Auguste Comte
1798-1857 · Human Sciences · Prominent
Comte was a French thinker who founded positivism and coined the word sociology. He claimed that human thought grows up in three stages, the theological, the metaphysical and the positive. Gods explain events, then abstractions do, then observation and law take over. He wanted society studied the way physics studies matter, with science in the place of speculation. Late in life he built a Religion of Humanity, with saints and rites but no God.
Signature
The position Comte is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- leans Vertical
- Knowledge
- Naturalism
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Brain Only (25 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Meaning
- mildly leans Constructed (33 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (21 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Opposition
- mildly leans Concurrence (67 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Comte refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism / Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Technocracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Harmony
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Naturalism
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Social Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- State Socialism / Welfare Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Rational Expertise
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Legal Positivism
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Socially Constructed
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?