Positivism And Hippolyte Taine
An Introduction to Positivism
Written: Yusuf Bektaş, Sanel Biberovic, Deniz Aydın
positivism (Comte), f. Positif -ive, Positive; la philosophie positive being Comte’s name for his system.
A system of philosophy elaborated by Auguste Comte from 1830 onwards, which recognizes only positive facts and observable phenomena, with the objective relations of these and the laws that determine them, abandoning all inquiry into causes or ultimate origins, as belonging to the theological and metaphysical stages of thought, held to be now superseded; also a religious system founded upon this philosophy, in which the object of worship is Humanity considered as a single corporate being.
(Lenzer, 1975, xiv)
From the early 19th Century and onwards, positivism was a popular philosophical theory. It took the ideas that came before and defied them in a philosophical sense.
The middle ages mostly defended the ideas of Christianity in which the theories of explaining the world consisted of interpreting the religious texts and referring the religion for explanation. Every natural phenomena could be explained by religion, like the ancient Greeks that came way before them, religion based thinkers tried to explain the volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts with something like God being angry. Which possibly seemed the logical and the “right” way to interpret things, and this might have triggered a philosophical reaction. One of the products of this reaction was Positivism. It doesn’t rely on religion or any kind of metaphysics to explain nature and its way of work. It denies any validity to speculation or metaphysics. Positivism argues that every natural occurrence like earthquakes or auroras can be explained with positive thinking. The positive in this context refers to the scientific way of thinking. As Comte puts it, “science does not need philosophy’s help”. It’s sometimes associated with empiricism and positivism maintains its ground firmly with the argument that metaphysical questions are unanswerable and the only knowledge is scientific knowledge. (Kolakowski, 1968, v)
And it is right to define Positivism as a theory of philosophy arguing that the positive knowledge is based on nature and how nature operates. Which the interpreter takes the information through their senses, and decodes through their reason and logic. Which makes up the source of authoritative knowledge (Macionis, Gerber, 2010, 14).
We can lay out the main principles of positivism as such; The logic of inquiry is identical across all branches of science. The goal of inquiry is to explain, predict and discover. Research should be observed empirically with human senses. Science is not the same as common sense. Science should be judged by logic and remain free of values.
Also there are three cultural stages of society; Comte believed that society was passing through distinct stages and was then entering its third, these were; A theological-military stage, a metaphysical-judicial stage and a scientific-industrial stage. The first, theological-military level is where theology draws the borders, due the fact that the lack of intellectual resources, people used their imagination and seek the answers in metaphysical beings and phenomena. The metaphysical-judicial level is where gods are replaced with ideas. And finally the third level is Positivism when people get conscious about their own limits and possibilities of getting to know all the truth. And because of that, they leave the previous levels by starting to question reality on objective references which should be linked in one unique system. Comte leaves metaphysical concepts to religion, poetry, and other kinds of spiritualism. The particular assumption of positivism is that the behaviors of people can be measured just like the behaviors of substance, which means it can be measured objectively. The objective measuring can be made by observing the behavior through causes and consequences, and the factors which cannot be observed like feelings, do not matter according to Comte because they can lead the science astray. It is sometimes associated with empiricism, positivism maintains that metaphysical questions are unanswerable and that the only knowledge is scientific knowledge.(Crossman, About.com)
Comte believed that science has no need for guidance from philosophy. In the opinion of the positivists, however, this does not exclude the existence of a synthesis of scientific knowledge, to which the term “philosophy” may be applied. Thus, philosophy is reduced to a set of general conclusions drawn from the natural and social sciences. In as much as positivism has nothing to do with metaphysical problems, it rejects both idealism and materialism. The claim that causes and essences can be discovered is attributed by Comte to the vestiges of metaphysics, which, in his opinion, ought to be eliminated from science. Science does not explain phenomena but describes them, answering the question “how,” not “why”. By consistently developing this thesis, Comte arrived at a phenomenalist point of view. However, the subjective idealist tendencies in Comtean positivism continued to coexist with certain elements of natural scientific materialism, which stemmed from the traditions of the French Enlightenment of the 18th century. Like the Enlightenment thinkers, Comte stated his conviction that science has an infinite capacity for development. He revealed his ideas in his books The Course in Positive Philosophy and A General View of Positivism. (Comte, Martineau, 1974, 804)
Positivism in Sociology, Religion, Literature
In sociology, positivism describes an approach to the study of society that specifically utilizes scientific evidence like as experiments, statistics and qualitative results to reveal a truth about the way society operates and functions. According to sociological positivism, social changes should observe strict empirical methods. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to observe social life and establish reliable, valid knowledge about how it works.
In psychology the positivist movement was influential in the development of operationalism. The 1927 philosophy of science book The Logic of Modern Physics in particular, which was originally intended for physicists, coined the term operational definition, which went on to dominate psychological method for the whole century.
(Koch, 1992, 275)
When it comes to religion, Comte has a lot to tell us. Positivism denies the existence of a personal God and takes humanity (“the great being”) as the object of its veneration and cult, and in this respect has similarities to Humanism. Comte would do away with the supernatural, and consider humanity by itself as “the continuous whole of convergent beings.” (Comte, Martineau, 1974, 30) Now humanity cannot give more than it has. Humanity is only society; and according to Comte’s own statement, society is out of joint, and suffers from intellectual and moral anarchy. This is what society is equal to. It has never, in any stage of its existence, been able to regenerate itself. It has always required extraneous assistance. It bears in its womb the seeds of corruption, dissolution, and distraction, rather than the germs of its own regeneration. When, in prehistoric times, the whole world becomes corrupt, the Supreme Being destroys it, saving only one family with which to repeople it. When, again, it merges into idolatry, it does not rise from the shadows of death in which it finds itself; the Redeemer comes, and teaches a purifying and supernatural doctrine, and raises man into that higher plane of life that has become the basis of our modern civilization. These illustrations are for the Christian reader, not for the Positivist. For him we are content to lay statement against statement, for he proves not, and we are in possession. (Azarias, 1899)
Positivistic method was taken over from philosophy for researches in the field of literature. In positivistic method the main aim is to gather and arrange the facts about the writers and the time they were living in, also about the sources of literature, connections and purchases. The origin of the writers is observed and studied, as well as their life and works. Also the place they lived in is studied, under what circumstances they had created, the reflection of their life in the work, motives, themes and inspiration. The psychology of the writer is important as well. Positivism researches about the constitution of literature with three disciplines: the criticism of literature, the history of literature, and theory of literature. These researches have neglected the artistic values of literature, which is the biggest defect, but they have provided a huge construction that helped in creating the literature-historic synthesis. In the era of positivism there were a lot of valuable literary historicism have been written in many European countries. (“Opusteno”)
Historian and Positivist Hippolyte Taine
Hippolyte Taine was a French critic, philosopher and historian. He was one of the most esteemed exponents of 19th-century French positivism and one of the most prominent intellectual figures of his period in France. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. To his contemporaries and modern sociologists alike he is known as the founder of a sociological science of literature. He had a profound effect on French literature. He attempted to apply the scientific method to the study of the humanities. (Kelly, 1974, 143)
Taine formulated his critical system most clearly in the introduction to the five volumes of one of his major works, Histoire de la littérature anglaise (1863). He argued that literature was largely the product of the author’s environment, and that an analysis of that environment could yield a perfect understanding of the work of literature, which makes him sociological positivist, though with important differences. He stated that every reality, psychological, esthetic, or historical, can be reduced to a distinctly definable formula by discovering in each reality a single operative principle. This basic principle is governed by a system of laws that he reduced to his famous triad of race, environment, and time (“la race, le milieu, le moment”). Taine applied this critical system in all of his works. (Encyclopedia.com)
According to Taine, both history and criticism are based on facts, and there is no difference between these two sciences, as he stated in his 1858 preface to the Essais de critique et d’histoire, both should be based on facts. He insists on the importance of exactness. For the positivists, science is objective, while spoken language is always subjective. Scientific language seems to be the language that renounces all the seductive power of language, a language closer to the thing than to the word. A written document is a tangible object and provides visible proof that can be controlled; an oral document evaporates and changes as it is affected by the passion of spoken words, the instability of the audience, and the diversity of voices, legends and traditions. For him it was important to find “the main lines”, the general plan and system underlying history-the philosophy of history.
Taine stated that history should neither be oratorical, nor be written in a symbolic-poetic language. The type of persuasion characteristic of spoken language -subjective and not objective- irritated Taine, who devalued elocutio and actio. (Lombardo, 1990, 125)
Taine was perceived by his professors as the best student in philosophy, of real promise for the national competition, the Concours d’agregation. In 1851, a scandal broke out when he failed to pass the exam. Prevost-Paradol, Taine’s friend at the Ecole normale, recounted the whole misadventure in front of the jury, which was mainly composed of members of the Institut (the five-part institute in which the French Academy is included). According to Prevost-Paradol, in spite of the rigorous logical construction of Taine’s argument, some people in the jury could not accept his dry and scientific thesis in which the role of divine providence was not considered. (119)
If we take a look at his personal life leading to the point of his established fame and respect, in his early years Taine had a rebellious attitude towards institutions like his university. He liked to be bold and say what he really want to say, and criticize the way he wants to criticize. Even a paper which won him an award in his early university years was hardly published by the jury. (121) And he had very substantial differences of view when it comes to history with the Academia. As Lombardo puts it; “The problem for Taine is that history should be an exact science, while the Academy wants to hold onto the definition of history as oratorical art.” (123) Taine wanted to bring the scientific methods and scientific reliability to history.
Taine had the same attitude towards both criticism and history, “Taine does not distinguish from history, since, as he repeated in his 1858 preface to the Essais de critique et d’histoire, both should be based on facts.” (123) He wanted to do things scientifically, and approach the sociological areas that had been thought as “can’t be scientific, just an oratory tradition” scientifically. For Hippolyte Taine the sociology was a science, there were no questions about that, and he when he applied science to history and criticism the positivism in literature and sociology took a new meaning.
CONCLUSION
The scientific methods and the approach to the truth in the late 18th and early 19th century shaped the minds of many thinkers to be scientific in their own areas, such as sociology, literary criticism, history etc. These scientific approaches with their “positivist” thinking started a new era of sociology and other philosophical, otherwise not seen as scientific (non-positive) areas to be judged and researched in a new light. And one of the most important figures of positivism in criticism and history, Hippolyte Taine, shined this positive thinking light onto his areas of study, taught his contemporaries those who come after him how to be fact-oriented and scientific about not just already positive areas like physics and mathematics, but also literature and art.
WORKS CITED
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