Georges Canguilhem’s first reading of Auguste Comte (1926) and positivism’s fortune in the French philosophical field (1830-1930)

In this essay I claim that Georges Canguilhem’s distinctive ethical-political analysis of the history of the sciences was the result of an original synthesis of different types of interpretations of Auguste Comte’s work offered by the French philosophers operating inside the academic space. These interpretations, in turn, depended on the progressive reconfiguration of pedagogical and research institutions during the Third Republic (1870-1940). I show this synthesis at work in Canguilhem’s first reading of Comte, the unpublished dissertation from 1926. I begin by considering the penetration of positivism into the French philosophical field during the July Monarchy, the Second Empire and the Third Republic; I then come to the interpretation of Comte offered by Émile Chartier (1868-1951), aka Alain, Canguilhem’s philosophical mentor at the Henri-IV; finally I focus on Canguilhem’s first reading of Comte.