A General View of Positivism
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 704 passages
Cite this work
- APAAuguste Comte. (n.d.). A General View of Positivism. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/auguste-comte/a-general-view-of-positivism
- MLAAuguste Comte. "A General View of Positivism." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/auguste-comte/a-general-view-of-positivism.
- ChicagoAuguste Comte. A General View of Positivism. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/auguste-comte/a-general-view-of-positivism.
What it is about
Comte's own summary of positivism, published in 1848: the short way into a work that otherwise runs to six volumes.
Context and history
The French original is the 'Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme'. Here, in a few pages, are the law of the three states — theological, metaphysical, positive — the classification of the sciences, and the claim that sociology must complete them. But here too is the other Comte, the one usually left out of the textbooks: the one who holds that a society is not held together by knowledge alone, and who proposes a 'religion of humanity' with its calendar and its secular saints. Mill, who admired him, thought that second part deplorable, and the argument has gone on ever since. It repays reading for seeing the two things together, which is how Comte thought them.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Although Positivism has been pretty widely discussed of late, not only by those interested in philosophy and religion, but by the general reader and the public press, perhaps but few of them, whether readers or critics, have exactly grasped the full meaning of it as a system at once of thought and of life. The vast range of the ground it covers and the technical, allusive, and close style of Comte’s writings in the original have made it difficult to master the subject as a whole. It has accordingly been thought that the time has come to add to the ‘New Universal Library’ a translation of _The General View of Positivism_, i.e., the careful summary of the _Positive Polity_ which Auguste Comte prefixed to the four volumes of his principal work. The translation which was published by Dr. J. H. Bridges in 1865 is at the same time a most accurate version by one of Comte’s earliest followers, and also it is turned in an easy and simpler style, with the references and allusions explained, marginal headings to the paragraphs, and a complete analysis of the contents. Positivism is not simply a system of Philosophy; nor is it simply a new form of Religion; nor is it simply a scheme of social regeneration. It partakes of all of these, and professes to harmonize them under one dominant conception that is equally philosophic and social. ‘Its primary object,’ writes Comte, ‘is twofold: to generalize our scientific conceptions and to systematize the art of social life.’ Accordingly Comte’s ideal embraces the three main elements of which human life consists--Thoughts, Feelings and Actions. Now it is clear that no such comprehensive system was ever before offered to the world. Neither the Gospel nor any known type of religion undertook to give a synthetic grouping of the Sciences. No synthetic scheme of philosophy ever attempted to correlate religion, politics, art, and industry. No system of Socialism, ancient or modern