Auguste Comte and the Second Empire Regime

Abstract

The article analyzes the doctrine of the late Comte in his attitude to the Bona­partist regime. Although Comte experienced a short-term fascination with Napoleon’s personality in his youth, from the Restoration period he spoke of the empire in a negative way. At the same time, the coming to power of Louis Bonaparte seemed to him a favorable omen for the fate of positivism. Through public lectures on the philosophy of human history allowed by the new regime, he set the task of influencing public opinion. The Bonapartist coup met the full approval from the founder of positivism, and he did not renounce this kind of as­sessment even later. The transformation of republican power seemed inevitable to him: from parliamentarism to dictatorship. In this regard the dictatorship was conceived as a transitional stage to a true positivist regime. The idea of centra­lizing power impressed Comte, so he interpreted the coup as a logical conse­quence of the entire previous history of France. This was more than an episode. But then the philosopher became disappointed with Bonapartist politics. The presi­dent proclaimed an empire, which, in the opinion of the philosopher, acted only as a metamorphosis of an obsolete monarchical principle. But Comte did not refuse to adhere to the “republican dictatorship”, he spoke of the need for a posi­tivist triumvirate to come to power, personally outlined by him. He assigned himself the role of a spiritual mentor of secular power, the high priest of the new, scientific religion of Mankind. Both the philosopher and the emperor saw their mission as helping to end the era of revolutions. But the ways of its implementa­tion were thought so differently that there was no way to synchronize the two political positions