Auguste Comte is widely acknowledged as the founder of the science of sociology and the 'Religion of Humanity'. In this fascinating study, the first major reassessment of Comte’s sociology for many years, Mike Gane draws on recent scholarship and presents a new reading of this remarkable figure. Comte’s contributions to the history and philosophy of science have decisively influenced positive methodologies. He coined the term ‘sociology’ and gave it its first content, and he is renowned for having introduced the sociology of gender and emotion into sociology. What is less well known however, is that Comte contributed to ethics, and indeed coined the word ‘altruism’. In this important work Gane examines Comte's sociological vision and shows that, because he thought sociology could and should be reflexive, encyclopaedic and utopian, he considered topics such as fetishism, polytheism, fate, love, and the relations between sociology, science, theology and culture. This fascinating account of the birth of sociology is an unprecedented introductory text on Comte. Gane’s work is an essential read for all sociologists and students of the discipline.

Auguste Comte's doctrine of positivism was both a philosophy of science and a political philosophy designed to organize a new, secular, stable society based on positive or scientific, ideas, rather than the theological dogmas and metaphysical speculations associated with the ancien regime. This volume offers the most comprehensive English-language overview of Auguste Comte's philosophy, the relation of his work to the sciences of his day, and the extensive, continuing impact of his thinking on philosophy and especially secular political movements in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Contributors consider Comte’s reasons for establishing a Religion of Humanity as well as his views on domestic life and the arts in his positivist utopia. The volume further details Comte's attempt to apply his "positive method," first to social science and then to politics and morality, thereby defending the continuity of his career while also critically examining the limits of his approach.

This 2001 book is a critique of Comte's concept of religion and its place in his thinking on politics, sociology and philosophy of science.

Although Auguste Comte is conventionally acknowledged as one of the founders of sociology and as a key representative of positivism, few new editions of his writings have been published in the English language in this century. He has become virtually dissociated from the history of modern positivism and the most recent debates about it. Gertrud Lenzer maintains that the work of Comte is, for better or for worse, essential to an understanding of the modern period of positivism. This collection provides new access to the work of Comte and gives practitioners of various disciplines the possibility of reassessing concepts that were first introduced in Comte's writings. Today much of the ordinary business of academic disciplines is conducted under the assumption that the realm of science is essentially separate from the realms of politics and science. A close reading of Comte will reveal how deeply such current ideas and theories were originally embedded in a particular political context. One of his central methodological principles was that the theory of society had to be removed from the arena of political practice precisely in order to control that practice by means of these same sciences. It is in Comte's work that the reader will be able to observe how the forces of social and political reaction began to be powerfully organized to combat the critical forces in its own and later eras. Auguste Comte and Positivism will be of importance to the work of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, and historians.

In Comte’s original work on positivism, he attempted to outline a general perception of positivism, how it can be applied to society and how society would work should positivism be applied. J.H. Bridges’ translation, originally published in 1865, this version first published in 1908, manages to simplify and clarify Comte’s views of positivism and how it is related to the thoughts, feelings and actions of humankind as well as how positivism can be applied to philosophy, politics, industry, poetry, the family and the future. This title will be of interest to students of sociology and philosophy.

This volume explores the life and works of Auguste Comte during the last and most controversial part of his career, the period from 1842 to 1857.