ABSTRACT
Keith Taylor has undertaken a thorough study of the full range of writings by the brilliant French thinker Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825), including his unpublished manuscripts, and the result is the first comprehensive and truly representative selection in English from the works of this founding father of social science and socialism, whose ideas exerted a formative influence on such major and diverse intellectual figures as Comte, Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Herzen, Carlyle and Durkheim. When Saint-Simon's writings first appeared, they aroused little more than amusement and curiosity. The ideas they contained – ideas concerning the application of scientific method to the study of man and society, the coming of the new 'scientific-industrial' age in which the State would assume responsibility for promoting social welfare, the prospects for international cooperation and integration in Europe, man's need for a secular religion – were widely dismissed. But the boldness and originality of Saint-Simon's work had a lasting impact on subsequent thinkers and played a major role in the development of European social thought throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.
Keith Taylor's introductory essay places Saint-Simon's writings in their proper historical context, offers a penetrating reassessment of their significance as a contribution to social theory, and considers the extent of their influence on modern thought. It indicates the inadequacies of many previous interpretations of Saint-Simon's thinking, and highlights, in particular, the tendency of most recent commentators to disregard some crucial features of his political philosophy. This selection is an essential insight into a modern understanding of Saint-Simon from a young English scholar. Nowhere else in English may be found so wide-ranging a selection from Saint-Simon's writings presenting such a balanced view of his thought.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|65 pages
Selected Writings 1802–25
chapter 1|17 pages
Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries
chapter 2|3 pages
Extract on Social Organisation
chapter 3|19 pages
Introduction to the Scientific Studies of the 19th Century
chapter 4|6 pages
Second Prospectus for a New Encyclopaedia
chapter 5|13 pages
Memoir on the Science of Man
chapter 6|4 pages
Study on Universal Gravitation
part II|27 pages
Proposals for Post-War Reconstruction (1814–15)
chapter 7|7 pages
The Reorganisation of European Society
chapter 8|4 pages
On the Establishment of an Opposition Party
chapter 9|4 pages
Leiter to the Minister of the Interior’ 43
chapter 10|11 pages
To All Englishmen and Frenchmen Who are Zealous for the Public Good
part III|66 pages
From the Government of Men to the Administration of Things (1817–20)
chapter |7 pages
12. Letters to an American
chapter 14|3 pages
[Views on Property and Legislation] 53
chapter 15|7 pages
On the Political History of Industry
chapter 16|2 pages
The Political Interests of Industry
chapter 17|4 pages
On M. BarthéLemy’s Proposal to the House of Peers
chapter 18|5 pages
Comparison between the National (Industrial) Party and the Anti-National Party
chapter 21|9 pages
Sketch of the New Political System
chapter 22|4 pages
[On the Replacement of Government by Administration]
chapter 23|6 pages
Considerations on Measures to be Taken to End the Revolution
chapter 24|2 pages
Third Letter to the Farmers, Manufacturers, Merchants, Bankers, and Other Industrials
chapter 25|4 pages
Letters on the Bourbons
part IV|82 pages
The True Christianity (1821–5)