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1 - 1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2010

Mary Pickering
Mary Pickering
Affiliation:
San José State University, California
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Summary

If the time of butchers and poisonings or simply that of guillotines could come back, they [the members of the pedantocracy] would dare to do everything against me because they are always motivated by the same hatreds … The crimes of well-bred people have … undergone the same radical transformation as those of the rabble, who increasingly steal instead of kill: according to this … fortunate influence of our civilization, one no longer can oppress … except [through] the purse. This is what those people have attempted to do to me.

Comte, July 22, 1844

COMTE'S THREE PROJECTS

The year 1842 was a difficult one for Comte. He was upset that the Catholic press suddenly attacked him for promoting atheism in his weekly lectures on astronomy for workers. Most of all, the great push to complete the sixth and final volume of the Cours de philosophie positive before missing yet another deadline exhausted him. For twelve years, he had experienced difficulties in balancing his teaching duties with his commitment to writing this work, which he believed would provide the basis for a reorganization of Western society. His tendency to devote all his “free” time to completing the Cours had contributed to his estrangement from his wife, who threatened to leave him. The intensity of his intellectual life and the instability of his domestic situation made him fear he would experience an attack of madness similar to the one that had sent him to an asylum in 1826.

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Auguste Comte
An Intellectual Biography
 , pp. 15 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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