Sociological theory of Auguste Comte

Some people believe, and They are or I am Legion, the largest contribution to the sociology by Comte was the conception of the term, but we may be wrong, and can extract some valuable lesson ideas, often extravagant and usually dry, but He was a pioneer, one of the Founding Fathers, as they say in Sociology. Someone had to crash for others now fly in relative comfort. These are broadly his views on society, as it is and / or how it should be ...
   
Positivism: The search for invariant laws
Positivism: Commonly used to refer to the search for invariant laws of natural and social world. For Comte facts derived from research are less important than thoughtful speculation. It is based on the idea that there is a real world and the scientist has to discover and report on. In this sense, Comte is a realist. Comte defines sociology as a positive science. Develop a hierarchy of positive sciences: mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and sociology will be located at the top. This hierarchy starts at the base, which would be more general science of man away to the most specific, complex and close to this, the closer the sociology.
For Comte's sociological three methods:
1. - The remark should be guided by theory and concectarla once made a law.
2. - Experimentation: was more suitable for other sciences to sociology for obvious reasons.
3. - Comparison: is divided into three subtypes:
a) comparison of human societies with animal societies.
b) comparison of companies of different places.
c) comparison of different stages of societies over time.
The third is of utmost importance, is the historical method that I use almost exclusively Comte.
2.-law of the three stages
For Comte ALL crossed three stages, each man's search involved an explanation of his surroundings.
a) The theological stage: Man seeks the essential nature of things, their origin and purpose. They are supernatural beings or forces that create and regulate the phenomena and their purpose assigned. There are three types:
I) Fetish: Cult objects.
II) Polytheism: Worship of various gods.
III) monotheism worship of one God.
b) metaphysical Stadium: It is the least important. It is a transitional stage between the theological and the positive. Here the abstract forces replace divinity to explain the causes and purposes of the phenomena. It reaches its full development when an entity is considered cause of everything.
c) positive Stadium: According Comte all
we know are phenomena and the relationships between them, their root causes and not its essence., will look for unchanging laws governing all phenomena. There are specific laws and abstract, the former are of an empirical inductively, deductively by the latter theory. Its ultimate goal is to advertise as many abstract general laws to explain everything.
These three stages, although successive, can also occur simultaneously. These stages could also occur in the stages of life of individuals: children would be the theological stage, the metaphysical adolescents and adults positive.
3. - Positivism: the search for order and progress.
Comte positivism used as opposed to negativity, I thought that dominated society of her time is negative. Serious moral and political disorder of the time (for him). The goal was to counter the positivist philosophy philosophy and oppositional symptoms.
For Comte disorder, intellectual anarchy of his time were due to coexisting three stages, being incompatible and neither was fully; theology and metaphysics were in decline and positivism in its relationship with the social world (sociology ) was in the process of formation. The solution to this mess is that one of them predominates. Positivism already did in science, just missing in sociology to dominate the order. The order and progress were key concerns for Comte and theology offered ORDER BUT NO PROGRESS whereas metaphysics offered PROGRESS BUT NOT ORDER. Positivism offered both. Order by restricting social disorder and intellectual advancement of knowledge through extension and perfection of society. Order and progress would not separate entities but mutually define and interpret. For the crisis was Comte crisis of ideas and can only be solved with the emergence of a dominant idea, positivism. This view is similar in some aspects to Hegelian idealism.
Comte's sociology.
Comte distinguished between social statics and social dynamics, what today would be to structure and social change.
1.-Social Statics.
Define the Study of Social Statics as investigation of the laws that dominate the action and reaction of the parts of the social system. The laws are not derived from the empirical study, are derived from the laws of human nature. Developing a perspective on the parts of society, how they work and their relationship with the whole social system.
He macrosociology of social statics, as analyzed the relationship between the parts and the whole social system. Comte believed that the individual was imperfect, was dominated by lower forms of selfishness rather than by higher forms of altruism. If left to their discretion behaves selfishly, to create a better world, the selfish motives must be controlled to appear altruistic impulses. People are not creative: do not create the social world but this creates ellas.Comte considers the two principles:
-Subjective principle implies the subordination of the intellect to the heart.
Target-Principle: it implies the need for the existence of a world that really exists outside of individuals.
The selfish aspect of the heart, which dominates the intellect should be restricted externally by society for the altruistic aspect of the heart can emerge. Large structures such as family and society are necessary to restrict the display selfishness and altruism.
-Collective phenomena:
1) The family is the fundamental institution. It is the family and not the individual based society. Individuals are different units and society can not be derived from these. Families are microscopic units similar, though smaller than society. The family serves as the integration of the individual in society, these individuals learn to be social. Changes in the family are the basis for other changes, any change in it deeply affects both the individual and society.
2) Religion: This is the most important institution. It has two main functions:
a) serves to regulate the lives of individuals, curb their selfishness and stimulate their altruism.
b) Promotes social relations, laying the foundation of larger social structures.
3) The language: It is profoundly social, allows people to interact, connect their people with their peers, with their ancestors (reading them) and their successors (which we will read). It also allows the formation, transmission and application of religious ideas.
4) The division of labor: if individuals depend on each other, social solidarity is intensified. Therefore there must be a division of labor in which people in positions according to their training and skills. But he did not like the excessive specialization.
5) The government: Based on the force, this could keep society together, but could rampage, the government would be a destructive factor for society. To avoid this, this was to be governed by a more extensive and higher: the "true religion".
2. - Social Dynamics
For Comte, the dynamic was more interesting and more important than social statics. Its purpose was to study the inheritance laws of social phenomena. Society is always in flux, this occurs orderly according to social laws. The company moves to its destination under the laws of positivism; evolves towards the dominance of altruism over selfishness.
Are invariant laws that control this process, people can do relatively little to influence it. People can only change that which is consistent with existing trends.
His theory of social evolution is based on the theory of the evolution of the mind through the three stages. Deduced theoretically this social law of the laws of human nature and then studies the history of the world to see if the data verified his theory. Comte watching history in dialectical terms, historically locating the roots of each of the preceding stage.
Study was limited to Western European society, considering most evolved and which he was the elite of humanity.
Society evolves from a state of war in the theological phase typical to industry call to dominate the positive phase.
The theological stage had three successive periods: fetishism, polytheism and monotheism. These periods contained since the germs of positivism.
In the fourteenth century theology, specifically Catholicism, lost strength, it is replaced by Protestantism. This meant the beginning of negativity, you begin to systematize doctrine in the seventeenth century. Protestantism the basis of the negative philosophy by encouraging free and unlimited speculation. This leads to negativity in society, the social crisis developed because French thinkers (Voltaire, Rousseau) thinkers were not systematic and were not able to produce consistent speculation but his theories had great support in the prose at a time when the that theology weakened and positivism was still in its infancy; serious metaphysics as a transition between the two. Comte believed to be in the twilight of the metaphysical stage, amid a philosophical anarchy, this opened the way for the social revolution, specifically the French Revolution, that despite its many negative effects opened the possibility of positive reorganization of society .
France lead the reorganization of Europe, it had produced negative ideas and processes more advanced but it was the nation that had advanced toward the positive. France had sought to develop a constitutional government based on metaphysical principles, in this period the individual premium and the metaphysical notion of individual rights. The only concern for the individual led to disorder. The idea of ​​duty was a more positive because it was more scientific. Instead of just worrying about individual rights, people should concentrate on the duties to society. These new duties would establish the basis of a new spiritual authority (positivism) that help to regenerate society.
Theory and practice.
Comte asks: What social groups would support positivism?
-The philosophers had little ability to put into practice his ideas.
-The upper classes were characterized by "vanity, greed and ambition"
-The middle classes saw them too busy to join the upper classes.
Comte hoped the aid of three groups: a) the philosophers, who contribute their intellect; b) the working class, who would perform the required action and c) women would affection was needed.
The main actors of political change would be women and workers, both are excluded from the government and therefore better understand the need for change. Their exclusion from the education system makes this prevents them from seeing the need for change. They have strong social instincts and more common sense and good feeling.
The working class, having simpler jobs have more time to reflect on the advantages of positivism. Workers are morally and intellectually superior. They are more emotional attachment to the home, experience the miseries that foster the spirit of solidarity and propensity to sacrifice for public needs. For Comte spreading communist ideas among the workers was evidence that the trend towards social revolution focused on moral issues, since for him communism was a moral rather than an economic movement.
Positivism was the alternative to communism. Differences:
Positivism sought answers-moral rather than political or economic.
-Communism sought the suppression of individuality, positivism encouraged both this and solidarity.
-Communism amount to withdrawal of leaders in the industry, while positivism them as essential. -
-Communism wanted to abolish inheritance positivism considered important to the historical continuity of generations.
Comte rejected communism but considered as important as other forces to lay the groundwork for the emergence of positivism.
As for women, the policy gave the necessary subordination of the intellect to feeling. This, for Comte was more important than intellect or action. His admiration for the women did not make him think that men were superior and intellectually practice. He admired the moral and emotional female, but despised his capacity for action and thought. Women had to modify the educational process within families and create "rooms" to propagate positivist ideas. Comte believed in equality of the sexes as it is contrary to his nature. The maximum positivist era: LOVE, order and progress. The emphasis on feeling led him to add in his study of morality as feeling. Morality as science exceeded even sociology. The world had a natural morality and the positivist must discover the laws that guide the thoughts and political actions.
He appealed to the law of the three stages for analysis: The stage dominated by feelings stab theological and rational imagination with few restrictions. Theology worked in the field lacked connection subjective and objective reality.
The metaphysical stage was dominated by feelings, thoughts were confused and even less able to connect with the practical world. The stadium provided positive unity and harmony of thought, feeling and action. His ideas were derived from the practical world, and also incorporated the moral sphere. As a guide to morality, positivism would handle the most complex, important and urgent of his time. Comte can already conclude that positivism is a religion. Comte and his priests would humanity exerting greater influence than the previous religions. His cult would humanity or the Great Being, which would consist of all beings (including animals) present, past and future to cooperate with the world order.

COMTE, a critical assessment.
1) positive contributions:
-It was the first thinker to use the term "sociology".
-He defined sociology as a positive science.
-I state the three main sociological methods, experimentation, observation and comparison, in addition to the comparative historical method, which continue to be used in sociology.
I differentiate static and dynamic-social (structure and change)
-He defined sociology in microscopic terms, as the study of collective phenomena.
-Express the idea that if humans were left at will, fall into selfishness.
She offered a dialectic of macrostructures: structures resulted from past and future cause.
2) basic weaknesses THEORY OF COMTE.
His theory was influenced by his personal life. His unsatisfactory relationships with women led him to a series of absurd ideas about these and their role in society. He suffered from mental problems, reflected in his work. It becomes evident that theorists should not allow their private lives influence their theories.
-Seems to experience a loss of contact with the real world. His theories are disconnected from the internal logic of their ideas.
She lost contact with the thinking of his time, this relates to their practice of mental hygiene. Furthermore denigrated the importance of scientific rigor.
Positivist-failure as theoretically and empirically. His research consisted of vague generalizations about history. Her theory as sociological laws large number of extravagances.
-There is very little sociology in his work. His statements on social statics weak just help us understand its structure.
-I do not make original contributions, their ideas can be seen in earlier authors.
His sociology suffered from a primitive organicism, which led him to see a strong resemblance between the functioning of the human body and the social.
-He created theoretical tools then used indiscriminately to discuss any issue as triplets.
He had a huge extravagant conception of himself which led him to consider the feeling foolish as subordinate to reason.
-Totalitarian implications in his plans for the future.
 It is not known exactly when he was a genius or a bit insane, but it is certain that something changed in the social sciences with its emergence. That always deserves respect. Capitalized.

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