Saint-Simon (Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon)

Introduction

The name Saint-Simon is more famous than his work, particularly because the Duke of Saint-Simon, famous memorialist of Louis XIV, and Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon (1760–1825) the philosopher of the early nineteenth century discussed in this article, are often mistaken. The distorting reading of his work by the Saint-Simonian School added up to this confusion: it glorified the author, transformed him into a new Messiah, while at the same time caused his writings to be forgotten. His work, child of the French Revolution, played a mediating role between the end of the Enlightenment and the beginning of the following century, when the ideologies of the industrial world were born. Four lines of thought come directly from Saint-Simon: first, the positivism of Auguste Comte, his disciple and secretary for 7 years; then the socialisms, the anarchist thought of Proudhon, and especially the ideas of Marx who was the proponent of a return to Saint-Simon; then, the...