Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography

by Mary Pickering

• ISBN13: 9780521434058
• ISBN10: 052143405X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-11-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book constitutes the first volume of a two-volume intellectual biography of Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology and a philosophical movement called positivism. Volume One offers a reinterpretation of Comte's 'first career' (1798-1842), when he completed the scientific foundation of his philosophy. It describes the interplay between Comte's ideas and the historical context of post-revolutionary France, his struggles with poverty and mental illness, and his volatile relationships with friends, family and colleagues, including such famous contemporaries as Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians, Guizot and John Stuart Mill. Pickering shows that the man who called for a new social philosophy based on the sciences was not only ill at ease in the most basic human relationships, but also profoundly questioned the ability of the purely scientific spirit to regenerate the political and social world.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The early years

2. The life and works of Saint-Simon up to 1814

3. Comte's first works for Saint-Simon

4. Comte's growing independence, 1819-1821

5. The fundamental opuscule and Comte's rupture with Saint-Simon

6. The aftermath of the rupture

the search for connections

7. Comte's efforts to establish himself

8. Intellectual and mental crises

9. The road to recovery, 1828-1830

10. Years of success and confrontations, 1830-1838

11. Comte's changing psyche and aberrant behaviour, 1838-1840

12. The encounter between two luminaries: Comte and Mill

13. 1842: a turning point

14. Cours de philosophie positive: positivism and the natural sciences

15. Cours de philosophie positive

sociology

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography.