A Philosophical Appraisal of Auguste Comte’s Scientific Positivism
This essay is a critical engagement with Auguste Comte’s theory of positivism. Comte laid the foundations of scientific positivism with “the law of three stages” which is both a logical and a historical law. According to him, the human mind evolves historically through the theological via the metaphysical to the positive stage which correspond to the infant, adolescent, and adult stages of human development. The positive stage ushers in the scientific outlook as the mental maturity of mankind. Later, Comte’s positivism assumed the garb of a positive religion with social humanity as its deity. Applying the analytical and critical method, this essay demonstrates that Comte’s scientific positivism is not only empiricist and historicist, but also atheist and that Comte’s atheism is not the conclusion of a rational argument about the question of the existence of God, but a postulate that underlies his law of “the three stages.”
Keywords: Atheism, God, Humanity, Law of Three Stages, Metaphysics, Positivism, Positive Philosophy, Scientific Positivism, Positive Religion, Theology