Status Updates From Introduction to the Study o...

Lecture 5

Ch 2

Max Weber

Durkheim— society’s mirror

Marx— thought the only thing that was necessary was the first level of survival (food shelter etc) but the second level (art religion culture) was unnecessary and could be used to subjugate

Comte: more like Auguste Cult amirite

-church of positive science in Brazil still there

WOWWWWWWWWWW
Comte put himself as the pope of this new religion of humanity, his title: The High Priest of Humanity

And his dead not-girlfriend??? The patron saint of the religion, basically it’s Virgin Mary.

Yuck 🤮 this dude has some interesting ideas but is also a creepo surpreme

The religion of the great being
-the great being is humanity itself

New religion had to have:
-hierarchy of elite functionaries to replace old priesthood
-educational system
-buildings that ppl could get together for

rituals that would inspire connection

Comte: how to go about filling this hole with some kind of new religion that wouldn’t lose plausibility (compatibility with positive science, has to be compelling and inspire love/devotion, had to provide a moral consensus and Norms of behavior/social structures)

Comte thought that the fall of religion would lead to societal collapse bc of the hole that that social bonding religious practice would leave

Comte basically thought of religion was bad science, and also had a separate theory of religion as a way of binding social connections

Stage of positivism: moving towards science as a way to explain

-polytheism stage: ppl thinking in patterns about natural phenomena (rain god, sun god, etc) to group things together
-monotheism stage: grown to the most abstract of conceptualization that religion can take you

Progressivist: humans are linearly progressing forward

Comte: religion is the index of human development (false but necessary) as religions became more
Sophisticated until they can be let go they can map human development
-theological stage: ppl believe in gods to explain natural phenomomena
——fetishistic stage: totems (part of theological stage)

So basically Clomte is a creepy gross wifebeater obsessed with a dead gurl who not only says religion is wrong but also worships this bitch that never slept with him or dated him, and probably thought he was a fucking weirdo. COOL

Comte: beat and harassed his first wife until she left his ass, then turned around and got obsessed with this other lady Clothilde (sp?), he was so aggressive and insistent with his obsession that her family finally allowed him to meet with her a few times, shortly after they met she died of TB and for the rest of his life he called her his Angel and the saint of his life and kneeled in prayer before a pic of her

Auguste Comte

Bought the Quran on audiobook, weirdly hard to find at the library???