The Philosophy of Auguste Comte

Every new system of philosophy, however original in appearance, is more or less directly related to the doctrines which have preceded it. But it is also connected with more gene...

According to Comte, philosophy is destined to serve as a basis for morality, for politics and for religion. It is not an end in itself but a means to reach an end not otherwise...

In Comte’s system the constitution of sociology may be considered at the same time as a terminus and as a starting point. One sees the positive method attaining with it to the o...

According to the law of the three States, all our conceptions in the different orders of knowledge, begin by being theological, pass through the metaphysical transition, and end...

We may admit, with Aristotle, that curiosity is natural to man, and that we are inclined to inquire into things for the pleasure of knowing them. But it must be admitted, adds C...

The perfection of the positive system, towards which it unceasingly tends, although very probably it may never reach it, would be to represent all observable phenomena as partic...

Logic, says Comte, almost in the terms of Descartes, is the sole portion of ancient philosophy which is capable of still presenting some appearance of utility.[83] And does even...

The Philosophy of the Sciences is one of the leading parts of Comte’s work. No other brings out more clearly the essential differences which distinguish his doctrine from previo...

In the eyes of philosophers, mathematics has always occupied a privileged place among the sciences. Plato located their object in an intermediate region between the world of sen...

The object of astronomy is the discovery of the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the celestial bodies; and, by the knowledge of these laws to obtain...

If we do not separate chemistry from physics, their common object is the knowledge of the laws of the inorganic world. In this way they are clearly distinguished on one hand fro...

The passage from the inorganic world to the world of Life constitutes a critical step in natural philosophy. Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry represented successive steps in th...

Psychology has no place in the classification of the fundamental sciences. In it Sociology immediately succeeds Biology. Use has been made of this fact in order to reproach Comt...

Of the philosophers who flourished before the rise of the positive doctrine, the greater number assumed as a postulate in the comparative study of man and animals, that there wa...

Social science had at first been called social physics by Comte. Later on he invented the name of “sociology”[228] for it. It stands at the summit of the encyclopædic ladder of...

As biology distinguishes the anatomical point of view, “relating to the ideas of organisation,” and the physiological point of view, “relating to the ideas of life,” so sociolog...

For Comte, social dynamics is the chief part of sociology. He tells us that it occupied his attention “in a preponderating and even almost exclusive manner.”[259] This preferenc...

If social dynamics is a science, and if the law of the three states, discovered by Comte, is its fundamental law, this law (and those which proceed from it), must explain the su...

Ethics is not an abstract speculative science; it does not therefore belong to the hierarchy of the fundamental sciences. It is true that, at the end of his life, Comte added a...

“Live for others”: such is the supreme formula of positive ethics. Feeling bears witness to its justice; science discloses its far-reaching importance and its deep consequences....

In this world there is nothing absolute, everything is relative; Comte wrote this to his friend Valat as early as 1818.[354] But as a matter of fact, there exists a supreme real...