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Two thinkers, side by side

Life

Portrait of Condorcet
Condorcet

1743 CE – 1794 CE

EnlightenmentFrench

Mathematician of the vote and prophet of progress, he believed reason would carry humanity upward, and died of the revolution he served.

Portrait of Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte

1798 CE – 1857 CE

PositivistFrench

Born Montpellier

He argued that human thought passes through three ages (the religious, the philosophical, and the scientific) and tried to found a new science, and eventually a new religion, for the last one.

Connection

Condorcet history as stages of progress Auguste Comte — Comte's law of three stages restates in a stricter form the account of the mind's advance through history that Condorcet sketched while in hiding from the revolution that would kill him.

Shared Ideas

Progress

Shared Places

ParisParis

Ideas

ProgressEquality
ProgressReason

Words

“The time will come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no master but their reason.”

— Condorcet

“Savoir pour prévoir, prévoir pour pouvoir.”

— Auguste Comte

“Love as a principle, order as a basis, progress as a goal.”

— Auguste Comte

Key Moments

1743 CE

Born in Picardy

c. 1769 CE

Mathematics and Reform

1794 CE

Sketch of Human Progress

1794 CE

Death in Hiding

1824

Breaks with Saint-Simon

1851

Founds the Religion of Humanity

Works

Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind

Course of Positive Philosophy

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Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624-262 BCE