Abstract
Historians frequently highlight the long-term influence of a “positivist tradition” upon French philosophy, but they disagree about its theoretical content as well as about its personnel. This chapter retrieves the origins of the struggle to define positivism in France, showing how the label “positivist school” was invented in the 1860s. This label was mostly promoted by spiritualist philosophers and Catholic theologians: both relentlessly attacked what they saw as novel and dangerous, materialist and deterministic, regimes of inquiry. According to the agenda pursued by the groups involved in this hostile fabrication of “positivism,” each adopted different definitions of the “positivist school” and its representatives. Emile Littré, Hippolyte Taine, and Ernest Renan were lumped together under this label. This chapter assesses the adequacy of this construction and explores the links each of the mentioned thinkers had with Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richard, N. (2018). The French Philosophical Crisis of the 1860s and the Invention of the “Positivist School”. In: Feichtinger, J., Fillafer, F., Surman, J. (eds) The Worlds of Positivism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65762-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65762-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65761-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65762-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)