Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-7tdvq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-23T10:51:48.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Saint-Simon and the Origins of Scientism and Historicism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Peyton V. Lyon
Peyton V. Lyon*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
Get access

Extract

Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, was born in 1760; his writings date from 1802 until his death in 1825. He is widely regarded as perhaps the most enthusiastic of all scientistic writers, and one of the most influential, but the nature and motivation of his scientism have been frequently misunderstood. Scientism I understand to be the belief that all, or virtually all, moral and political problems can be solved by methods similar to those used in the natural sciences. Historicism, a form which scientism very often takes, I would define as the revealing of laws of history by which, it is claimed, the future of man can be predicted. Exponents of scientism appear to have one or more of three different but related objectives: one, the pursuit of truth about man and society; the second, the acquisition of techniques to cure social ailments; the third, the re-establishment of ideological uniformity.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 1961 , pp. 55 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Kingston, June 10, 1959.

References

1 Œuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin (hereafter cited as Œuvres), ed. Laurent de l'Ardèche, Fournel et al. (Paris, 1865–1878), XX, 119.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., XIX, 26.

4 Ibid., XX, 32.

5 L'Industrie, III, republished in Revue occidentale (Paris, 1884), II, 169.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., in Revue occidentale (Paris, 1884), I, 331.Google Scholar

7 Œuvres, XXXIX, 189–90.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., XX, 126–7 n.

9 Hayek, F. A. von, “The Counter-Revolution of Science,” Economica (N.S.), VIII, 1941, 290.Google Scholar

10 German Ideology, ed. Pascal, R. (London, 1939), 129–44.Google Scholar

11 Marx complained that the “utopian” socialists ignored history, were excessively rationalistic, held aloof from the class struggle, advocated peripheral experiments, and eschewed violence. These may be reasonable criticisms of Fourier and Owen, the other members of the trio who, according to Marx, were the outstanding “utopians.” Saint-Simon, however, referred constantly to historical trends, advocated and almost always maintained a relativistic approach, threw himself ardently into the class struggle, ignored the periphery and aimed straight for the heart of social power. He mistrusted war and mob action, of which he had had more experience than Marx, but was not above violence to the truth or crude exploitation of financial power. Engels, always more fair than Marx, wrote of Saint-Simon that “almost all the ideas of later Socialists that are not strictly economic are found in him in embryo.” Marx, and Engels, , Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in Selected Worfa (Moscow, 1949), II, 113.Google Scholar

12 Œuvres, XXXVII, 129.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., XX, 62–3.

14 Ibid., XXXVII, 57.

15 Ibid., XXXIX, 210.

16 The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1945), II, 25.Google Scholar

17 The Poverty of Historicism (Boston, 1957), 3.Google Scholar

18 Among other developments, Saint-Simon anticipated the rise of a managerial élite; the concentration of control over industry; the modern role of central banking and the national budget; the welfare state, especially full-employment policies; the ideological system characteristic of communist countries; a reunited Western Europe established largely on the basis of joint industrial projects; the use of art to promote social objectives such as peace and the exploitation of natural resources; the establishment of sociology.

19 Œuvres, XL, 158.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., XL, 304.

21 Ibid., XV, 84.

22 Ibid., XX, 173.

23 Ibid., XXXIX, 74–5.

24 Œuvres choisies de C.-H. de Saint-Simon, ed. Lemonnier, C. (Brussels, 1859), I, 219.Google Scholar

25 Œuvres, XVIII, 221.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., XXXIX, 26.

27 Ibid., XL, 311–13.

28 Ibid., XV, 51–5.

29 Ibid., XXI, 17.

30 Ibid., XL, 288.

31 World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York, 1935), 237.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 20.

33 In Berger, Morroe et al., eds., Freedom and Control in Modern Society (New York, 1954), 282.Google Scholar