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Affectivity and the Social Bond
 Rethinking Classical Sociology
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Affectivity and the Social Bond
Transcendence, Economy and Violence
in French Social Theory

Tiina Arppe
University of Helsinki, Finland
© Tiina Arppe 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Tiina Arppe has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.

Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Arppe, Tiina.
Affectivity and the social bond : transcendence, economy and violence in French social
theory / by Tiina Arppe.
pages cm. -- (Rethinking classical sociology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-3182-4 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-3183-1 (ebook) -- ISBN
978-1-4724-0313-1 (epub) 1. Social sciences--France--History--19th century. 2. Social
sciences--France--History--20th century. I. Title.
H53.F7A77 2014
300.1--dc23
2013027936

ISBN 978-1-4094-3182-4 (hbk)

ISBN 978-1-4094-3183-1 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 978-1-4724-0313-1 (ebk –ePUB)

III
 Contents

Acknowledgements   vii

Introduction   1

1 Auguste Comte: Passion Sublimated into Love   11

2 Émile Durkheim: Passion Transformed into Force and Symbol   55

3 Georges Bataille and the Accursed Part of Affectivity   105

4 René Girard and the Mimetic Desire   159

Conclusions    211

Bibliography    229

Index    245
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Acknowledgements

My interest in French social theory is long-standing and shared by a group of

colleagues, nowadays working mainly in the University of Helsinki but also in
other, completely non-academic settings, with whom I’ve had the great fortune
to read and to discuss the important works of the French scene over the years –
of this heterogeneous bunch I especially want to mention Elisa Heinämäki, Ilpo
Helén, Timo Kaitaro, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Hannu Sivenius, Sami Santanen,
Olli Sinivaara and Pekka Sulkunen, whose insight and erudition have been of great
inspiration along the way. I am particularly indebted to Susanna Lindberg whose
perceptive and thoughtful comments on the critical points of the manuscript helped
me to see my way through when working with the final version of the manuscript.
Of my international colleagues a special ‘thank you’ is due to Camille Tarot, an
eminent expert on French sociology of religion, whose illuminating remarks and
unending hospitality I have had the privilege of enjoying over the years.
The institutional actors that have made this book possible are The Academy
of Finland which funded the project and allowed me to work for several years
in relative peace – a rare luxury in the academic world nowadays – and The
Department of Sociology of the University of Helsinki which offered me not only
the working space and the facilities, but also the academic community without
which no research would ever be possible. Of the other, more informal institutional
settings from which this book has greatly benefitted, I would like to mention two:
the Girard study group that assembled during the years 2011–2012, headed by the
indefatigable Olli Sinivaara, and the Summer School of the Finnish Association of
Researchers, headed by Kirsti Määttänen and Tuomas Nevanlinna for as long as
memory goes – one of the last informal settings of the civilized world in which the
researchers of social sciences and humanities can meet, discuss The Fundamental
Questions (the ones that really matter) and have fun all night long during a whole
summer weekend.
I also want to thank my editors Neil Jordan and Aimée Feenan from Ashgate –
without their patience and diligence, but also their invaluable help in the concrete
copy-editing process, this book would probably never have seen daylight.
The last and the greatest thanks, however, goes to my daughter Kathleen who
must have used every ounce of her creativity and sense of humour to support her
absent-minded mother constantly bent over a book or a computer. No love should
ever be put on such trial. This book is dedicated to her.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Introduction

Affectivity has become an important issue in sociology and social theory during
recent decades. For example, an entire ‘affective turn’ has been proclaimed,1
which aims to readdress questions linked to gender, the body and otherness,
the role of affect and emotions in different micro-level interactions as well as
in larger historical transformations. This growing interest in affectivity was
already mirrored in the ‘sociology of emotions’, a broad field of related themes
and research agendas that appeared in the European sociology during the 1990s.2
Yet the problem is by no means a novelty in the domain of sociology, quite the
contrary. In fact we might claim that the role of affectivity in human sociality has
been a matter of controversy in sociology since the foundation of the discipline
in nineteenth-century France. Some sort of affective element seems to be needed,
if the association of human beings is to be founded on something other than a
simple rational calculus of utilities, be they individual or collective. At the
same time affectivity seems to be placed in a perilous no-man’s land between
several disciplines (biology and psychology most obviously, but also economic
and political theory) from which the emerging sociology wanted to distinguish
itself at all costs – the heroic efforts of Émile Durkheim in this respect are well
known.3 In other words, affectivity has been the focal point of precisely those
disciplinary tensions from which sociology as an autonomous field once emerged

1 See Clough and Halley 2007 and Clough 2008.

2 See for instance Kemper 1990; Wentworth and Ryan 1994; Barbalet 2002 – these
are just few examples of a vast ocean of studies published in the field during the recent
decades. It is not easy to make a clear-cut distinction between the concept of ‘affect’,
crystallized in the notion of the ‘affective turn’, and that of ‘emotions’, conceptualized
in the ‘sociology of emotions’ – partly we seem to be dealing with overlapping problems.
However, should one try to pinpoint a single differentiating feature then one could claim
that there is a certain difference of emphasis, related to the degree of individuation and
of consciousness: whereas the sociology of emotions is more concentrated on the felt
(and in this sense ‘conscious’) subjective/individual states of emotion, the proponents of
the ‘affective turn’ are more interested in a ‘pre-individual bodily forces augmenting or
diminishing a body’s capacity to act’ (Clough 2008, 1) and the related (biomedical, digital)
technologies enabling the manipulation of these forces.
3 Durkheim, also known as the father of ‘scientific sociology’, sought to separate
the newborn discipline most of all from psychology and biology (or rather, the Spencerian
version of evolutionism) by demanding in his The Rules of Sociological Method that social
facts should be explained exclusively by other social facts – see Durkheim 2010 [1894],
217–234.
2 Affectivity and the Social Bond

and which even nowadays characterize the discussion of the problem, albeit under
the more positive label of ‘interdisciplinarity’. However, the form that the problem
of affectivity took or the shape in which it was introduced to the emerging field
of sociology also had its roots in the history of modern philosophy and political
thought.
Schematically put, in the tradition of modern social and political theory human
affectivity has been regarded from two different angles.4 In its positive form it
has often been denoted by the term ‘sentiment’, in its negative form by the term
‘passion’. Whereas the seventeenth century was saturated with ‘passions’, so that
every self-respecting philosopher, moralist and physician had a list of harmful
passions that man should avoid,5 the eighteenth century was dominated by the
search of happiness, sentiments and sentimentality.6 Sentiments were the ‘benign’
form of affectivity, mediated by reason and generally identified with the good – a
paradigmatic example is the Durkheimian theory of collective sentiments, most
visible in his theory of religion7 – that constitute the foundation of social cohesion.
By contrast passions were typically considered an alien, as if ‘exterior’, force that
subjugates the rational subject and, as such, entails the idea of the passivity of the
soul (or its rational part) – this is the paradigmatic Cartesian conception dominated
by a constitutive dualism between the spiritual and the corporeal.8
The same ambiguity between two different types of affectivity is repeated in
modern political theory. The positive bond between men was ultimately based
on sentiment (the postulate of the ‘natural sociability’ of men, common in the
social contract theories) whereas the relationship between passions and sociality
was mostly seen in a negative manner: the basic motivation for the constitution
of the political society is precisely men’s desire to protect themselves from the
destructive consequences of the ‘passionate’ element equally implicit in their
nature. This is the Hobbesian starting point of the modern political philosophy: in
a hypothetical ‘state of nature’, preceding the formation of the political authority
(or Leviathan, the mortal god), men free and equal by their capacities inevitably
end into conflicts and rivalry over the objects of their desires, the result being

4 Needless to say, this is a grossly simplified way of presenting an extremely complex

network of notions denoting different forms of affectivity in the modern philosophical and
political thought – on the history of the notions of ‘passion’, ‘sentiment’ and ‘energy’ on
this field, see for instance Bodei 1997; Mauzi 1960; Delon 1988.
5 See Talon-Hugon 2002, 7.
6 See Mauzi 1960.
7 See Durkheim 1990 [1912].
8 See Descartes 1970 [1649]; Talon-Hugon 2002. It should be noted, however, that
contrary to most of his predecessors and also his followers Descartes considered passions
to be a useful mechanism for the body: they were the only means to get the soul, cut off
from the body, to take an interest in its fate and its well-being. In this sense the function
of passions in Descartes’ theory was to bridge the gap between the body and the soul and
thereby restore their unity.
 Introduction 3

the famous ‘warre of every man against every man’.9 The only stable solution to
this chronic state of insecurity is the social contract by which men, urged by fear
and reason, confer their power and strength to one sovereign actor who thereafter
oversees the obedience of laws and punishes violators. Although the social contract
theories propose different solutions as to the identity of the contracting parties and
the nature of the sovereign actor, in the post-Hobbesian tradition the motive for
quitting the state of nature is almost always the insecurity caused by unrestrained
passions.10
However, this strongly dualistic picture of human affectivity was nuanced
during the following centuries. Already the emergence of psychology as an
autonomous discipline in the seventeenth century altered the Cartesian conception
and the psychology of passions, since no one saw the soul in a similar manner
anymore – that is, chained to a ‘body’ and yet separated from it. The pioneers of
the domain, such as Christian Wolff, John Locke and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
sought to explain the passions starting from the soul, not from the body.11 But at
the same time the problem of regulation got more complicated: if the source of
passions is inside the consciousness itself, from whence does the consciousness
get the necessary force to fight them? Although passions were transferred from
the body to the soul, they still seemed to subjugate the conscious subject and
free will under an ‘alien’ power. In other words, the split between the conscious/
rational and non-conscious/irrational had not vanished, it had only changed locus,
and was in a certain way institutionalized with the birth of psychoanalysis at the
end of the nineteenth century – for Freud ego (‘das Ich’) was no longer a master
in its own house.12 On the other hand, the eighteenth century also exalted the
creative energy of passions, their unrestrained force which was seen as the source
of everything new (a case in point being late-eighteenth and the early-nineteenth
century Romanticism).13 The attempt to regulate human passions thus goes hand
in hand with the exaltation of their violent extravagance, but a consensus is found
in the middle way: although necessary because of the energy they give to the soul,
passions were regarded as an insufficient foundation for the collective life; politics
can only be based on reason.14
Yet there is also another factor behind the demise of Cartesian dualism in
the realm of affectivity, although one might claim that the spirit of Cartesian
‘scientific anthropology’ itself paved the way for this change: in the eighteenth
century biology started to replace rationality as the foundation of human thought

9 Hobbes 2010 [1651], 79.

10 The only exception is certainly Jean-Jacques Rousseau for whom man in the state
of nature lives ignorant, but happy and isolated from his fellow beings, and the harmful
passions are only born with the constitution of society – see Rousseau 1905a.
11 Talon-Hugon 2002, 253.
12 Freud 1940, 11.
13 See Délon 1988, 349.
14 See Délon 1988, 352–353.
4 Affectivity and the Social Bond

and action. As a consequence, the spirit was no longer seen as transcending nature,
but rather as emanating from it.15 Although Descartes (together with Hobbes and
Spinoza) already wanted to remove the problem of passions from the ancient
tradition of moral philosophy (where they had been located in the domain of
‘wisdom’) and bring them into the realm of discursive knowledge, this realm
was for him by no means that of the biological.16 The mechanical world view of
the seventeenth century saw the universe of passions rather from the viewpoint
of physics (Descartes, Hobbes) or geometry (Spinoza): like astronomy that had
discovered the order governing the trajectory of meteors, the new ‘astronomers of
passions’ wanted to reveal the ‘hidden order of perturbations agitating the soul’.17
By contrast, the biological approach of the nineteenth century placed all life on
the same continuum, the basis of which was organic and which emphasized the
influence of the environment on living organisms. As a consequence, not only the
theories treating society as a gigantic organism, with its proper states of equilibrium
and disequilibrium, proliferated, but human affectivity was also placed on the same
line with that of other living creatures. For instance the Freudian psychoanalysis
that conceptualized the basis of human affectivity in terms of libidinal energy and
leaned heavily on a theory of instincts of Darwinian inspiration had strong roots
also in biology.18
The last historical point that should be emphasized in this context concerns
the relationship between affectivity and economy. In the Hobbesian tradition of
political theory the regulation of passions was realized through a contract, that
is, by juridical means. However, in the Anglo-Saxon economic theory of the late-
eighteenth century another type of solution to this problem was formulated. This
solution was developed by Adam Smith who, inspired by Mandeville’s famous
idea that private vices make the public good, gave one of these vices, namely
greed, which he baptized as ‘interest’, the power to channel and thereby to temper

15 Mauzi 1960, 641.

16 In this sense Hobbes’ materialism which denied to the spirit (the soul) any
specificity was perhaps closer to the biological approach, but his way of understanding
human passions was purely mechanical, not organic: the material processes mechanically
produce the psychological motivations; it is precisely these motivating forces, produced by
the mechanical movements of appetite/aversion or attraction/repulsion (matter in motion)
inside of us, that Hobbes calls passions. See Hobbes 2010 [1651], chapter VI.
17 Talon-Hugon 2002, 14.
18 See for instance Sulloway 1979 and Ellenberger 1970, 236–237. Another notable
influence from the natural sciences in this context was the principle of constancy which
dominates the Freudian conception of the economy of the psyche, based on the avoidance
of excessive excitation. As Sulloway points out, the Freudian emphasis on the dynamic,
the instinctual, and, above all, the nonrational in the human behaviour was very much due
to the enormous influence that the Darwinian theory of evolution had on psychoanalysis,
although Freud’s earlier work was rather marked by a more ‘mechanical’ type of biologism
(the neurophysiological model) – see Sulloway 1979, 131, 235–236 and 267.
 Introduction 5

the other more destructive passions.19 In Smith’s version one should speak rather
of satisfaction than of regulation in the strict sense of the term, since all the other
passions (in particular the desire for recognition that constitutes the most important
motivating factor in the human psyche for Smith) found in the interest a channel
of expression and in this sense also of satisfaction. The channelization of passions
via interest also implied a certain democratization of the Hobbesian passion
which was essentially the vice of the warlords (the belligerent aristocracy): by
following freely their interests in the market, the merchants but also the common
people contributed to the welfare of all. Interest thus constituted a non-violent and
completely immanent manner of regulating the potentially destructive affective
impulses of man.
This is schematically presented the historical background against which the
problem of affectivity is seen in this study. I will analyse the problem both from
a structural (or thematic) and a historical angle, such as it appears in the works
of four major French social theorists, Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim, Georges
Bataille and René Girard. The rationale behind the choice of theorists is likewise
twofold, including both thematic and historical reasons. The first and rather self-
evident reason is that affectivity, whether in the form of ‘instinct’, ‘tendency’,
‘sentiment’, ‘passion’, ‘attraction’, ‘repulsion’ or ‘desire’, constitutes a central
element in each theorist’s way of seeing the nature of the social bond. However,
besides this loose thematic connection there are a number of other, more specific,
points that these theories have in common. First of all, they are all theories about
origin, either in the logical or historical sense of the term: affectivity is first and
foremost invoked as the impulse giving birth to the social bond, and thereafter
as a factor of social integration contributing to its maintenance. However,
each theorist also attempts to combine the immanence of affectivity with some
form of transcendence 20 which is, moreover, generally related to the viewpoint

19 See for example Smith 1977 [1776], book I, chapter 2. Unlike the other passions
greed was regarded as a rather monotonous and, therefore, relatively ‘harmless’ passion
which always led to the same result – on the relationship between passion and interests in
Smith’s theory, see Hirschmann 1977.
20 This is also the main reason why I have deliberately left out the whole tradition of
mass psychology that emerged in France at the end of the nineteenth century, notably the
theories of Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon – both shall be discussed shortly in relation
to Durkheim and Bataille. Apart from the fact that these theories drew from a slightly
different scientific body than the theorists here analysed (notably from the French tradition
of raciology, most famously represented by Paul Brocca, and the Italian criminologists like
Sighèle and Lombroso, and the cultural evolutionism dominated by the idea of heredity
in Le Bon’s case, from the psychological theories of hypnotism and suggestion in Tarde’s
case), they gave affectivity a completely immanent interpretation that excluded a priori the
idea of a social or, for that matter, any other sort of transcendence. On the French tradition
of mass psychology, see Moscovici 1981; on its historical background, see Muchielli 1998;
an excellent introduction to the whole tradition in France as well as in the United States has
recently been written by Christian Borch (2012).
6 Affectivity and the Social Bond

of regulation: left in its own immediacy or immanence affectivity is seen as a

dangerous and potentially destructive force that can only be held in check by an
exterior force. This constant menace of violence constitutes the third factor present
in all the theories considered, and it logically leads to the fourth theme to which
affectivity is connected, namely a crisis that cannot be resolved with traditional
political means. In other words, affectivity, as indispensable as it seems to be for
both the constitution and the maintenance of the social bond, is in these theories
paradoxically also the most important factor menacing it.
This is where the historical angle becomes important, because the theorists
considered are also situated at the heart of two important historical transformations
concerning the discursive framework in which the problem of affectivity is placed
in social theory. The first one has to do with regulation affectivity, the second
one with its locus or its subject. Whereas the Hobbesian tradition of political
theory had regarded affectivity first and foremost in the framework of regulation,
as a problem concerning the constitution of the political authority, and tried to
solve it by juridical means (the social contract), emerging French sociology
emphasized the role of affectivity in the constitution of the social bond, in other
words, its function as the foundation of human integration, and accordingly
searched for a solution to the problem of regulation in the morphological and
normative structure of society. Moreover, the origin of affectivity itself was no
longer posed in terms of a metaphysical ‘human nature’ like in the social contract
tradition, but instead seen in the framework of the new discourses that emerged
in biology and psychology: human affectivity was placed on the same organic
continuum with the living nature, and the specific difference located primarily
in the human psychological structure. It is this psychological structure which is
the centre of another transformation that, at the end of the nineteenth century,
positions affectivity not only inside the human psyche, but also in a spot that the
individual cannot control, namely the unconscious.21 This inaccessibility to the
individual consciousness and the ensuing idea of a hidden structure of dominance
constitutes the common point of the sociological theories here analysed and the
psychoanalytic theory born at the end of the nineteenth century. The difference
resides in the alleged subject of this structure – for Freudian psychoanalysis, it is
the unconscious located in the individual psyche, for social theorists, a collective
subject the constitution of which varies depending on the theorist, but which for
each of them surpasses the individual.

21 Although Freud in fact excluded affects from the unconscious as such, seeing it
rather as a network of repressed representations, or of mnemonic traces, the symptoms
produced by the repression were first and foremost of an affective nature (anxiety, hysteria,
neurosis etc.). Also the basic dynamics of the psyche especially in Freud’s early theories
on hysteria were based on a model in which the inhibition of the conscious discharge led to
a ‘damming up’ of affects in a portion of the mind inaccessible to consciousness – see for
instance Sulloway 1979, 63.
 Introduction 7

The differing historical contexts of the theorists obviously also affect the
discursive environment and the theoretical constellations in which the problem
of affectivity is placed in each case and the conceptual tools with which it is
addressed. The danger of asynchronous or disproportionate comparisons seems
difficult to avoid with such glaringly different thinkers as, for instance, Auguste
Comte and Georges Bataille. On the other hand, since the book only deals with
four theorists, any genuine history of ideas seems to be excluded beforehand,
because there simply isn’t enough material to allow for the establishment of strong
historical currents of thought. However, the aim of this study is not so much to
demonstrate a solid historical relationship between the theorists in the traditional
sense, that is, by showing in which way each of them has influenced the others,
although there is necessarily a certain amount of this kind of classical historical
analysis included in it as well. Rather, the objective is to trace a line of continuity
between themes, imageries and approaches in order to see how the relationship
between the central concepts has changed in function of the differing historical
and theoretical references, and especially through what sort of forms the pivotal
axis, constituted by the notions of affectivity and of transcendence, has been
articulated in each case. What are the principal domains on which affectivity has
appeared and the instances of transcendence through which it has been mediated
in each theory? What is the ultimate subject of the sociological transcendence and
how is it constituted?
This leads to the three principal hypotheses on which this study is based. First
of all, I claim that the theories here analysed are all influenced by a more general
transformation in the conceptualization of human affectivity that can be placed
approximately in the same period of time, namely the nineteenth century, as the
emergence of the new and extremely influential scientific discourses in economics,
biology and psychology. In consequence, the ‘passions’ of the seventeenth century
are progressively transformed from an obscure and ‘diabolical’ power into
objective forces which animate the human psyche (be it individual or collective).
Secondly, although this ‘scientific’ aspiration is clearly visible, especially in
Comte’s and Durkheim’s way of understanding the specific nature of human
affectivity, the Hobbesian thread is still present in that the problem of affectivity is
posed primarily in the framework of crisis and regulation. Thirdly, although French
sociological theory seems to follow in Hobbes’ footsteps also in its persistence in
the need of a transcendental instance for the regulation of affectivity, the manner
in which this regulation is realized is also deeply influenced by the economic mode
of discourse in the sense that affectivity is largely seen in terms of forces and
energies to be put into productive use – more specifically, to be channelled in a
way which contributes to social integration. It is precisely this combination of
the transcendental and the economic (the immanent) that, I claim, characterizes
a specifically ‘modern’ sociological approach to human passions, in which the
integration of society is founded on its affective regulation through the social.
The ultimate objective of the book is to reflect not only on the theoretical but
also the political implications of a sociological theory that seeks the foundations
8 Affectivity and the Social Bond

of society in human affectivity: is not this type of strong, emotive bond also open
to dangers always implicit in affectivity? But on the other hand, can a theory
of the social bond do without this ‘accursed part’, since we always seem to be
dealing with affectivity when using the very term ‘bond’? From the angle of social
theory, the most difficult problem concerns the conditions of an exterior point
or structure which would not be reduced to the immanence of affectivity. This
question is all the more urgent because of the demise of the ancient instances of
transcendence, such as religion that has definitely lost its grip on the soul of the
Western consumer, now driven solely by his endless desires in a universe where all
exterior vantage points seem to have vanished. This basic condition of modernity
has been given varying characterizations in nineteenth-century philosophy and
social theory: ‘simulation’,22 ‘Technik’,23 ‘homogeneity’24 etc. Although the
possibilities of transcendence are at best marginal (that is, opened up only at the
margins of the system), requiring a reflexion on the conditions of possibility of
the modern society itself and rising only from the inside of its organization, it is
on this condition alone that we can ever hope to conceive a turn – not a return or
turning back, but another perspective on the possibilities of being (being together,
in particular). In this situation the development of new theoretical openings is
vital not only because of the inner anguish (depression or rage) of the individuals
turned into consuming bodies, but also because the ‘desiring machines’, guided
exclusively by the invisible hand of economy (and the horizon of infinity opened
up by technology), are in danger of destroying the conditions for the survival of
human culture on the planet.
Before concluding a short terminological remark is in order: ‘Affectivity’
as such does not figure among the historical terms used by any of the theorists
considered; it is a theoretical construction which I have elaborated in order to
grasp the totality of the terms involved. I use ‘affectivity’ as a generic category
which designates by-and-large the capacity or the disposition, common to all
living creatures, of being affected.25 This means that the notion of ‘affectivity’ here
utilized is broader than that of ‘emotions’ or of ‘affects’ used in the contemporary
sociological discussion: instead of ‘emotions’ or ‘affects’ the classics talked about
‘passions’, ‘energies’, ‘effervescence’, ‘impulses’ and ‘desires’. If one should
want seek a common denominator for these categories then it would perhaps be the
emphasis laid on the non-voluntary, mostly preconscious and above all collective

22 See for instance Baudrillard 1981 and 1983.

23 See for instance Heidegger 2000 [1954].
24 See for instance Bataille 1970f [1933].
25 The French dictionary Le Trésor de la langue française gives among other possible
meanings the following definition to the term ‘affectivité’: ‘Faculté d’éprouver, en réponse
à une action quelconque sur notre sensibilité, des sentiments ou des émotions’ [‘Faculty of
experiencing sentiments or emotions in response to any action on our sensibility’] – another
definition is simply ‘Ensemble des sentiments et des émotions’ [‘The totality of sentiments
and emotions’].
 Introduction 9

nature of the states in question. However, my intention here is not to construct an

exhaustive definition, but to find a term broad enough to cover all the possible
sub-categories encountered – in other words, the function of the term ‘affectivity’
is here more heuristic than definitional strictly speaking.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 1
Auguste Comte:
Passion Sublimated into Love

Introduction

The case of Auguste Comte is a curious one. After having devoted the first 20-odd
years of his career to the development of a doctrine almost entirely limited to the
epistemological domain, in the 1840s he suddenly seems to undergo a complete
change of mood, beginning to stress the preponderance of sentiments over reason
in individual as well as social existence. And, as if this were not enough, after
having bitterly criticized his predecessor and former mentor Saint-Simon for his
‘religious’ and ‘sentimental’ tendencies,1 he now proposes to turn his own positivist
theory into a religion, based on none other than the universal love of humanity.
The most popular explanation for this apparently illogical volte-face was
for a long time the one promulgated by John Stuart Mill, a former admirer and
sympathizer of Comte’s positivist theory. According to Mill this unscientific
‘deterioration’2 in Comte’s thought was due to an unfortunate and bitterly one-
sided love affair with a young woman, Clothilde de Vaux, who tragically died of
tuberculosis in 1846, the relationship never actually having been consummated.
This narrowly biographical and psychological interpretation was undoubtedly lent
some support by the long letter of love and devotion Comte himself annexed to
the first volume of his four-part Système de politique positive, the chef-d’oeuvre of
his later years, as well as by the various references and acknowledgments made to
Mlle de Vaux throughout the text.3
However, most of the commentaries published during the last decades have
disputed this alleged break between the ‘reasonable’ father of positivism and the
‘crazed religious reformer’,4 emphasizing the essential continuity in Comte’s
thought: his ideas of the necessity of a profound moral and political reform date as

1 See Benichou 1996, p. 737 and Pickering 1993, pp. 422–423.

2 See Mill 1961 [1866], p. 132.
3 See Comte 1851, Préface, pp. 8–12 and Dédicace, pp. I–XXI; this ‘dedication’ is
furthermore followed by a novel written by Clothilde de Vaux that Comte wanted to make
public as a token of his devotion and proof of ‘the intellectual and moral character’ of Mlle
de Vaux.
4 This is the way Pickering (2009b, p. 3) formulates the caricatured image given of
Comte by the proponents of this line of argument. For a detailed and sound analysis of the
relationship between Comte and de Vaux, see also Pickering 2009a, pp. 133–229.
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