ABSTRACT
The Comtean conception of social order is on many points a precursor of that developed by Durkheim. Both conceptions are characterized by an orientation Piaget calls ‘le realisme totalitaire’. Society is presented as a ‘whole’, or a self-constituting (autonomous) system whose life and survival, up to a point, would not owe anything to the intentions and strategies of actors and to the comprehension these actors have of their intentions and strategies. What is neglected by sociology, and what is so opportunely asserted in the contractualist tradition, although Comte pretends to believe that it knows only selfish individuals, is the problematic character of consensus. Comte repeats after Aristotle that the social state is the natural state of man. But this pun makes him disregard what Hobbes and Rousseau had each well perceived in his own way: social order is not a given such as the order which governs the relationships of one living species with its living conditions.
