Auguste Comte and Positivism
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~56,800 words · 270 passages
Cite this work
- APAJohn Stuart Mill. (n.d.). Auguste Comte and Positivism. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/auguste-comte-and-positivism
- MLAJohn Stuart Mill. "Auguste Comte and Positivism." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/auguste-comte-and-positivism.
- ChicagoJohn Stuart Mill. Auguste Comte and Positivism. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-stuart-mill/auguste-comte-and-positivism.
What it is about
The examination of Comte: what positivism got right and where it turned into an authoritarian religion.
Context and history
Mill had been an enthusiast of Comte and here takes his distance. The second part is a severe critique of the 'system of positive polity', which he sees as a spiritual despotism — and which reads as a warning about philosophies that turn into churches.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
For some time much has been said, in England and on the Continent, concerning "Positivism" and "the Positive Philosophy." Those phrases, which during the life of the eminent thinker who introduced them had made their way into no writings or discussions but those of his very few direct disciples, have emerged from the depths and manifested themselves on the surface of the philosophy of the age. It is not very widely known what they represent, but it is understood that they represent something. They are symbols of a recognised mode of thought, and one of sufficient importance to induce almost all who now discuss the great problems of philosophy, or survey from any elevated point of view the opinions of the age, to take what is termed the Positivist view of things into serious consideration, and define their own position, more or less friendly or hostile, in regard to it. Indeed, though the mode of thought expressed by the terms Positive and Positivism is widely spread, the words themselves are, as usual, better known through the enemies of that mode of thinking than through its friends; and more than one thinker who never called himself or his opinions by those appellations, and carefully guarded himself against being confounded with those who did, finds himself, sometimes to his displeasure, though generally by a tolerably correct instinct, classed with Positivists, and assailed as a Positivist. This change in the bearings of philosophic opinion commenced in England earlier than in France, where a philosophy of a contrary kind had been more widely cultivated, and had taken a firmer hold on the speculative minds of a generation formed by Royer-Collard, Cousin, Jouffroy, and their compeers. The great treatise of M. Comte was scarcely mentioned in French literature or criticism, when it was already wo
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