Comte, Isidore-Auguste-Marie-François-Xavier (1798–1857)

8. Influence

Comte’s ideas were initially well received in England after the excellent review of the first two volumes of Cours de philosophie positive in the Edinburgh Review (1838). Later, John Stuart Mill confirmed his support in System of Logic (1843), in which he presents social statics as the science of the ‘coexistences of social phenomena’ and social dynamics as that of their progressions. Mill saw in social statics a theory of the consensus between the different parts of the social organization, whereas social dynamics was a theory of society in its progressive movement; their combination led to a law of correspondence between the spontaneous stages and their simultaneous transformations, from which one could then discover the scientific law governing the development of humanity. Like Comte, Mill regarded the speculative faculties of human nature as the agents of social progress, and he also advocated the historical method (his ‘Inverse Deductive Method’) in the social sciences. In politics, he favoured the separation of powers and the establishment of a consensus based on a common public doctrine. In 1841 he began a six-year correspondence with Comte with an enthusiastic letter, but continued it in opposition to him in three areas: psychology, political economy and feminine intelligence. In Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865), Mill categorically rejected the Religion of Humanity, though he still accepted Comte’s method.

Alexander Bain, the founder of the journal Mind, rallied, if not directly to Comtism, at least to the English positivist school. Like Comte, Bain (1855) connected his psychology to the spontaneous activity of the brain. Similarly, though he explicitly differentiated his own philosophy from that of Comte, Herbert Spencer, who wrote Social Statics (1851) on the basis of extreme individualism, then applied the doctrine of evolution to sociology, while at the same time rejecting Comte’s conclusions. The English positivist Frederick Harrison, founder of The Positivist Review, was also the author of a Social Statics (1875). He engaged in a polemic with Spencer to force him to recognize the links between his philosophy and that of Comte. Spencer did at least admit that he owed the concept of social consensus to Comte. Other notable supporters are Richard Congreve (1818–99), who devoted himself to the propagation of English positivism, and Harriet Martineau, who edited a summary of Comte’s philosophy, The Positive Philosophy (Comte 1830–42).

In France, Comte drew support from certain workers, such as Fabien Magnin, the author of Études Sociales (Social Studies) (1913), but his main devotee was the academic Pierre Laffitte, who published numerous positivist texts. Many people who did not strictly adhere to positivism nevertheless came under Comte’s influence: Claude Bernard advanced the discipline of experimental medicine and studied the internal environment of advanced living organisms; and Pierre Duhem became well-known for his work on the elements of a natural classification, the epistemological independence of the fundamental sciences, and the holistic thesis. On the other hand, many French thinkers were critical of Comte, notably Émile Meyerson.

In general, Comte’s positivism was received in two ways: some absorbed his central themes of the importance of scientific method in resolving social issues but rejected his religious movement; others were deeply impressed by his diagnosis of the crises afflicting modern society and were inspired by his vision for its redemption. In France, the former were led by Émile Littré, who was critical but friendly towards Comte’s thought; the latter by Pierre Laffitte, a supporter of the positivist religion and from 1892 Professor of History of Science at the Collège de France. Two positivist reviews were published, La philosophie positive (1867–82) under the direction of Littré and G. Wyrouboff, and the Revue occidentale (1878–1914) created by Laffitte. The Revue positiviste internationale (1906–30) was founded later under the direction of Emile Corra. The religious aspect of Comte’s positivism was developed by an English-born American, Henry Edger, who published The Positivist Calendar in 1856.