Auguste Comte: biography of this philosopher and founder of positivism.

A review of the life of Auguste Comte, French philosopher who promoted the positivism paradigm.

To speak of science is to speak of research, of the search for knowledge through experimentation and the validation of empirically verifiable hypotheses and theories. Regardless of how we say it, what is clear is that knowledge is only considered scientific if it can be tested objectively..

However, this idea of science has not arisen out of nowhere: throughout history a large number of authors have debated and defended various models of knowledge, some of which are opposed or mutually exclusive, based on philosophy and epistemology.

One of these models is Auguste Comte's Positivism, one of the main philosophical currents that advocates that authentic and true knowledge can only be obtained through the verification of hypotheses by means of the scientific method. This movement has marked to a great extent the intellectual evolution of an era, which is why we should know its main creator. It is for this reason that throughout this article we are going to make a short biography of Auguste Comte, with his main contributions to the development of the scientific method.with his main contributions to the intellectual development of the West.

Brief biography of Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte was born on January 19, 1798 in Montpellier, France, in the last years of the French Revolution. Born Isidore Marie Auguste Auguste François Xavier Comte, he was one of three sons of the civil servant Louis Auguste Xavier Comte and Félicité Rosalie Comte. His family of origin was of modest status, with strong Catholic beliefs and defenders of the monarchy. and defenders of the monarchy.

During his early years Comte was educated in the Catholic religion, and would attend a school in his hometown. Around the age of fourteen the young man decided to declare himself an agnostic and republican. Highly intelligent and gifted with a great capacity for memory, his grades were high but he stood out for his great rebelliousness.

Education

In 1814, when the young man was sixteen years old, he was accepted at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. It was there that he began to take an interest in science and engineering.It was there that he began to take an interest in science and engineering, subjects promoted for the training of new technicians for the benefit of the State, and for the first time came into contact with the ideas of Count Claude Henri Saint-Simon.

All this led him to believe in the need to create a society governed by scientists. However, two years later the government decided to close the institution, due to its republican ideology.

The closure of the school caused Comte to return to Montpellier, where he began studying medicine at the faculty while surviving by teaching mathematics. However, Comte decided to return to Paris soon after, however, he decided to return to Paris and settle there, studying in a self-taught manner.. Academically he was an outstanding student, but nevertheless he did not obtain any degree, something that would later make it difficult for him to access different positions.

In Paris he met Saint-Simon in person, and managed to become his secretary in Paris.and managed to become his secretary in 1817. He would remain with him until 1824, a period in which he learned a great deal from his mentor, although he would end up separating from him due to divergences on what should be done to reshape society.

The separation occurred after the publication of the Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société ("Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société", a work in which the nature of positivism and its link with politics would begin to be observed) by Comte, with which his mentor disagreed, and in the face of Saint-Simon's lack of appreciation of his ideas.

Precariousness and crisis

A year later, in 1825, Auguste Comte married Anne Calorine married Anne Calorine Massin. During some years the couple suffered a great economic precariousness, which forced Comte to organize courses of positive philosophy at great speed and almost without being able to sleep in order to be able to subsist.

He began to give lessons in his house, lessons in which he would have as students some scientific personalities of great renown of the time. These lessons dealt with positive philosophy, being with the passage of time collected in the Cours de philosophie positivewhich would culminate in six volumes in 1840.

The great mental exhaustion of the author led him to suffer for the first time nervous breakdowns, so serious that he had to cancel his courses and led him to a state of high irascibility and messianic delusions. Although his mental problems were initially redirected by his wife, they became more and more serious.

He was then hospitalized in Saint-Denis and diagnosed as a "megalomaniacal maniac", something that could correspond to a "manic megalomaniac".which could correspond to a manic episode or even a psychotic break.

His internment lasted a year, until December 1826, when his mother's intervention allowed him to leave the center even though he was not considered cured. However, shortly after (in 1827) the author threw himself from the Pont des Arts to the Seine River with the intention of taking his own life, something that was prevented by a guard.

The beginning of positivism

In 1828, somewhat more recovered, Comte resumed his lessons at home, at the same time that he began to compile and elaborate the different volumes of his "Course of Positive Philosophy", which he would finish as we have already said in 1840, and in which he would include the three theoretical stages through which each branch of knowledge must pass (theological, metaphysical and scientific/positive). It was this book and the courses he took that provoked the beginning of the rise of positivism as a current of scientific thought.

In addition, he founded and worked as a professor at the Polytechnic School of the Polytechnic Association, which allowed him to expand his ideas.which allowed him to expand his ideas, but in which he nevertheless could not become a professor and from which he was eventually expelled.

Likewise, and starting from this basis and his dream of generating a society led by wise scientists, Comte intended to apply the principles of mathematics and science to social phenomena.sociology was born on the basis of this ideal. One of the works in which he embodied these beliefs is found in Système de politique positive, ou Traité de sociologie, instituant la religion de l'humanité (to be published in 1854).

In 1842 he separated from his wife. In 1845, he met he met the one who would be his great love, Clotilde de Vaux, who initially rejected him but who would be published in 1854.who initially rejected him but ended up establishing a relationship with him. A relationship that would end a year later, when the woman died. All this, together with the economic precariousness that accompanied him throughout his life, would lead him back to a state of crisis in which he needed the economic support of admirers such as Stuart Mill.

Last years, death and legacy

Towards the end of his life Comte's thought shifted towards religion.He also began to write and finished one of the volumes of the "The New Religion", elaborating works in which he linked positivism with religious sentiment and the elaboration of a personal god and trying to promote a new religion in which society would be governed by sociologists.

He also began to write and finished one of the volumes of Synthèse subjective ou Système universel des conceptions propres à l'état normal de l'Humanitéin which he sought to link mathematics and religion.

Auguste Comte died on September 5, 1857, in the city of Paris, at 59 years of ageHe died on September 5, 1857, in Paris, at the age of 59, as a consequence of a stomach cancer.

Despite the great difficulties he had throughout his life, Comte's work has left a legacy of great importance worldwide, since he has been developing sociology and other currents that have been born either based on the ideals of positivism or opposing them.

Criticisms of Compte's thought

Compte's positivism has received much criticism over the years, especially in the last decades of the twentieth century, with the emergence of postmodern thought. The idea that true knowledge is practically indescribable from the hard sciences has been seen as a display of reductionism which, in fact, is anti-scientific, since it is based on the idea that the world works according to human epistemology.

On the other hand, those who point out that philosophical positions in the face of science implicitly carry a political position. often argue that Compte's ideology was reactionary, since it was in favor of an individualistic vision of the generation of knowledge and access to truth.

However, it cannot be denied that the ideas of this thinker are still very influential today and that they contributed strength to the idea that there are areas of knowledge in which knowledge is more grounded than in others.

Bibliographical references:

• "Auguste Comte." (2018). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
• Comte, A. (1998). Auguste Comte and positivism: the essential writings. Piscataway: Transaction Publishers.
• Delaney, T. (2003). Auguste Comte. Council for Secular Humanism.
• Sutton, M. (1982). Nationalism, Positivism, and Catholicism. The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics 1890 - 1914.