Auguste Comte (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521434058)

This book constitutes the first volume of a projected two-volume intellectual biography of Auguste Comte, the founder of modern sociology and a philosophical movement called positivism. Volume One offers a reinterpretation of Comte's "first career," (1798-1842) when he completed the scientific foundation of his philosophy. It describes the interplay between Comte's ideas and the historical context of postrevolutionary France, his struggles with poverty and mental illness, and his volatile relationships with friends, family, and colleagues, including such famous contemporaries as Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians, Guizot, and John Stuart Mill. Pickering shows that the man who called for a new social philosophy based on the sciences was not only ill at ease in the most basic human relationships, but also profoundly questioned the ability of the purely scientific spirit to regenerate the political and social world.

Author: Mary Pickering
ISBN-10: 052143405X
ISBN-13: 9780521434058
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/26/1993
Pages: 792
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.56lbs
Size: 9.32h x 6.33w x 1.67d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/15/1993
New York Review of Books 10/25/2012 pg. 61