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7 - Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2010

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

The mind must always be the minister of the heart, never its slave.

Comte, 1848

INTRODUCTION: POSITIVISM AS POLITICS AND AS RELIGION

Comte wrote one important work during the Revolution of 1848, the Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme, which he had originally hoped to finish in May the year before. He finally started it on January 1, 1848 and completed it on June 18. Less than a week after he finished it, Paris was rocked by the workers' rebellion. Just as the Revolution of 1830 caused delays in the publication of the Cours, the fighting during the “June Days” impeded the appearance of the Discours. Comte gave up finding a publisher and simply engaged a printer for all his remaining works. The Discours was finally printed by E. Thunot on July 29, 1848, thanks to the aid of a subsidy from his positivist disciples in Holland. The volume was four hundred pages and cost six francs. In a slightly modified form, it served as the first part of the first volume of the Système, which was completed in February 1850 but not published until July 1851.

The title Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme is significant. Comte made a point for the first time of regularly calling his positive philosophy “positivism” to underscore his argument that it was a complete system as well as a political movement.

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Auguste Comte
An Intellectual Biography
 , pp. 335 - 413
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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