The law of the three states is a concept stated by Auguste Count, founder of the Positivisme, according to which the human spirit passes by three successive states which constitute the three stages of the mankind (but also of each individual): theological, metaphysical, and positivism.

Philosophy Positiviste privileges the scientific knowledge with the detriment of the " Metaphysical " , this term indicating the approach of the encyclopedists and the Components of 1789 to which it reproaches for being the main cause of revolutionary violences.

According to Auguste Count, science is the only type of effective thought to guarantee at the same time the political and social order and the Progrès. The human spirit must give up the " métaphysique" , i.e. to base a company on the concepts of freedom and equality, and to substitute for it a science and a morals based on the observation of the historical progress of the companies.

For Auguste Count, the scientific spirit positivist will triumph over the inevitable Church of way.

Origin

The law of the three states finds its origin in work of Saint-Simon (Claude Henri de Rouvroy), whose Count was the secretary between 1816 and 1823. Saint-Simon acquired elements of historical knowledge near Augustin Thierry, which was its first secretary. He formalized them in industry (1816 - 1817).

Saint-Simon studied the passage of the feudal age at the industrial age. Count intercalated an intermediate age, that of the Métaphysique.

Description of the three states according to Count

The theological or feudal state

The theological state or Féodal corresponds to the Moyen-âge and the Ancien mode. The social relations are analyzed there like the result of the supernatural idea of divine Droit.

" She explains, written Count, the successive political changes of the mankind by an immediate supernatural direction, exerted in a continuous way since the first man until présent."

Source: Plane of the scientific work necessary to reorganize the company. 1822

The metaphysical or abstract state

The metaphysical state indicates the Age of Enlightenment and in particular the encyclopedists. Auguste Count their reproach to reason starting from the abstract and metaphysical assumption of a primitive social contract like does it in particular Jean-Jacques Rousseau and to reason starting from the individual rights common to all the men, leading to the ideas of freedom and sovereignty of the people.

Source: Plane of the scientific work necessary to reorganize the company. 1822

The scientific or positive state

The human spirit understands that one can include/understand neither the origin, nor the destination of the universe. It gives up the question of the " why? " and seeks by the single use of the reasoning and the observation the effective laws of nature " i.e. their true relations of succession and similarity " This law of the three states is the general law of the development of the thought.

Auguste Count also carries out a classification of sciences. Sciences reaching at the positive state the ones after the others, one can according to their degree advance carry out their classification. One will have in the order: mathematics, the Astronomy, the Physical , the Chemistry, the Biology and finally the Sociology. The order goes from sciences whose object is more the general with those of which he is less the general, of simplest with most complex, of most abstract with most alive to approach the man. If sociology is the born last, it is however most important. With the age of science a policy based on a rational organization of the company must indeed correspond.

Lastly, Count recommends a religion of humanity. This religion is a religion without God. The man must adore humanity itself, i.e. the whole “of the beings passed, future and present which freely contribute to improve the universal order”. The great men have a subjective immortality. It consists in being honoured after its death and possibly with being the object of a worship. The name of the great men will be registered with the calendar positivist. “Humanity is composed of more than deaths than of alive. ” Count announced peace and the perfect harmony for the 20th century, thanks to the advent of the Religion positivist.

Effects on the philosophy of the history

The Positivism and the law of the three states had very important consequences in Philosophie of the history. The current Saint-Simonian and the historians Marxiste S adapted this philosophy to adopt their own design of the history.

Critical

Implicitly, the law of the three states denies all Main cause, any principle first, such as large the Religion S and Spiritualité S conceives them.

In the drama of atheistic humanism (1942), the theologist Henri de Lubac showed that the law of the three states corresponds in fact to three aspects of the human thought, and not with a " loi" of historical evolution.

See too

Internal bonds

• Positivism

On the philosophical concepts

• Philosophy of the history | Logical Aristote

• | Metaphysical | Ethical
• List of the concepts of philosophy
• Main cause
• Teleology | Four causes
• Relationship between faith and reason, as well as an extract of the text of the Encyclical on the bases of the thought.

On the pure scientific step

• Cogito

• Explanation
• Conjecture
• Causality