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Auguste Comte was born Isidore Marie Auguste Francois Xavier Comte to deeply religious and strict Roman Catholics parents, in France on 19 January 1798.
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in 1814, Auguste started school at the Eccle Poly-Technique.
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Once the school closed in 1816, he set up a permanent residence in Paris. He supported himself by occasionally teaching Math and contributing Journalism. Auguste, during this time, became an avid reader of Philosophy and History, specifically the history of human society.
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Auguste began giving private lectures on what he called "Positive Philosophy"(Barnes & Fletcher 2019) but soon suffered a major nervous break down and was hospitalized. After he was released and recovered, Comte went on to give very popular, public lectures. He then wrote and published a 6 volume series on his philosophy work called "Cours de Philosophie positive" .
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His law of three states stated that our intellectual development had originated at a theological standpoint (when everything was explained by the gods), to a "transitional metaphysical stage" (when everything was explained by final causes) to becoming aware of the limitations of human knowledge.
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After almost two decades in an unhappy marriage, Auguste met and fell in love with a woman, named Clotidle de Vaux. She would die within a year from tuberculosis, would cause a huge impact on Auguste's thoughts and writings. This would spur him to write a series called "Systeme de Politique Positive"(Barnes & Fletcher 2019), which would complete his formula for Sociology. He would create new classifications within science, that would break off into Mathematics, Sociology, and many others.
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Comte’s contributions to positivist philosophy include the harsh adaptation of the scientific method, his law of three states of intellectual development, his version on the classification of the sciences; and the combination of a positivist social philosophy into a single form. He craved a system of philosophy that would create a base for political organization appropriate to modern industrial society.
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Auguste Comte would die of cancer at the age of 59 on 05 September 1857, from cancer in Paris, France, having been ridiculed during his life for his theories of a Positive Philosophy.
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Resources
Barnes, Harry Elmer, and Ronald Fletcher. “Auguste Comte.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1 Nov. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Auguste-Comte. Bourdeau, Michel, "Auguste Comte", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/comte/. -
1830-1842: Cours de Philosophie Positive, 6 volumes
1851-1854: System de Politique Positive , 4 volumes
1852: Cathechisme Positiviste
1856: Synthise Subjective
