The positivist calendar was a calendar reform proposal by Auguste Comte in
1849. Revising the earlier work of Marco Mastrofini, or an even earlier proposal
by "Hirossa Ap-Iccim", Comte developed a solar calendar with 13 months of 28
days, and an additional festival day commemorating the dead, totalling 365
days. This extra day added to the last month
was outside of the days of the week cycle, and so the first of a month was
always a Monday. On leap years, an additional festival day, to celebrate
holy women, would join the memorial day of the dead. The scheme followed the
Gregorian calendar rules for determining which years are leap years, and started
on January 1. Year 1 "of the Great Crisis" was equivalent to 1789 in the
standard Gregorian system. Much like Comte's other schemas, the
positivist calendar never enjoyed widespread use.
The months were named, in chronological historical order, for great figures in
Western European history in the fields of science, religion, philosophy,
industry and literature. Each day of the year was named after neither Catholic
Saints as in the Gregorian calendar nor after Île-de-France agriculture as in
the French Republican calendar but after figures in history in various fields.
Weeks and days were also dedicated to great figures in history as a secular
version of the concept of saint's days. In all, the Positivist Calendar
"contains the names of 558 great men of all periods, classified according to
their field of activity." Villains of history were also commemorated in order
to be held up for "perpetual execration". Napoleon, according to
Comte, was especially deserving of this fate.
Months were named: Moses
Homer Aristotle
Archimedes Caesar
Saint Paul Charlemagne
Dante Gutenberg
Shakespeare Descartes
Frederick Bichat
In 1849, Comte wrote that he called his calendar a "breach of continuity" with
the old way of thinking, and his Humanistic calendar was part of that
breach. He called it, "a provisional institution, destined for the present
exceptional century to serve as an introduction to the abstract worship of
Humanity." Aside from the religious references the
calendar carried, Duncan Steel, author of Marking Time, believes the novelty of
the calendar's month names alone helped prevent the wide acceptance of this
proposal. The main reason that his suggestion [for
calendar reform] failed to find favor with many people seems to have been that
he insisted on naming the months for various notable persons from historical
to modern times, ... One must admit that it would seem strange to give the date
as the third day of Homer, and with a month named for the bard a reference to
"Shakespeare's Twelfth Night" would be ambiguous.
Author Tricia Lootens writes that the idea of naming days after literary
figures, as if they were Catholic Saint days, didn't catch on outside the
Positivist movement. Outside of positivist circles,
canonization of literary secular saints was nearly always slightly tinged with
irony or nostalgia, and positivist circles were never large.
See also Positivism
Religion of humanity Secular Humanism
Notes ^ Edward Cary Hayes; Ulysses G.
Weatherly, Social Progress: Studies in the Dynamics of Change, J. B.
Lippincott, 1926, p.255. ^ a b John Bowle, Politics and Opinion
in the Nineteenth Century: An Historical Introduction, Oxford University Press,
New York, 1954, p.131. ^ Comte, A: "System of Positive Polity",
page 346. Longmans, Green and Co. 1877 edition.
^ Steel, D: "Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar",
page 308. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2000. ^ Lootens, T. Lost saints: silence,
gender, and Victorian literary canonization, page 15. University of
Virginia Press. 1996. External links
Interactive positivist calendar Calendrier positiviste, Auguste Comte,
April 1849. Scanned pages as PDF from Gallica.
Calendrier positiviste, Catéchisme positiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de
la religion universelle en treize entretiens systématiques entre une femme
et un prêtre de l'humanité, Auguste Comte, Apostolat positiviste, 1891. From
Gallica - Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The Thellid Calendar is a modern calendar similar to the Positivist
calendar. Philosopher's Calendar is an adaptation
of the positivist calendar for Android devices.