Positivism

Positivism is a philosophical system based on the writings of French thinker Auguste Comte, which flourished from the 1830s onwards. This secular ‘Religion of Humanity’ appealed to many during the second half of the 19th century as a humanist alternative to the established Church, though many later turned away from its increasingly ritualised and hierarchical stylings. Removing the worship of gods, the Religion of Humanity instead venerated humankind and its achievements, establishing ‘churches’ or ‘temples’ of humanity in which to do so. Some positivists were also members of the ethical societies, which became Humanists UK.

The first volume of Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive was published in 1830, followed by a further five volumes in which his ideas were outlined in detail. Central to his philosophy was the idea that humanity passed through three stages: the theological, the metaphysical, and finally the positive. The first two stages both represented a reaching out for explanations as to existence and the natural world, and attributing what could not be understood to a god. The final, positive, stage, represented the embrace of science – that which could be proven and observed – as a basis on which to live and make sense of things. Comte acknowledged, though, the significance of collective ritual in society, and his Religion of Humanity was borne from the desire to offer an alternative.

It was this sense of the possibilities of a ‘scientific’ religion which drew Martineau, and others, to explore positivism. A number of notable freethinkers and humanists in the UK, including John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, and F.J. Gould, were drawn to Comte’s ideas, and to the central maxims of love, order, and progress. It was Comte who coined the term ‘altruism’, or in French ‘altruisme’, derived from the Latin ‘alter’, meaning ‘other’. This new term conveyed an ethic of godless selflessness (literally ‘living for others’). This was a distinctively humanist innovation which reframed morality as based in the relationships between human beings and in human societies, rather than, as in Christianity, the product of a moral order handed down to human beings from on high.

In England, positivism’s major leaders were Richard Congreve and Frederic Harrison, and the first ‘Church of Humanity’ opened in 1870, on Chapel Street (now Rugby Street) in Bloomsbury. Harrison, an accomplished barrister, writer, and lecturer, was himself a member of the West London Ethical Society during the 1890s, illustrating the shared sympathies of the two movements. In 1899, he conducted the wedding ceremony of ethical society leader Stanton Coit to Fanny Adela Wetzlar, described by some newspapers as ‘the first ethical marriage’. This was a notable forerunner of today’s Humanist Ceremonies.

The ritualistic nature of positivism drew heavy criticism from some. T.H. Huxley famously described the Church of Humanity as ‘Catholicism minus Christianity’, and the positivist religion as arising from an ‘incongruous mixture of bad science with eviscerated papistry’. John Stuart Mill, an early admirer of Comte, later described ‘passages in his writings which, it really seems to us, could have been written by no man who had ever laughed.’ Comte’s ‘mania for regulation’, he felt, threw ‘an irresistible air of ridicule over the whole subject’. 

Despite this, positivism exerted a significant influence on some of the leading humanists and social reformers of the 20th century. William Beveridge, who laid the foundations of the welfare state, was raised in a household steeped in positivist philosophy. F.J. Gould, in his Life-Story of a Humanist, lauded Comte’s ‘excellent motto for daily life and education,’ which so inspired him: 

At the tail of the 19th century, positivism still had a significant global following, particularly in Latin America. Comte’s humanist motto (L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base; le progrès pour but) was translated into Portuguese (Ordem e Progresso) to become the national motto of Brazil, and still figures in the Flag of Brazil today.