When we look at Auguste Comte's positivism we should remember that he lived during
a time a tremendous political turmoil. His 60-year lifespan was lived under six
different French regimes. He was born under the first French Republic and he
died during the second French Empire. So Comte's life was one of constant
political change. Comte felt that a restoration was necessary after the
turmoil introduced by the French Revolution. But because the ancient
regime was lost irrevocably, a restoration could only take the form of
a reorganization of society along new, scientific principles. And this was the
ambition of Comte's positive philosophy. According to Comte there are three
fundamental elements of society. The first and most basic is the state of
intellectual knowledge. The second, which is generated by the first, is the
political government of the state. And the third is the artistic, philosophical,
and economic civilization that is generated by the first two. Comte's
ordering is a reversal of Marx's ordering. Marx sees the economic and
industrial factors as the root of the others. These then generate a political
regime, which then generates the intellectual and artistic superstructure
which provides the justification for the economic status quo. Notice then: this
means that for Marx, the solution is going to be a revolutionary change in
the material distribution of the means of production in society, whereas Comte, and
his positivism, has an ambition to change the political order and the civilization
by providing a deeper intellectual unity to it. Comte sees the arrangement and the
flow of civilization going in the opposite direction from Marx. Central to
Comte's philosophy is his Law of the Three Stages. Comte believes that every
civilization goes through three stages of development, and that progress between
these stages is inevitable--one stage always leads into the next. In the first,
theological, stage natural phenomena are explained by appealing to the wills of
invisible beings. The world is full of gods: some beneficial to man, some
dangerous. Societies develop magical religions aimed at controlling or
negotiating with these nature spirits. Politics and culture in the first stage
tends to be theocratic and authoritarian, as people gather around the priest
figure who claims to be able to mediate with the forces of the world. At the
second stage, metaphysics and philosophy replace theology as the primary form of
knowledge. Philosophers abandon the quest to understand and manipulate
invisible wills, instead seeking to know the inner natures of natural things,
thus to understand and control them. Second stage cultures tend to be
legalistic and hierarchical. The third and final stage is the positive or
scientific stage. Scientific method, based upon observation and experiment, forms
the knowledge basis of society. Scientists grasp the behavior or the 'how'
of Nature, giving up the impossible task of knowing its inner nature, or 'why.'
The scientific knowledge base of the third stage generates a culture that is
technological and industrial, focused on manipulating nature to improve human lives.
According to Comte, the Law of the Three Stages gives both the explanation
for his current 19th century social crisis and a means of bringing this
crisis to a successful conclusion. To conclude the crisis we need to remember
that the unity of a social order is provided by the unity and integrity of
its underlying philosophical or intellectual system of knowledge.
So, for example, it was a united Christian theology that held together the social
order of the Middle Ages. In 19th century France the transition is being made from
the 2nd to the 3rd stages, but there is no uniting intellectual basis of
knowledge to tie together this new scientific society. This is the job that
Comtean philosophy will do: it will be the intellectual foundation
of a new scientific positive social order. Comte thinks that his new positive
philosophy will have two primary effects. It will make possible a new science of
social facts, to be called sociology, which will make possible social
engineering, the arrangement of society on a new and scientific basis. It will
also provide a principle of unity to unite all of the sciences under one
heading, to give the intellectual unity and integrity that is required in order
to stabilize the social order under this new third positive stage of scientific knowing.
That's my quick overview of Comte's positive philosophy and his ambitions for it.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.