The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comte

For most of the twentieth century, Auguste Comte, a controversial but highly influential nineteenth-century figure, and his vast treatises on positive philosophy, politics and religion were disregarded and largely ignored. More recently, however, Comtes life and writings have been reexamined together with the project of social reform to which his intellectual labors were devoted, producing a much more complicated picture of his thought and its significance. The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comtewith ten new critical essays by leading Comte scholars, sociologists, intellectual historians, social theorists and philosophersaims to further this reexamination while also providing a multifaceted introduction to Comtes thought and to current discussion about him. The essays also examine Comtes relation to a multiplicity of other thinkers, and his place more generally in the formation and legacy of modern Western thought.