Comte after Positivism

This 1996 book provides a detailed, systematic reconsideration of Auguste Comte.

Robert C. Scharff (Author)

9780521893039, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 June 2002

248 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.492 kg

"Comte After Positivism provides telling intellectual history, incisive diagnosis of our present philosophical impasse, and a coherent vision of what postpositivist philosophy could become." Laurence D. Smith, The Journal of Mind and Behaviour

This 1996 book provides a detailed, systematic reconsideration of the neglected nineteenth-century positivist Auguste Comte. Apart from offering an accurate account of what Comte actually wrote, the book argues that Comte's positivism has never had greater contemporary relevance than now. The aim of the first part of the book is to rescue Comte from the influential misinterpretation of his work by John Stuart Mill. The second part argues that this deep historically-minded concern with the tradition of philosophy for current philosophical practice places Comte in the same camp as such well-known post-positivists as Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, and Hilary Putnam. Professor Scharff concludes that, even though he was the first positivist, Comte is also the only positivist who retains his relevance today.

Introduction: Comte for a post-positivist world
Part I. Comte Then: 1. Mill versus Comte on 'interior observation'
2. Mill versus Comte as positivist philosophers of science
3. Comte's three-stage law
Part II. Comte Now: 4. Comte's ambiguous legacy: science defended or already justified?
5. Cartesian ahistoricism and later epistemic analysis
6. Comte and the very idea of a post-positivist philosophy
7. Comte for tomorrow?

Subject Areas: Analytical philosophy & Logical Positivism [HPCF5]