SAINT-SIMON, CLAUDE-HENRI de ROUVROY, Count of. — Born in Paris on 17 Oct. 1760, died there on 19 May 1825. From 1779 to 1782 he served as a captain in the regular French army during the War of American Independence. The spiritual impact of the American war was decisive for him; he gained the impression of witnessing the beginning of a new historical era, founded upon production and oriented toward the future rather than upon inheritance and the defence of tradition.
Between 1787 and 1789 he was in Spain, where he entered into relations with the Count of Redern, Saxon ambassador to Madrid and subsequently his business partner. On returning to France he adhered to revolutionary ideas, though without engaging in intense political activity. He aligned himself with the extreme left-wing faction associated with the “industrial patriots,” from whom Robespierre wished to free the Republic; this, together with his friendship with Redern, who was suspect as a foreigner, was the reason for his arrest in October 1793. After Thermidor he was released and, having recovered a fortune that allowed him to live in a manner befitting his ancestors, he occupied a prominent position in the fashionable life of Paris under the Directory. In 1798 he broke with Redern and, immediately thereafter, decided to abandon business in order to devote himself to philosophy, or, in his own terms, to open a new career for human intelligence: the physico-political.
His ineptitude for administration, together with the extravagant style of his life, led him into dire poverty between 1805 and 1813; it was not until 1823 that he finally found a secure patron in the banker Olinde Rodrigues, who had begun to take an interest in his doctrine.
Three phases can be distinguished in the development of his thought. In the first, 1788–1813: *Lettres d’un habitant de Genève* (1802); *Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siècle* (1807–1808); *Mémoire sur la science de l’homme* (1813), his effort was directed toward “systematising the philosophy of God.” He believed that the solution to social phenomena could only be found through a total synthesis, achieved by the maximal generalisation of the most universal physical law, the law of gravitation. In this respect he was truly the initiator of 19th-century scientism. The thesis that politics and morality are merely aspects of the “general science” naturally led him to the idea that the direction of humanity should be entrusted to a magisterium of scientists (to be called the Newton Council): only they possess the qualities needed to interpret the generalised law of gravitation and to derive from it the applications destined to make the earth a paradise. The work was placed on the Index by decree of 11 Apr. 1859.
Naturally, this idea of a “new encyclopaedia” (*Esquisse d’une nouvelle Encyclopédie*, 1810) could not meet with the approval of specialist scientists. The Bureau des longitudes declared that it was not within its competence to judge the ideas of the “founder of physicism”: hence his *Lettres au Bureau des longitudes*, sharply polemical, especially against Laplace. In this first phase he wished to associate his synthesis with Napoleonic reconstruction and aspired to the role of “scientific logothete of the emperor.”
A fundamental trait of the entire Saint-Simonian movement was its refusal to take a stand against the dominant political forces, but rather to exploit the attraction of a plan for social reform. The entire history of the movement is marked by this contradiction between the revolutionary character of its programme and the opportunism of its practice.
In the second phase: *De la réorganisation de la société européenne* (1814); *L’Industrie* (1816–18); *Le Politique* (1819); *L’Organisateur* (1819–20); *Du Système industriel* (1821–22); *Catéchisme des industriels* (1823–24) — in which he was assisted by Augustin Thierry from 1814 to 1817, and then by Auguste Comte from 1817 to 1824 — he abandoned, at least in practice, the “total synthesis” and sought in history, understood as a science, the laws that must be applied to save the world scientifically. Here we encounter the Saint-Simon most significant and best known, the precursor of positivism and socialism. With regard to the general vision of historical development, it may be said that he rethought Condorcet through Bonald. From the former he took progressivism; from the latter, the distinction between organic and critical ages, the positive evaluation of the Middle Ages, and the view that the age opened by the Reformation and closed by the French Revolution and liberalism was one of crisis and dissolution.
For him, the organic periods are those in which social equilibrium is perfect, power is in the hands of the most worthy, and each person is in his proper place. In critical periods this order is destroyed, and society suffers until it has found its legitimate leaders again. The new organic age will have its spiritual foundation in science and its temporal basis in production, in “industry.” Social life is nothing other than the organisation of social interests; the aim of political inquiry will be to define the organisation most favourable to industry. In this phase Saint-Simon distinguishes between spiritual power and temporal power: the former still belongs to scientists, who exercise it through the discovery of laws; the latter must instead pass to the producers. It is easy to see in what sense Saint-Simon is a precursor of continuous positivism, not only on account of his general scientism, but also for his formulation of the law of three stages — theological, metaphysical, and positive. His relationship with socialism is less close. Certain socialist elements in his thought are nonetheless clear: his critique of liberalism, his affirmation of the priority of the social over the political, his interpretation of the French Revolution as a bourgeois revolution, a phraseology that has remained in the history of socialism (the opposition between producers and idle, parasitic classes), and the idea that the administration of things must replace the government of persons, etc. What is entirely lacking, however, is any critique of industrial capitalism and, consequently, any concept of class struggle; and with regard to the problem of inheritance, he criticises the hereditary transmission of offices but does not pronounce on the heredity of property.
A work of particular significance in the history of European ideas is *De la réorganisation de la société européenne*, written in collaboration with Thierry. Of interest in this work is the critique, conducted with a rigour unusual in Saint-Simon, of the policy of equilibrium pursued by European states after the Treaty of Westphalia. The European constitution is conceived on the model of the English Constitution: a hereditary European king and a European parliament, above the national parliaments, with two chambers, one hereditary and one elective. With regard to means, he envisages the union of France and England as the first nucleus of the European confederation and seeks to show how this union is demanded by the interests of both countries.
In the final period of his life a new ethical-religious phase of his thought is announced, of which the *Nouveau christianisme* (1825), published posthumously, is a document. S.-S. believed that, in order to move men, his ideology had to reach their “heart,” that is, assume a religious form. The *Nouveau christianisme* is of considerable interest as an attempt at a total reduction of Christianity to humanitarianism. The task of Christianity at the last moment of its development is resolved into directing society toward improving the lot of the poorest class. On the basis of this reduction S.-S. condemned both Catholicism and Protestantism as a “crisis.” This religious moment was seen by Comte as an involution, a return to the “theological” stage, and was the reason for their break. The strictly understood Saint-Simonian movement, however, devoted itself to its development.