RG

IN CONTEXT

IDEOLOGY

Positivism

FOCUS

The family

BEFORE

14th century Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah uses scientific reasoning to examine social cohesion and conflict.

1821 In France, early socialist Henri de Saint-Simon argues that the new industrial society will bring forth a new Utopia, with a new kind of politics led by men of science.

1835 Belgian philosopher Adolphe Quetelet puts forward the idea of a social science to study the average man.

AFTER

1848 Karl Marx argues for the abolition of the family in the Communist Manifesto.

1962 Michael Oakeshott argues that society cannot be understood rationally.

French philosopher Auguste Comte’s defense of the family in his Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–48) is based on more than mere sentimental attachment. Comte’s “positivist” philosophy takes the view that in any true understanding of society, the only valid data comes from the senses, and from the logical analysis of this data. Society, he argues, operates according to laws, just like the physical world of natural science. It is the task of the scientist of society to study it and tease out these laws.

"Families become tribes and tribes become nations."

Auguste Comte

Family is the social unit

It is crucial, believes Comte, to look at general laws and not become obsessed by idiosyncratic individual views. “The scientific spirit forbids us to regard society as composed of individuals. The true social unit is the family.” It is on the basis of families that society is constructed—a social science that starts with the demands of individuals is doomed to failure. It is also within the family that individual whims are harnessed for the good of society. Humans are driven by both personal instinct and social instincts. “In a family, the social and the personal instincts are blended and reconciled; in a family, too, the principle of subordination and mutual cooperation is exemplified.” Comte’s position stresses social bonds, but is in conflict with socialism—Marxists who argue for the abolition of the family are, in Comte’s view, arguing for the very destruction of human society.

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