MATHEUS ICHIMARU BEDENDO

Departing from the “republican revival”, this work aims to settle the basis for an investigation about the “ideological drift” of republican thought in France since the Revolution, at the end of eighteenth-century, up to the consolidation of the Third Republic, at the second half of nineteenth-century. Taking the notion of progress as the guiding line of our investigation, we intend to show that Auguste Comte’s positivism in developing his critique of the “unlimited perfectibility” notion, at the same time (i) put an end in a quarrel that guided the philosophical debate concerning “the progress of human mind” since the end of eighteenth-century; and (ii) gives nineteenth-century a new paradigm to think henceforth the “development of humanity”. To that end, nevertheless, we shall concentrate our efforts (i) on justifying a republican interpretation of Auguste Comte; (ii) on elucidating the meanings and the indetermination of the French republican thought in which the author is framed; and (iii) on analyzing the epistemological status of positive philosophy based on the critique that it develops towards the dogmas of Enlightenment philosophy.