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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. (shrink)

Selections from the most important and representative writings of the philosopher, economist, social reformer and political activist August Cieszkowski (1814 1894).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Sophocles: AntigoneE. Christian KopffMark Griffith, ed. Sophocles: Antigone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xii + 366. Cloth, $64.95; paper, $24.95.Mark Griffith's edition of Sophocles' Antigone is a welcome addition to the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. The best volumes in the series, inaugurated by T. B. L. Webster's Philoctetes (1970), enrich the traditional commentary format with the editor's distinctive scholarly concerns: general editor P. E. Easterling's Trachiniae (1982) (...) displays a sensitive literary taste; R. D. Dawe's Oedipus Rex (1982) provides a lively example of a first-rate mind reading a great text, as does Alan Sommerstein's Eumenides (1989); Sommerstein doubts that his play was originally called "Eumenides," while Griffith's Prometheus (1983) gives reasons to question the Aeschylean authorship of Prometheus Vinctus. Griffith's Antigone is less controversial, but it lives up to the series' high standards.The introduction has almost thirty pages of background information on Sophocles and Athens, the myth, dramatic structure, technique, and style, the production of Greek drama, and the transmission of the text. The forty pages on "The Meaning of the Play" contain short essays with bibliography on aesthetics, lessons, characters, ethics, contradictions (human/divine, polis/oikos, male/female), politics, and fantasies. The section on character is especially clear and forceful, but I found the pages on fantasies less focused and their discussion of Freudian criticism, with the rambling footnote on page 60, distracting. Colleagues will learn much from these pages, but students might well skip them and start reading the play.The text is temperately conservative, with good taste displayed when conjectures and variant readings are chosen. The commentary is careful, scholarly, and yet accessible to students. Difficult passages are translated with close attention to particles. The many notes devoted to explicating the nuances of the word reminded me of the story that Denniston was supposedly overheard telling a student, " can sometimes mean 'and.'"Each chorus is accompanied by a metrical description based on a colometry which is often that of R. D. Dawe's Teubner (1985). Griffith's short essays explaining the metrical patterns are usually successful. An exception is his note on [End Page 274] 1115-16/1126-27, which he prints as one long colon, which "could be classified as a kind of 'dragged enoplian'... or as 'acephalous dactylo-epitrite.'... In either case the affiliation to aeolics remains clear" (316). This is the kind of explanation which convinces people that metrics is mumbo-jumbo. Griffith refers to A. M. Dale, Lyric Metres of Greek Drama (Cambridge 1968, 191 n. 3), but Dale's note does not explain why she prefers this colometry over others. The colometry of Lloyd-Jones and Wilson's Oxford Classical Text (1990) is better than Dale's and Griffith's because it is easier to understand (telesillean with resolved first element/ iambic penthemimer) and fits the meter of the rest of the ode. This is also true of the colometry of manuscript L, Laurentianus 32.9 (telesillean/iambic dimeter/telesillean), which I prefer.Griffith usually ignores L's colometry, although for the third stasimon (781-800), the Eros Ode, he agrees with it, including word break at the end of 789/799, and gives a good discussion of the metrical and verbal traits that make the poem a satisfying unity. In other choruses the colometry of manuscript L is superior to that concocted by modern scholars, for example, the second stasimon (582-625), the Ate Ode. At 604-5/615-16, the beginning of the second strophe and antistrophe, Griffith prints glyconic () followed by hipponactean (). L presents these lines as hipponactean and hagesichorean (), an acephalous hipponactean. With modern editors' colometry, the hipponactean is a pendent clausula to the preceding glyconic. Two points noted by Griffith favor the manuscripts. The modern colometry entails word break in both strophe and antistrophe, so that, as Griffith notes (223) "'dovetailing' makes the distinction between 'glyconic' and 'hipponactean' arbitrary." The modern colometry is clearer on paper than in performance. The ancient colometry begins a pattern of increasingly acephalous verses, as noted by Bruno Snell, in Griechische Metrik (Göttingen 1984, 62).More important, as Griffith notes sagaciously: "The basic motif... (shrink)

Josef Pieper's Tradition: Concept and Claim analyzes tradition as an idea and as a living reality in the lives and languages of ordinary people. In the modern world of constant, unrelenting change, tradition, says Pieper, is that which must be preserved unchanged. Drawing on thinkers from Plato to Pascal, Pieper describes the key elements and figures in the act of tradition and what is distinctive about it. Pieper argues that the handing down of tradition is not the same as discussing (...) or teaching, despite its similarities to those activities. It means accepting something as true and valid with the intent of handing it down again, unmixed with alien intrusions and yet kept alive for each new generation via imaginative reformulations. In the beginning, there is sacred tradition, founded on a revelation of God to man, yet secular tradition is important too. Tradition offers liberation from the prison of the present." Understanding what tradition really means makes one free and independent in the face of conservatisms," notes Pieper. At the same time, it links us to the past and is essential for a meaningful future. Book jacket. (shrink)

" Pour devenir un parfait philosophe, il me manquait surtout une passion, a la fois profonde et pure, qui me fit assez apprecier la partie affective de la nature humaine " note Auguste Comte dans ses " Prieres quotidiennes " redigees peu apres 1845, cette " annee sans pareille " au cours de laquelle il rencontre, frequente et voit disparaitre Clotilde de Vaux a laquelle il voue un amour eperdu. Cette relation aussi profonde et intense que physiquement ephemere ne bouleverse (...) pas seulement la vie privee du fondateur du positivisme. La decouverte du role preponderant de l'affectivite dans les relations humaines et sociales inflechit de maniere definitive la doctrine positiviste dont la nouvelle devise devient L'amour pour principe, l'ordre pour base et le progres pour but. L'edifice theorique qu'est le Systeme de politique positive developpe l'idee d'un " nouveau pouvoir spirituel " qui prendra la forme d'une " religion de l'Humanite " a laquelle l'ordre et le progres doivent etre subordonnes, de meme que l'esprit au cur. Ce numero explore sous differents angles les implications de cet inflechissement majeur a l'uvre dans la philosophie positive, et sa complexe actualite. (shrink)

t. 1. Les religions de l'Inde, et Bulletins des religions de l'Inde (1880-1885) -- t. 2. Bulletins des religions de l'Inde (1889-1902) -- t. 3. Comptes rendus et notices (1872-1886) -- t. 4. Comptes rendus et notices (1887-1898) -- t. 5. Comptes rendus et notices (1899-1911). Bibiliographie. Index général.

t. 1.- Cours de philosophie positive. v. 1: Les préliminaires généraux et la philosophie mathématique.--v. 2: La philosophie astronomique et la philosophie de la physique. v. 3: La philosophie chimique et la philosophie biologique.

While Alexis de Tocqueville described America as the 'absolute democracy,' Karl Marx saw the nation as a 'defiled republic' so long as it permitted the enslavement of blacks. August J. Nimtz argues that Marx, unlike Tocqueville, not only recognized that the overthrow of slavery and the cessation of racial oppression were central to democracy's realization but was willing to act on these convictions. This potent and insightful investigation into the approaches of two major thinkers provides fresh insight into past (...) and present debates about race and democracy in America. (shrink)

1891. Comte, a French philosopher, was the founder of Positivism. Positivism is a philosophical system of thought maintaining that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena experienced, not to question whether it exists or not. Comte sought to apply the methods of observation and experimentation, as was beginning to be used in the hard sciences, to a field that we now know as sociology. This is one of his later works. Contents: Explanation of the Worship; Explanation of (...) the Doctrine; Explanation of the Regime, or System of Life; and General History of Religion. (shrink)

Western democracies experience profound conflicts that induce concerns about polarization and social cohesion. Yet although conflicts are a core feature of democracies, the forms, functions, and dynamics of democratic conflicts have rarely been subject of political theory. This paper aims at furthering our understanding of democratic conflicts. It analyzes the theory of conflict in Mouffe's agonistic pluralism, confronts it with sociological conflict theory, and presents concrete points of departure for a more comprehensive theory of democratic conflicts. The paper, thus, contributes (...) to two lines of research: (1) Regarding agonistic theories, the paper shows that agonistic pluralism fails to provide a convincing theory of conflict since it underestimates the mechanisms and effects of conflict dynamics (e.g. intergroup cohesion, intragroup conflict, domination, and escalation) and fails to account for the variety of conflict interactions. Proponents of agonistic pluralism should therefore invest more into clarifying their core concept. (2) For a general account of democratic conflicts, the paper proposes to pursue interdisciplinary research on the cognitive concepts shaping conflict interactions, the linked practices of conflict regulation, and the processual dynamics of conflicts. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

How do groups of people persist through time? Groups can change their members, locations, and structure. In this paper, I present puzzles of persistence applied to social groups. I first argue that four-dimensional theories better explain the context sensitivity of how groups persist. I then exploit two unique features of the social to argue for the stage theory of group persistence in particular. First, fusion and fission cases actually happen to social groups, and so cannot be marginalized as “pathological.” Second, (...) it is implausible that groups spatially coincide pre-fission. This means that theories that depend on pre-fission spatial coincidence, such as some endurance theories and the worm theory, cannot explain fission cases. All things considered, the stage theory offers the best explanation of how groups persist. (shrink)

Chez Auguste Comte, la connaissance ne saurait dépasser la sphère des lois scientifiques. Aussi la philosophie positive, expression par laquelle Comte désigne sa conception, se définit-elle comme une discipline ayant pour objet la coordination des faits observés, sans nulle prétention à aller au-delà des acquisitions de la science expérimentale.Cette philosophie positive d'Auguste Comte porte aussi le nom de positivisme, qui, chez Auguste Comte, désigne la conception selon laquelle l'esprit humain ne saurait atteindre le fond des choses et doit se borner (...) à la seule recherche des lois de la nature, conçues comme des relation s invariables de succession et de similitude. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Cet article s’attache à montrer que c’est de la crise de notre siècle apparaissant comme l’inadaptation des principes classiques de la science à nos exigences nouvelles, que surgit l’épistémologie d’Edgar Morin sur la complexité. La crise, dans le sillage de Morin, n’engendre pas seulement la montée des incertitudes ; elle est aussi l’une des barbaries qui menacent les sociétés contemporaines. Indice par excellence de la crise, la complexité épistémologique n’est plus seulement le lot quotidien des sciences de la culture. Elle (...) mine aussi de l’intérieur celles de la nature physique, biologique et des sciences formelles. Nous n’insisterons que sur la valeur et la portée théorique de la crise comme condition de possibilité de la complexité épistémologique.This article aims to show that this is the crisis of our century appears as the inadequacy of the classical principles of science to our new requirements that arise epistemology Edgar Morin complexity. The crisis in the wake of Morin, leads not only to increased uncertainty, it is also one of the barbarities that threaten societies. Index by excellence of the crisis, the epistemological complexity is not only the daily science culture. It also undermines the ones inside the physical, biological and formal sciences. We will not dwell on the value and theoretical implications of the crisis as a condition of possibility of epistemological complexity. (shrink)

"Après la proclamation de la république, en 1848, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), le fondateur du positivisme, remanie son système et fonde la religion de l'Humanité. Considérant que le moment est venu de terminer la révolution et de donner à la société son organisation définitive, il expose son programme, de 1849 à 1851, dans des leçons publiques sur l'histoire de l'Humanité destinées à rallier le peuple parisien, où il dresse le tableau de l'avenir d'après l'ensemble du passé et prépare ce qui allait (...) devenir le Système de politique positive (1851-1854). Aucune trace écrite de cet enseignement ne nous était parvenue jusqu'à la découverte récente du manuscrit de César Lefort, un document unique qui nous renseigne sur la forme et les enjeux de ce que Comte appelait lui-même ses « prédications hebdomadaires ». L'édition critique de ce cours comporte une introduction dans laquelle L. Fedi restitue le contexte et étudie les transformations doctrinales et organisationnelles du positivisme."--Back cover. (shrink)

Orthodoxy holds that the difference between weakness of will and compulsion is a matter of the resistibility of an agent's effective motivation, which makes control-based views of agency especially well equipped to distinguish blameworthy weak-willed acts from non-blameworthy compulsive acts. I defend an alternative view that the difference between weakness and compulsion instead lies in the fact that agents would upon reflection give some conative weight to acting on their weak-willed desires for some aim other than to extinguish them, but (...) not to their compulsive desires. This view allows identificationist theorists of moral responsibility to explain why weak-willed actions, but not compulsive actions, are attributable to agents such that they can, in theory, be praised or blamed for them. After motivating and presenting the view in detail, I show how it has unique resources for explaining the ethics of managing one's compulsions. (shrink)

A keen student of theology, August Friedrich Gfrörer became professor of history at the University of Freiburg and also sat as a representative in the Frankfurt parliament, agitating for the reunification of Protestantism and Catholicism. His academic work marked the modern period in the Christian study of Judaism, making full use of primary sources without pursuing an obvious apologetic or polemical agenda. This two-volume work, published in 1831, is a critical study of early Christianity and the influence that Judaism (...) had on the New Testament. Volume 1 provides a thorough exposition of Philo of Alexandria's philosophy and theology. Gfrörer also offers a biographical sketch of Philo and gives an informative overview of his writings and his time. (shrink)

I THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY In order to explain properly the true nature and peculiar character of the positive philosophy, ...