ABSTRACT
It would be helpful if we could begin this chapter with a clear definition of the term ‘positivism’ but, unfortunately, that is not possible, since it has been, and continues to be, employed in varied ways. In the context of French social thought the terms ‘positive science’ and ‘philosophy of positive science’ were apparently first introduced by Madame de Stael, a popular novelist and a leading figure of French romanticism, in her influential book De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (Literature Considered in its Relation to Social Institutions, 1800). Inspired more by Condorcet’s utopianism than by Montesquieu’s analytical approach to social questions, de Stael was the centre of a group of French intellectuals who contended that the perfectibility of man and society is possible, since all social problems are soluble by the use of scientific methods and the application of scientific knowledge in a state governed by scientists. As we shall see, a similar view played a central role in the development of positivism by Saint-Simon and Comte. But this is as far as one should go in trying to define early nineteenth-century French positivism in a general way. It is best to allow its meaning to emerge from a specific examination of the ideas of its main figures.
