Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

  • Birth of Auguste Comte

    Auguste Comte was born following the aftermath of the Franch Revolution in Montpellier, France on Jan 19,1798. He was born into a Catholic family. His father, Louis Comte, is a tax official and his mother, Rosalie Boyer, is a "Royalist and Sincere" Roman Catholic.
  • École Polytechnique/ Education

    Comte was intellectually gifted since a young age. In 1814 (around age 18), He entered the École Polytechnique. A School in Palaiseau, France, known for Its specialty in science and engineering.
  • Henri de Saint-Simon

    Due to the temporarily close of École Polytechnique in 1816, Comte took up residence in Paris. Around the same time, he meets Henri de Saint-Simon, a French social reformer. He turns out to be a very important acquaintance of Comte.
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    Caroline Massin

    Comte was married to Caroline Massin in 1825 and separated in 1842
  • system of positive philosophy

    In 1826, Comte began a lecture on his "system of positive philosophy" for private audience. "Positivism, in Western philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations." - Herbert Feigl. Around the same time, Comte soon suffered a serious nervous breakdown, but he made an almost complete recovery.
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    Early Success

    Comte has been working on his lectures for the past 2 years. It has gotten so successful, that he redelivered it at the Royal Athenaeum during 1829–30.
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    Cours de philosophie positive

    Comte has devoted 12 years of his life (1830 - 42) to his publication. His philosophy in a work titled Cours de philosophie positive, had six volumes. (1830–42; “Course of Positive Philosophy”; Eng. trans. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte)
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    École Polytechnique/ Tutor

    From 1832 - 1842, Comte worked as a tutor and then an examiner at the revived École Polytechnique.
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    Système de politique positive

    His other major work, the Système de politique positive, had 4 volumes (1851–54; System of Positive Polity). "...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."(Harry Elmer Barnes, Auguste Comte,1998)
  • Other Work

    Catéchisme positiviste (1852; The Catechism of Positive Religion)
  • Other Work

    Synthèse subjective (1856; “Subjective Synthesis”)
  • Death of Comte

    On Sep 05, 1857. Comte passed away from Stomach cancer. In this YouTube video it explains the importance of Auguste Comte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbHw-1eUrv4.