The Philosophy of Auguste Comte

by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

BOOK IV

[CHAPTER I]
THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS

In Comte’s system Ethics occupies an intermediate place between theoretical philosophy and politics. Ethics rests upon the philosophy as Politics rests on the principles of Ethics.

Ethics is not an abstract speculative science; it does not therefore belong to the hierarchy of the fundamental sciences. It is true that, at the end of his life, Comte added a seventh to the six sciences of the early list,[322] which precisely was ethics, that is to say the science of the laws which govern the emotions, passions, desires, etc., of man considered as an individual. But here it is more a question of ethical psychology than of ethics understood in the sense usual with philosophers. The latter, in Comte’s eyes, never constituted the object of a special science. As a matter of fact, either the laws of moral phenomena are studied, and this research, founded upon the positive knowledge of individual and collective human nature, forms a part of sociology. Or, starting from the knowledge of these laws, we ask ourselves what would be the best use for the power possessed by man of modifying phenomena; in this case it is an art whose rules must be determined. But for these rules to be rationally established, social science itself must be rationally founded. Thus, from the practical as from the speculative point of view, positive ethics depends upon sociology.

I.

In the XVIII. cent. Comte distinguishes three schools of Ethics: the utilitarian school, especially represented in his view by Helvetius; the Kantian School, which he knows through Cousin; and finally the philosophy of the moral sentiment; that is to say, the Scottish school; by none of the three is he fully satisfied. The Utilitarianism of Helvetius rests upon an inadequate psychology, which distorts human nature by denying against all evidence the existence of altruistic inclinations. He involuntarily tends to “reduce all the social relations to low coalitions of private interests.” The ethics of duty, as presented by Cousin, at any rate, organises “a kind of mystification, in which the so-called permanent disposition of each one to direct his conduct according to the abstract idea of duty would end in a small number of clever schemers taking advantage of the human race.” These remarks, in Comte’s mind address themselves less to the doctrine than to the person of Cousin. Finally the Scottish school was nearer to the truth than the others, since it admitted the existence of the altruistic tendencies beside the selfish ones. But it lacked precision and strength.

These various schools of ethics had a common failing by which they stood condemned as erroneous: they were constituted before the science of human nature had become positive. Thus utilitarian morality is quite deducible from a psychology such as that of Condillac: but this “metaphysical” psychology treated man chiefly as a reasoning and calculating being, and misunderstood the preponderance of the affective faculties. In the same way, the “german,” that is to say Cousin’s philosophy, represents the ego as being free, of an absolute freedom, and as being subjected to no law whatever: hence a strange and metaphysical system of ethics of duty.

Theological doctrines of ethics hitherto have been very superior to those which have been produced by philosophical speculation. The reason for this is simple. Without any scientific apparatus, religion implies a far more exact psychology than that of philosophers up to the present time. It deals with man “concrete” and real. It was bound not to misunderstand the relative importance of his faculties, and the respective power of his inclinations and his passions. The priest very often has a better knowledge of men than the metaphysician.

Comte especially admires Christian morality or, more precisely, the teaching of this morality as it was given by the Catholic church in the Middle Ages. “All the different branches of this morality have received most important improvements from Catholicism.” In saying “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” in making charity the supreme virtue, in fighting against selfishness as the source of all vices, Christian morality has taught what above all other things must be engraved upon men’s hearts. Positive philosophy will use the same language. “For anyone who has gone deeply into the study of humanity, universal love as Catholicism conceived it is still more important than the intellect itself in the economy of our individual or social existence, because to the gain of each one and of all, love makes use even of the least of our mental faculties, while selfishness disfigures or paralyses even the best dispositions.”[323]

But the greatest merit of Catholicism has been that it considered ethics as “the first of social necessities.” Everything is subordinated to it: it is subordinated to nothing. It dominates the entire life of man so as ceaselessly to direct and control all his actions. In ancient society, morals depended upon politics. In Christian society even politics borrows its principles from morals. That was the finest triumph of “Catholic wisdom,” which instituted a spiritual power independent of the temporal power.