The “cursed” legacy of Auguste Comte: the reflexive “self–foundation” of sociology

Abstract

This article proposes to recover an aspect of the work of Auguste Comte that we consider has not been given enough importance. Based on the principles of his sociology of knowledge, we will reconstruct what still is a recurrent issue in contemporary sociological theory, of which Comte appears as its first exponent: the auto–justification of sociology belonging to the “canon” of scientific knowledge through strictly sociological arguments. Following some Comte’s postulations in the first lessons of the Course on Positive Philosophy and in the ones dedicated to “Social Physics”, we will emphasize on the strictly sociological character, and therefore circular, of the reasons that he turns to legitimize a science of society. This circularity, in the case of Comte, becomes even clearer as he argues that sociology will allow the consecration of the positive state through the development of an organic doctrine that reorganizes society, based, precisely, in the sociological auto–comprehension of the social. Thus, a “cursed legacy” is formed, since these arguments reappear in any theory of weight as a persistent problem, but also as a need to strengthen the discipline legitimizing arguments.