Name: 社會學--奧古斯特-孔特 (SOCIOLOGY - Auguste Comte)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:59:06.000Z
Duration: 8 min 44 s
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Though we tend to think of atheists as not only unbelieving

we should remember a tradition of atheistic thinkers

who've tried to reconcile a suspicion of the supernatural side of religion

with a deep sympathy for and interest in it's ritualistic aspects.

The most important and inspirational of these

was the visionary, eccentric, and only intermittently sane

French 19th century sociologist, August Comte.

Comte was born into a strict Catholic family in Montpelier in Southern France in 1798.

As a young man, he received a highly progressive education

and became obsessed with the idea of building a new kind of France based around science and republicanism.

His family violently disagreed and broke off relations with him

so he went to live in Paris, where he became a student of, and later, secretary to

the Utopian thinker, Henri de Saint-Simon.

But Comte had a quarrelsome nature and fell out with Saint-Simon, failed to get a university post,

and for the rest of his life, maintained a precarious existence

writing dense, often unreadable, works about the reform of humanity.

He was not entirely sane and spent long periods in asylums,

and in 1827, attempted suicide by jumping off the Pont des Arts in Paris.

In 1844, he fell deeply in love with a married woman called Clotilde de Vaux

but the relationship was never consummated.

After her premature death, Comte made his love for Clotilde

into one of his center pieces of his thinking on religion.

Comte did manage to gain the trust and interest of the important British philosopher, John Stuart Mill,

who admired his efforts around religion, and helped Comte to be better known in Britain.

Comte's thinking on religion had as it's  starting point, a characteristically blunt observation

that in the modern world, thanks to the discoveries of science,

it would no longer be possible for anyone intelligent to believe in God.

Faith would henceforth be limited to the uneducated, the fanatical, women, children,

and those in the final months of incurable diseases.

At the same time, Comte recognized, as many of his more rational contemporaries did not,

that a secular society devoted just to financial accumulation and romantic love

would be prey to some untenable social and emotional illness.

Comte's solution was neither to cling blindly to sacred traditions,

nor to cast them collectively and belligerently aside,

but rather to pick out the more relevant and secular aspects

and fuse them together with certain insights drawn from philosophy, art, and science.

The outcome of decades of thought and the summit of Comte's intellectual achievement was a new religion:

or as Comte termed it, "A Religion of Humanity":

an original creed expressly tailored to the emotional and intellectual demands of modern men and women,

rather than the inhabitants of Judea or northern India in 400 B.C.

Comte presented his new religion in two volumes:

the "Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion"

tended to cement their authority by providing people with daily, and even hourly,

Rotors typically pegged to the commemoration of a holy individual or supernatural incident.

So Comte announced a calendar of his own,

animated by a pantheon of secular heroes and ideas.

every month was to be devoted to the honoring of an important field of endeavor;

for example: marriage, parenthood, art, science, agriculture

and every day to an individual who had made a valuable contribution within these categories.

Comte was impressed by the way the traditional religions

had disseminated moral guidance, for example:

dictating principles on how to conduct oneself in a marriage, or fulfill one's duties to the community.

And he lamented the modern, liberal governments,

in their desire to prove inoffensive to all constituencies,

had settled on merely offering factual instruction

before letting people out into the world to destroy themselves and others

Therefore, in Comte's Religion of Humanity, there would be classes and sermons

to help inspire one to be kind spouses, patient with one's colleagues,

and compassionate towards the unfortunate.

Comte also recognized how badly we all need consolation

and proposed that his girlfriend, Clotilde, take the function previously accorded within Catholism

Portraits of Clotilde were to be placed everywhere in the new religion,

and when one was down, one was invited to share one's sorrows

and weep in front of his vision of kindness and sympathy.

Because Comte appreciated the role that architecture had once played

in bolstering the claims of traditional religion,

he proposed the construction of a network of secular churches,

or as he called them, "Temples for Humanity."

He suggested that each one be paid for by a banker,

whose bust would appear above the door in recognition of his generosity.

Comte thought it was wiser to coax them into supporting good causes.

Inside the temples of humanity, there would be lectures, singing, celebrations, and public discussions.

While around the walls, sumptuous works of art would commemorate the greatest moments

Finally, above the west-facing stage, there would be a large aphorism written in golden letters,

invoking the congregation to adopt the essence of Comte's philosophical religious world view:

the statement, "Connais Toi Pour T'ameliorer"

Regrettably, Comte's complex, thought provoking, and often deranged project

was felled by a host of practical obstacles.

Ridiculed by both atheists and believers, ignored by public opinion, devoid of funds,

He took to writing long and frightening letters in defense of his scheme

to monarchs and industrialists across Europe, including Louis Napoleon, Queen Victoria,

the Crown Prince of Denmark, three hundred bankers, and the head of the parish sewage system.

But few offered money, let alone replies.

Without seeing any of his proposals take hold,

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