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4 - Système de politique positive: Natural and Social Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2010

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

In a situation where all human conditions are simultaneously disturbed, one cannot cure anything in a radical manner except with a doctrine capable of embracing everything.

Comte to Congreve, October 18, 1856

VOLUME ONE: NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

In 1842, Comte had promised his readers at the end of the final volume of the Cours that his next work would treat political philosophy and would comprise four volumes. “The first will treat the sociological method, the second social statics, the third social dynamics, and the fourth the general application of such a doctrine.” The topics covered much of the same ground that the Cours did, but Comte did not want the Système to be a repetition of the Cours. In his mind, the Cours had established the importance of the social point of view in science and logic, whereas the Système would show how people could establish this new philosophy by changing the political order.

What is interesting to note is that Comte did not rush to begin explaining his approach to political reconstruction. After completing the Cours, Comte turned to familiar scientific subjects; he wrote the Traité élémentaire de géométrie analytique (1843) and the Traité d'astronomie populaire (1844), which included his summary of positivism, Discours sur l'esprit positif. In August 1844, he began contemplating his work on political philosophy, which he imagined would appear in four or five volumes in 1848.

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Auguste Comte
An Intellectual Biography
 , pp. 159 - 245
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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