74. Emile Rigolage - La Sociologie Par Auguste Comte

Emile Rigolage has just published the second volume of his carefully crafted excerpt from Auguste Comte's writings under the title "La Sociologie par Auguste Comte" (Bibliothöque de Philosophie contemporaine, Paris, Felix Alcan). The first edition of the book was published 15 years ago and has been translated into German by Kirchmann. Compte is a thinker who must be known as an example of a personality without ideas. Comte has no idea that the content of philosophy is ideas. No ideas flash through his mind when he contemplates the things of the world. That is why his so-called philosophy is the distorted image of all true and genuine philosophizing. The philosophers of all times have written down in their works what they have thought about the world: They have always gone beyond mere observation. This observation is a matter for the empirical sciences. Philosophy has no justification alongside these individual disciplines if it does not seek out the deeper, the ideal core of things. But Comte knows nothing of such a core. He is without any intuition or imagination. That is why he is of the opinion that philosophy has nothing of its own to add to the individual sciences, but merely to compile and bring into a systematic order what has been recognized by these individual sciences. To philosophize in Comte's sense would mean the bankruptcy of philosophy. Everything one needs to know in order to gain an insight into and overview of Comte's utterly barren and unfruitful "system" can be found in exemplary form in the above-mentioned excerpt. The author of the text has thoroughly familiarized himself with Comte's views and was therefore able to highlight the significant things that matter. It is particularly difficult to summarize Comte in this way. Because everything falls apart precisely because leading basic ideas are completely missing.

I think that the book could be useful right now. Other philosophers are also striving more and more to give philosophy a character that makes it similar to the individual sciences. There is even talk of exact philosophy. We can learn from Comte where we end up when such exactitude is taken to extremes. The result is un- and counter-philosophy. And since the harmfulness of an activity is best recognized by following it to its extremes and observing its excesses, Comte's philosophizing is recommended to contemporaries as a cautionary example. They may learn from him how not to do it if something fruitful is to be achieved in this field.

I believe that we are approaching a time in which philosophical endeavor will once again have the respect it deserves. The unfruitful attempts of Comte and others had to be made because one must first err in order to arrive at the truth later.