organismic analogy,” sociology’s first theoretical perspective was forged, although Comte did not take this analogy theory very far. He divided sociology into statics (structural properties of the social) and dynamics (processes creating, sustaining, and changing the properties and relations among these properties making up the social organism). This image of a social organism suggested a particular mode of analysis, and this approach eventually became known as functionalism or structural functionalism.

Why Comte is considered as the sociologist of human and social unity.

Auguste Comte suggests that sociology is the product of a three-stage development. In the study of Positive Philosophy applied scientific methods of comparison and arrived at ‘The Law of Human Progress’ or ‘The Law of Three Stages.’ The three stages are:

1. The Theological or fictitious stage: 

According to Comte in this stage, “all theoretical conceptions, whether general or special bear a supernatural impression”. Unable to discover the natural causes of the various happenings, the primitive men attributed them to imaginary or divine forces. This stage is also divided into four sub-stages as (a) Fetishism (b) Anthropomorphism (c) Polytheism (d) Monotheism.

a) Fetishism: 

During this sub-stage, the man accepts the existence of the spirit or the soul. It did not admit priesthood.

b) Anthropomorphism: 

In the second substage, with the gradual development in human thinking, there occurred a change or improvement in human thinking which resulted in the development of this stage.

c) Polytheism: 

During this sub-stage, man begins to believe in magic and allied activities. He then transplants or imposes a special god in every object. Thus, they believed in several gods and created the class of priests to get the goodwill and the blessings of these gods.

d) Monotheism: 

During this sub-stage of the theological stage, man believes that there is only one centre of power that guides and controls all the activities of the world. Thus, a man believed in the superhuman power of only one god.

2. The Metaphysical or abstract stage: 

This stage being an improvement upon the earlier stage, it was believed that the abstract power or force guides and determines the events in the world. Metaphysical thinking discards belief in a concrete god.

3. The Scientific or positive stage: 

The dawn of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of the positive stage in which “observation predominates over imagination” and all theoretical concepts have become positive. In this final stage, dominated by industrial administrators and scientists, the nature of the human mind has given up its childish and vain search for Absolute notions, origins and destinations of the universe and its causes but seeks to establish scientific principles governing phenomena.

Auguste Comte maintained that each stage of the development of human thoughts necessarily grew out of the preceding one. Only when the previous stage exhausts itself does the new stage develop. He also correlated the three stages of human thought with the development of a social organization, types of social order, social units and material conditions found in society. He believed that social life evolved in the same way as the successive changes in human thought took place.

Understanding Positivism According to Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte may be considered as, first and foremost, the sociologist of human and social unity. Human history is a single entity in his eyes, and he extended this conception of unity to the point where his difficulty would ultimately be the opposite of Montesquieu’s. He would have trouble rediscovering and accounting for diversity, according to his philosophy, only one type of society is absolutely valid and all mankind must arrive at this exemplary type. Comte’s has put forward his philosophical evolution representing the three ways in which the thesis of human unity is stated, developed, and justified. These three stages are marked by Comte’s three major works are:

1. Opuscules

The first stage begins from 1820 to 1826. The Opuscules are a description and analysis of a moment in the history of European society. According to Comte, a certain type of society is dying, another being born before his eyes. The dying type is characterized by two adjectives: theological and military.

Medieval society was united by transcendent faith as expounded by the Catholic Church. Theological thinking is contemporaneous with the predominance of military activity, a predominance which is expressed by the fact that the highest rank is granted to warriors. From this, the type being born is scientific and industrial. This society is scientific in the sense in which the moribund (Dying) society was theological: the thinking typical of the modern age is that of scientists, just as the thinking typical of the past was that of theologians or priests.

Scientists are replacing priests or theologians as the social category providing the intellectual and moral foundation of the social order. The scientists are inheriting the spiritual power of the priests. Spiritual power, according to Auguste Comte in his early Opuscules, is necessarily embodied in each age by those who provide the model for the predominant way of thinking and the ideas which serve as the basis of the social order. The scientists are replacing the priests, the industrialists, in the broad sense of the word (i.e., in the all-inclusive sense of businessmen and managers and financiers), are replacing the warriors.

According to Auguste Comte, viewing sociology as a science in the manner of earlier sciences, which he used Opuscules, i.e., that just as there is no free will in mathematics or astronomy, there can be none in sociology.

2. Cours de Philosphie Positive

The second stage consists of the lectures of the Cours de Philosophie Positive. Comte gave more universal scope and deeper meaning to the idea of progress. The law of the three stages consists in the assertion that the human mind passes through three phases.

a) In the first phase, the mind explains phenomena by ascribing them to beings or forces comparable to the man himself.

b) In the second phase, that of metaphysics, the mind explains phenomena by invoking abstract entities like “nature.”

c) In the third phase, man is content to observe phenomena and to establish the regular links existing among them, whether at a given moment or in the course of time.

In Comte’s thinking, the law of the three stages has no precise meaning unless it is combined with the classification of the sciences. For it is the order in which the various sciences are ranked that reveals the order in which the intelligence becomes “positive.” The positive method was adopted sooner in mathematics, physics, and chemistry than in biology. There are reasons why positivism is slower to appear in disciplines relating to the most complex matters.

The combination of the law of the three stages and the classification of the sciences eventually leads to Auguste Comte’s basic formula: the method which has triumphed in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology must eventually prevail in politics and culminate in the founding of a positive science of society, which is called sociology.

Comte of the various scientific disciplines was not just to demonstrate the need for creating sociology. It had a more specific aim: beginning with a certain science namely, biology there occurs a decisive reversal in methodology, a reversal which is to provide a foundation for the sociological concept of historical unity. Beginning with biology, the sciences are no longer analytic but necessarily and essentially synthetic.

a) Analytic:

For Comte, the sciences of inorganic nature, physics and chemistry, are analytic in the sense that they establish laws among isolated phenomena.

b) Synthetic:

On the other hand, in biology, it is impossible to explain an organ or a function apart from the living creature as a whole. It is within and in relation to the whole organism that a particular biological fact assumes its meaning and finds its explanation. If we were arbitrarily and artificially to cut off a part of a living creature, we would have before us nothing but dead matter. One could say further that the living matter considered as such is an entity, a totality. The logical consequence of this principle of the priority of entity over an element is the assertion that the object of sociology is the history of the human race.

3. Systeme de Politique Positive

The third stage of Comte’s is Système de Politique Positive. Here, Comte’s development by the desire to justify the idea of the unity of human history. For human history to be one, man must have a certain recognizable and definable nature at all times and in all places. Further, every society must admit of essential order, whatever the diversity of social organizations. This human nature and this social nature must be such that the major characteristics of historical evolution may be deduced from them. Auguste Comte’s theory of human nature comes under what he calls the tableau cerebral (areas of the brain). This tableau cérébral is equivalent to an enumeration of the different activities characteristic of man. This concept can be divided into two parts:

a) The study of Human Nature or the structure of human nature:

Comte indicated that human nature may be regarded as either twofold or threefold. If we regard man as twofold, he may be said to consist of a heart and a mind. If threefold, the heart will be divided into sentiment (or affection) and action (or will), and we will regard man simultaneously as sentiment, will, and intelligence. Comte adds that the double significance of the word “heart” is a well-founded ambiguity: to have heart is to have feelings or to have courage. The two ideas are expressed by the same phrase as if language were aware of the existing bond between affection and courage (i.e., will).

Man is emotional, active, and intelligent; the problem is to understand the relations among these three elements. Comte tries to put a solution: Man is made for action; he is an active creature; and, returning at the end of his life to the idea. Man is made to act. But, made to act, he will never act through intelligence. Abstract thought will never be the deciding factor. The impulse to act will always come from the heart (in the sense of emotions). But this emotionally inspired activity requires control of the intelligence. Or, to use one of Comte’s famous formulas, man is to act by emotion and to think in order to act.

The cerebral localizations of these three elements of human nature are merely the transposition of ideas about their functioning. Comte placed the intelligence near the forward part of the brain so that it is in direct communication with the organs of perception, the sense organs. Conversely, he placed the emotions behind, so that they may be in direct communication with the motor organs.

The breakdown of these three elements is as follows. Among the emotions, we can distinguish those which pertain to egoism which pertains to altruism or disinterestedness. First, the purely egoistical instincts or dispositions the nutritive, sexual, and maternal instincts. Then Comte adds to the list those tendencies which are still egoistical, but which already pertain to relations with others the military and industrial instincts. (This is the transposition into human nature of the two types of society he thought he had observed in his own age. The military instinct is the one that encourages us to overcome obstacles; the industrial instinct, on the other hand, is the one that induces us to produce goods.) And then Comte adds two words: pride and vanity. Pride is the instinct to dominate; vanity, the search for the approval of others. So that with vanity we have already passed in a sense from egoism to altruism.

The non-egoistical tendencies are three in number: friendship the feeling of one person for another, on an equal footing; veneration which already widens the circle and which applies to the feeling of the son for the father, the disciple for the master, the inferior for the superior; and, finally, kindness which in principle has universal application and which is to be fulfilled in the religion of humanity.

The breakdown of intelligence is as follows. The first distinction is between understanding and expression. Understanding, in turn, may be passive or active. When passive, it is abstract or concrete; when active, it is inductive or deductive.

Finally, the breakdown of the will is threefold: it consists of courage (to undertake), prudence (to execute), and steadfastness (to complete).

b) The study of Social Nature:

The statics of the Systéme de Politique Positive, Part II, is presented in the following manner. Auguste Comte outlined, one after the other, a theory of religion, a theory of property, a theory of language, a theory of the family, a theory of the social organism or the division of labour; and he devoted to the social order systematized by the priesthood (a rough draft of human society become positivist), and the other devoted to the limits of variations a static interpretation of the possibility of historical dynamics.

A theory of religion is an attempt to demonstrate the function of religion in every human society. Every society necessarily involves consensus, an agreement between groups, an agreement between individuals, a unifying principle. Religion is this unifying principle. Religion contains within itself the threefold division characteristic of human nature. It includes an intellectual aspect, dogma; an affective aspect, love; and a practical aspect, which Comte calls the regime or the cult. Religion imitates the divisions of human nature because, in order to create unity, it must address itself simultaneously to the intelligence, emotions, and will.

In a theory of property and language, the juxtaposition may seem strange, but it corresponds to Comte’s thinking. There is an analogy between property and language. The property might be called the projection of activity onto society, while language is the projection of intelligence. But the law common to property and language is what might be called the law of accumulation. Civilization exists because the material and intellectual conquests do not vanish with the conquerors. Man exists only by virtue of tradition, i.e., the transmission of goods and knowledge. Property is the accumulation of goods transmitted from one generation to another. And language is, so to speak, the receptacle in which the acquisitions of the intelligence are preserved. When we inherit a language, we are inheriting a culture created by our ancestors.

A theory of family taken as a model and implicitly regarded as exemplary in the Western type of family, and naturally, he has been criticized for this. The family is essentially the affective element, Comte tried hard to show that the various relations existing within the family correspond to the various relations which may exist between human beings, and also that in the family, human affectivity was trained and molded. In the scheme of family relations: a relation of equality between brothers; a relation of veneration between children and parents; a complex relation of authority–obedience between man and wife. According to Comte, the husband obviously has the authority, but it is an authority which is to a certain extent inferior because it is the authority of man, or activity and intelligence, over woman, who is essentially sensibility; this supremacy, based in a sense on strength, is from another point of view inferiority, because in the family the spiritual power that is, the noblest power belongs to a woman.

Auguste Comte had a sense of the equality of beings, but it was equality based on the radical differentiation of functions and natures. When he said that woman is intellectually inferior to man, he was ready to see this as a superiority of woman, because by the same token woman is the spiritual power, the power of love, which to the Comte of the Système was far more important than the futile superiority of intelligence. At the same time, in the family, it is the men who have the experience of historical continuity, who learn what is the condition of civilization, who control the transmission of civilization from generation to generation.

A theory of the social organism or the division of labour, Comte’s essential idea is that of the differentiation of activities and the cooperation of man. The exact terms are separation of functions and combination of efforts. But his profound idea, and probably one of Comte’s most original in this respect, is the recognition of the primacy of force in the practical organization of society. Society, conceived as a way of organizing activity, is dominated, and cannot help being dominated, by force. Auguste Comte acknowledged only two political philosophers, Aristotle and Hobbes. The only political philosopher between Aristotle and himself who, in Comte’s opinion, deserved (or almost deserved) to be mentioned is Hobbes. Why? Because Hobbes saw clearly that every society is ruled, must be ruled (must in both senses of inevitable and desirable), by force. What is the force in society? Number, or wealth. Thus no utopias, no illusions, no idealism: society is and will be dominated by the forces of numbers or of wealth (or a combination of these–there is no fundamental qualitative difference between the two). That force should prevail is normal. How could it be otherwise as long as we look at life as it is, at human society as it is?

A theory of spiritual power, as a counterpart to the realistic theory of the social order which recognizes the domination of force. Spiritual power is a constant necessity in human societies because the latter, as a temporal order, will always dominate by force. This spiritual power is twofold: that of the intelligence and that of the feelings or the affections. Comte interpreted spiritual power as primarily that of intelligence. Spiritual power according to him was primarily that of the affections or of love. But, whatever the precise form assumed by spiritual power, the distinction between temporal and spiritual power is of all times, of all ages, though it is not fully realized until the positive phase, the culmination of human history.

The static can be clarified from the dynamics of the threefold standpoint of intelligence, activity, and sentiment. The history of intelligence proceeds from fetishism to positivism, i.e., from the synthesis based on subjectivity, and on the projection onto the external world of a reality comparable to that of consciousness, to the discovery and establishment of the laws governing phenomena without claiming to reveal their causes. History, therefore, leads simultaneously to an increasing differentiation of social functions and an increasing unification of societies. In the final phase, temporal and spiritual will be more distinct than they have ever been, and this distinction will at the same time be the condition of a more profound consensus, of a deeper unity. Men will accept the temporal hierarchy because they will recognize its precariousness and will reserve their highest appreciation for the spiritual order which both sanctions and limits the temporal hierarchy.

Positivism means the philosophical system of Auguste Comte, recognizing only positive facts in observable phenomena, and rejecting metaphysics and theism and religious system founded on this. Thus, Comte was against all types of irrational elements in social thinking. Comte argued, “As long as man believes that social events are always exposed to disturbances by the accidental intervention of the legislators no human or divine no scientific provisions of them would be possible”.

 


Mill , J. S. (2017). Auguste Comte and Positivism. Alpha Edition

Aron, R. (2017). Main currents in sociological thought: Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville and the sociologists and the revolution of 1848. Routledge.



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