AS ORIGENS DO POSITIVISMO: UM OLHAR HISTÓRICO E IDEOLÓGICO
AS ORIGENS DO POSITIVISMO: UM OLHAR HISTÓRICO E IDEOLÓGICO
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.253152513107
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Palavras-chave: Positivismo; Auguste Comte; Racionalidade instrumental; Ideologia; Teoria Crítica; Tecnocracia.
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Keywords: Positivism; Auguste Comte; Instrumental reason; Ideology; Critical Theory; Technocracy.
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Abstract: This chapter examines the ideological aspects of positivism, tracing its development from the nineteenth century to its persistence in modern rationality. Based on the work of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), positivism is interpreted not merely as a philosophy of science but as a project of social stabilization grounded in faith in progress and order. Comte’s thought, by turning science into dogma and objectivity into moral law, provided the industrial bourgeoisie with an ideology of legitimation and social pacification. Drawing on Amadeu Carvalho Homem, Jean Lacroix, Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Mary Pickering, and Michael Singer, the chapter highlights positivism’s epistemology of certainty and its moralization of productivity. It then explores its transformation into bureaucratic and technocratic rationality as analyzed by Max Weber and Maurício Tragtenberg and its critique by the Frankfurt School, especially Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, and Marcuse, who expose the transition from emancipatory to instrumental reason. The chapter concludes that positivism, though philosophically waning, endures as a dominant mentality sustaining the ideology of scientific neutrality and technical efficiency. Finally, it suggests that Critical Theory and systems thinking offer pathways to overcome positivist fragmentation and reconstruct a truly emancipatory rationality.
- Ycarim Melgaço Barbosa