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The French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857)—often called the “father of sociology”—first used the term “sociology” in 1838 to refer to the scientific study of society. He believed that all societies develop and progress through the following stages: religious, metaphysical, and scientific. Comte argued that society needs ...
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Comte was educated by private tutors until he was nine years old and later attended the local lycée in Montpellier. In 1814, at age 16, he was admitted to the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris but was forced to leave two years later, when the institution was closed for political reasons by the Bourbon monarchy.
What did Auguste Comte write?
Comte’s major works include his six-volume Cours de philosophie positive (1830–42; “Course of Positive Philosophy”; The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte) and his four-volume Système de politique positive (1851–54; System of Positive Polity).
What did Auguste Comte die of?
Comte died of cancer.
What was Auguste Comte best known for?
Comte’s father, Louis Comte, a tax official, and his mother, Rosalie Boyer, were strongly royalist and deeply sincere Roman Catholics. But their sympathies were at odds with the republicanism and skepticism that swept through France in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Comte resolved these conflicts at an early age by rejecting Roman Catholicism and royalism alike. He was intellectually precocious and in 1814 entered the École Polytechnique—a school in Paris that had been founded in 1794 to train military engineers but was soon transformed into a general school for advanced sciences. The school was temporarily closed in 1816, but Comte soon took up permanent residence in Paris, earning a precarious living there by the occasional teaching of mathematics and by journalism. He read widely in philosophy and history and was especially interested in those thinkers who were beginning to discern and trace some order in the history of human society. The thoughts of several important French political philosophers of the 18th century—such as Montesquieu, the Marquis de Condorcet, A.-R.-J. Turgot, and Joseph de Maistre—were critically worked into his own system of thought.
Comte’s most important acquaintance in Paris was Henri de Saint-Simon, a French social reformer and one of the founders of socialism, who was the first to clearly see the importance of economic organization in modern society. Comte’s ideas were very similar to Saint-Simon’s, and some of his earliest articles appeared in Saint-Simon’s publications. There were distinct differences in the two men’s viewpoints and scientific backgrounds, however, and Comte eventually broke with Saint-Simon. In 1826 Comte began a series of lectures on his “system of positive philosophy” for a private audience, but he soon suffered a serious nervous breakdown. He made an almost complete recovery from his symptoms the following year, and in 1828/29 he again took up his projected lecture series. This was so successfully concluded that he redelivered it at the Royal Athenaeum during 1829–30. The following 12 years were devoted to his publication (in six volumes) of his philosophy in a work entitled Cours de philosophie positive (1830–42; “Course of Positive Philosophy”; Eng. trans. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte).
From 1832 to 1842 Comte was a tutor and then an examiner at the revived École Polytechnique. In the latter year he quarreled with the directors of the school and lost his post, along with much of his income. During the remainder of his life he was supported in part by English admirers such as John Stuart Mill and by French disciples, especially the philologist and lexicographer Maximilien Littré. Comte married Caroline Massin in 1825, but the marriage was unhappy and they separated in 1842. In 1845 Comte had a profound romantic and emotional experience with Clotilde de Vaux, who died the following year of tuberculosis. Comte idealized this sentimental episode, which exerted a considerable influence on his later thought and writings, particularly with regard to the role of women in the positivist society he planned to establish.
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Comte devoted the years after the death of Clotilde de Vaux to composing his other major work, the Système de politique positive, 4 vol. (1851–54; System of Positive Polity), in which he completed his formulation of sociology. The entire work emphasized morality and moral progress as the central preoccupation of human knowledge and effort and gave an account of the polity, or political organization, that this required. Comte lived to see his writings widely scrutinized throughout Europe. Many English intellectuals were influenced by him, and they translated and promulgated his work. His French devotees had also increased, and a large correspondence developed with positivist societies throughout the world. Comte died of cancer in 1857.
Auguste Comte was born on January 20, 1798 (according to the Revolutionary calendar then used in France), in Montpellier, France. He was a philosopher who is also considered to be the father of sociology, the study of the development and function of human society, and of positivism, a means of using scientific evidence to discern causes for human behavior.
Sociological positivism. Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte ( French: [oˈɡyst kɔ̃t] ⓘ; 19 January 1798 – 30 September 1857) [1] was a French philosopher, mathematician and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. [2]
Aug 9, 2023 · QUICK FACTS. Name: Auguste. Birth Year: 1798. Birth date: January 19, 1798. Birth City: Montpellier, Herault. Birth Country: France. Gender: Male. Best Known For: French philosopher Auguste Comte ...
The term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript. [23] [note 2] Sociology was later defined independently by French philosopher of science Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in 1838 [24] as a new way of looking at society.
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Comte, Auguste (1798–1857) Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte known better as Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was a French philosopher and considered the founder of sociology. Comte advocated for positivism and coined the term sociology (though he originally called it social physics) in the 1830s, establishing sociology as a systematic ...
