The Normative Doctrine

To the preceding outline of Comte's scientific writings must be added a summary of his normative theory, which he sketched out in his earliest papers and developed in his later work, from the Positive Philosophy on. He elaborated a complex blueprint of the good positive society of the future, a society directed by the spiritual power of priests of the new positive religion and leaders of banking and industry. These scientific sociologist-priests would be, as were their Catholic predecessors in the theological age, the moral guides and censors of the community, using the force of their superior knowledge to recall men to their duties and obligations; they would be the directors of education and the supreme judges of the abilities of each member of society. In the positive sociocracy of the future, the scientist-priests of the religion of humanity, having acquired positive knowledge of what is good and evil, would sternly hold men to their collective duty and would help suppress any subversive ideas of inherent rights. Saint-Simon had suggested that in the future the domination of men over men would be replaced by the administration of things. Comte now argued that the "things" to be administered were in fact human individuals. Human relations would become "thingified." Just as in the eleventh century Pope Hildebrand had for a brief moment extended his spiritual power over all temporal power, so the High Priest of Humanity, armed with a scientific knowledge the Pope could not yet command, would institute a reign of harmony, justice, rectitude, and equity. The new positivist order, to quote some of Comte's favorite formulae, would have Love as its Principle, Order as its Basis, and Progress at its Aim. The egoistic propensities to which mankind was prone throughout previous history would be replaced by altruism, by the command, Live for Others. Individual men would be suffused by love for their fellows, and they would lovingly venerate the positivist engineers of the soul who in their wisdom would incarnate the scientific knowledge of man's past and present and the lawfully determined path into a predictable future.

Comte, especially in his later years, considered himself not only a social scientist but also, and primarily, a prophet and founder of a new religion that promised salvation for all the ailments of mankind. These normative aspects of Comte's thought, although important for the historian of ideas, are only of peripheral concern here, where the focus is on sociology as a scientific enterprise. Yet this aspect of Comte's work must be kept in mind in relation to his life and to the social and intellectual context in which his work emerged.

From Coser, 1977:12-13.

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