Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Count of

SAINT-SIMON, CLAUDE-HENRI de ROUVROY, Count. — Born in Paris on 17 October 1760, died there on 19 May 1825. From 1779 to 1782 he took part, as a captain in the regular French army, in the war for the independence of the United States of America. The spiritual aftershock of the American war was decisive for him; he had the impression of witnessing the beginning of a new historical era, founded on production and consequently oriented toward the future, rather than any longer on the inheritance and defense of tradition.

Between 1787 and 1789 he was in Spain, where he entered into relations with the Count of Redern, ambas-

ambassador of Saxony in Madrid and subsequently his business partner. Upon returning to France, he embraced revolutionary ideas, but without engaging in intense political activity. He sided with the extreme Ebertist left, linked to the milieu of the “patriots of industry,” from which Robespierre wished to free the Republic; this, together with his friendship with Redern, who was suspected as a foreigner, was the reason for his arrest in October 1793. Released after Thermidor and restored to possession of a fortune that enabled him to maintain a lifestyle worthy of his ancestors, he occupied a prominent place in the elegant life of Directory Paris. In 1798 his break with Redern took place, immediately followed by his decision to renounce business in order to devote himself to philosophy or, in his own words, to open a new career to human intelligence, the physico-political one. His ineptitude at managing affairs, together with the lavish character of his lifestyle, brought him, in the years 1805–13, into a situation of genuine poverty; until, in 1823, he finally found a reliable patron in the banker Olindo Rodrigues, who had begun to take an interest in his doctrine.

Three phases may 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 is directed toward “systématiser la philosophie de Dieu.” He believes that the solution to social phenomena can be found only as part of a total synthesis, achieved through the utmost generalization of the most universal physical law, the law of gravitation. In this respect he is truly the initiator of nineteenth-century scientism. The thesis that politics and morality are merely aspects of “general science” naturally leads him to the idea that the direction of humanity should be entrusted to a magisterium of scientists (which would take the name of the “Council of Newton”); they alone possess the qualities needed to interpret the generalized law of gravitation and derive from it the applications destined to make the earth a paradise. The work was placed on the Index by decree of 11 April 1859.

Naturally, this idea of a “new encyclopedia” (Esquisse d'une nouvelle Encyclopédie, 1810) could not win the favor 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, bitterly polemical, especially against Laplace. In this first phase he wished to associate his synthesis with the Napoleonic reconstruction and aspired to the role of the “scientific lieutenant of the emperor.”

A fundamental feature of the entire Saint-Simonian movement is its refusal to take a position against the dominant political forces, instead seeking to use them for the implementation of its plan of social reforms. The entire history of the movement is troubled by this contradiction between the revolutionary character of its program 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 benefited from the collaboration of Augustin Thierry, from 1814 to 1817, and then of Auguste Comte, from 1817 to 1824—he renounces, at least in practice, the “total synthesis” and believes he can find in history understood as a science the laws that must be applied in order to save the world scientifically. Here we encounter the most significant and best-known S.-S., the precursor of positivism and socialism. With regard to his general view of the historical course, it may be said that he rethinks Condorcet through Bonald. From the former he accepts progressivism; from the latter, the distinction between organic and analytical ages, the positive evaluation of the Middle Ages, and the view of the age that begins with the Reformation and concludes with the French Revolution and liberalism as a danger of crisis and dissolution.

For him, organic periods are those in which the social balance is perfect, power is in the hands of the most worthy, and each person is in his proper place. In critical periods this order has been destroyed, and society suffers until it has found its legitimate leaders again. The new organic age will have its spiritual foundation in science and the basis of its temporal organization in production, “industry.” Social life is nothing other than the organization of social interests; the purpose of political inquiry will be to define the organization most favorable to industry. In this phase S.-S. distinguishes between spiritual power and temporal power: the former still belongs to scientists, who exercise it through the discovery of laws; temporal power, on the other hand, must pass to the producers. It is certainly easy to specify the sense in which S.-S. is a precursor of Comtean positivism: not only because of his general scientism, but also because of his definition of the law of the three stages— theological, metaphysical, and positive. His relationship with socialism is less close. The social elements of his thought are certainly very clear: the critique of liberalism, the affirmation of the priority of the social over the political, the interpretation of the French Revolution as a bourgeois revolution, a phraseology that has remained part of the history of socialism (the opposition between producers and idle, parasitic classes), the idea that the administration of things must replace the government of persons, and so forth. But the critique of industrial capitalism is entirely absent and, consequently, so is the concept of class struggle; and as regards the problem of inheritance, he criticizes the inheritance of functions but does not take a position on the hereditary transmission of property.

The De la réorganisation de la société européenne, written in collaboration with Thierry, holds a special place because of its significance in the history of European ideas. Of interest in this work is the critique, conducted with a rigor unusual in S.-S., of the policy of balance pursued by the 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. As for the 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 began to emerge, documented by the Nouveau christianisme (1825), which appeared posthumously. S.-S. believes that, in order to move people, his ideology must reach their “heart,” that is, assume a religious form. The Nouveau christianisme is of considerable interest as an attempt to reduce Christianity wholly to humanitarianism. At the final moment of its development, Christianity’s task is reduced to directing society toward improving the condition of the poorest class. On the basis of this reduction, S.-S. condemns Catholicism and Protestantism alike as “heresies.” This religious phase was viewed by Comte as an involution, a return to the “theological” stage, and was the reason for their break. The Saint-Simonian movement in the strict sense, however, devoted itself to its development.