This thesis discusses the philosophy of positivism in nineteenth century France. Based on an empirical vision of society, positivism advocated values of rationality, progress, and secularization. In that way, it stood as one of the defining systems of thought of the modern era. I discuss, however, an undercurrent of anxiety about those same values. Positivism's founder, Auguste Comte, argued that all sciences would become unified and organized under universal principles and empirical standards. He viewed the human mind as becoming more rationalized throughout history. In his later career, however, he argued that rationalism was a destructive force and that a new form of secular religion as necessary to establish morality and order. I argue that this transition from science to religion represents an underlying anxiety of the nineteenth century. Intellectuals from different sides of the political spectrum viewed progress as positive, but also limited. They argued that something beyond science, in the realm of the religious, the metaphysical, or the subjective, was necessary for society. They expressed these concerns through the language of gender. Comte argued that women would be at the center of his religion. They would socialize and moralize men, making them part of a new unified, pacifist and orderly

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Reconciling Order and Progress: Auguste Comte, Gustave Le Bon, Emile Durkheim, and the Development of Positivism in France, 1820-1914

ions, mere numbers divested of their individual histories, experiences, and feelings, and that this inhumanity is consistent with the Kantian assertion of abstract humanity at the expense of individual sentiments and interests—the “pathological” in Kant’s language—and even with the worst excesses of the reign of Terror in that there too the life of individuals was sacrificed to abstract principles.16 it is this alleged contradiction between democracy and liberty that presided over the union of antirationalism and right-wing politics and made their proponents adopt bergson’s arguments about freedom and contingency.17 Once he makes contingency the bastion of freedom insofar as each of us has a unique history that escapes any attempt at characterization through universals, once he describes freedom as acting solely in accord with one’s self as given in duration—the synthesis of that past experience—rather than with any external law, then each region or nation can understand its freedom to consist in its respect for and adherence to its own past, its ancestors, its land, its communal experience, in opposition to and exclusion of everything and everyone it considers alien. The Crisis of Authority: France Is My Mother, the Republic My God Opportunist ideology ignored many of the disparities between Kant and Comte because it was of course meant first of all to unite the largest number of people possible behind the new republic. but in order to do so, along with the concrete rewards it held out to its supporters, it had to convince them and potential converts of the legitimacy of its claim to authority, if only to assure them that it had indeed become the party most capable of ensuring national order and regeneration. The emphasis on independent morality, with its peculiar blend of freedom, autonomy, obedience, and conformity, was a versatile weapon in this battle, allowing the Opportunists to combat Catholicism while at the same time demonstrating their own adherence to a strict moralism that could assuage their compatriots’ sense of guilt and allay their fears of renewed social rebellions.

Enemy Within: Culture Wars and Political Identity in Novels of the French Third Republic

Archives nationales. Chaitelet de Paris: Repertoire numerique de la se'rie Y. Vol. 1: Les Chambres: Y 1 a 10718 et 18603 a 18800. Paris: Archives nationales, 1993. 213p. 1OOF. Archives parlementaires de 1787 a 1860: Recueil complet des de'bats legislatifs et politiques des chambresfranvaises. Vol. 97: Du 23 fructidor an II au 2 vendetmiaire an II (9 au 23 septembre 1794). Paris: CNRS, 1993. 400p. 450F. Bibliographie annuelle de l'histoire de France: Du Cinquieme siecle a 1958. Vol. 38: 1992. Paris: CNRS, 1993. 1190p. 710F. Bibliotheque de documentation internationale contemporaine. Me'moires de 68: Guide des sources d'une histoire aifaire. Paris: Verdier, 1993. 350p. 250F. Biziere, Jean-Maurice, ed. Dictionnaire des biographies. Vol. 5: Le XIXe siecle. Paris: Armand Colin, 1994. 256p. 89F. Chambers, Betty Thomas. Bibliography of French Bibles. Vol. 2: Seventeenth-Century French-Language Editions of the Scriptures. Paris: Droz, 1994. 942p. 720F. Contat, Michel, and Michel Rybalka. Sartre: Bibliographie, 1980-1992. Paris: CNRS, 1993. 265p. 240F. Delsalle, Paul, ed. La Recherche historique en France en archives: XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siecles. Paris: Ophrys, 1993. 213p. 79F. Durand, Jean-Dominique, and Claude Prudhomme. Guide du chercheur en histoire religieuse: Departement du Rhone. Paris: Presses universitaires de Lyon/Distique, 1993. 96p. 75F. Foufrquet, Emile. Les Hommes celebres de Franche-Comte et les personalites marquantes du IVe sie'cle a nos jours. Reprint of 1929 ed. Paris: J. Laffitte/Distique, 1993. 604p. 250F. Gourmelon, Roger, et al. Archives Rosambo: Fonds Le Peletier 259 AP. Paris: Archives nationales, 1993. 257p. 180F. Gotteri, Nicole. Maison de l'Empereur, grands officiers de la couronne: An VIII-1815, inventaire des articles 02 a 149. Paris: Archives nationales, 1994. 136p. 89F. Groupe d'anthropologie historique de l'occident medieval. Thesaurus des images me'dievales: Pour la constitution de bases de donnees iconographiques. Paris: Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 1993. 192p. 21 IF. Institut national de recherche pedagogique. Les Manuels scolaires en France de 1789 ia nosjours. Vol. 5: Les Manuels d'allemand. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1993. 413p. 200F. Noyon, N. Statistique du departement du Var. Reprint of 1838 ed. Paris: Res universis, 1993. 539p. 326F.

Recent Books and Dissertations on French History

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/vm40xs369

Cultural memory and national representation: The Franco-Prussian War in French and German literature, 1871--1900

https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/14647867/00title.pdf

Venita Datta

Papers

Birth of a National Icon. The Literary Avant-Garde and the Origins of the Intellectual in France