Comte’s religion of Humanity and Fedorov’s sociology of common cause: Measures of positivism

The article considers the social-religious doctrine of the French philosopher, one of the recognized founders of sociology and positivism, A. Comte (1798-1857), and the social paradigm of the Russian thinker-cosmosoph, the author of the doctrine of the common cause, N.F. Fedorov (1829-1903). The social-philosophical comparison of the basic concepts of the two theories allowed the author to identify their key intentions and semantic patterns. The comparative analysis revealed the semantic homogeneities and contrasts of the ideological systems of two thinkers - the religion of Humanity (Comte) and the sociology of the common cause (Fedorov) as determined by the moral-logical core of cosmosophy. Despite the undoubted diversity of their theoretical ideas, the compared concepts have common semantic sources, although initially they were fundamentally differently oriented in the social-historical space-time and in the potential field of the evolutionary possibilities of global humanity. Both thinkers consider science enriched with the religious feeling as the most effective tool for the real transformation of existence, but they differently project the potential of scientific knowledge on the planetary social organization development, which ultimately leads to the polarization of their fundamental ideas. The belief in the resolving potential of positive science and its idea of progress leads the French thinker to the religion of Humanity of the new, sociological-approved type. In cosmosophy, the supramoralistic task of the common cause leads to the demand for ‘positivism of action’ as an application of the theoretical knowledge of the laws and technologies of the directed evolutionary apotheosis of the man and a new type of sociality. The conclusion about the sociological overdetermination of the history of mankind logically leads positivism to the principle of ‘sociological theogony’, i.e., that society progressively develops and gradually acquires the absolute attributes of the divine essence. The central concept of the positive religion is humanity not only as the generalized statistical society, but also as a bearer of metaphysical features. In the cosmosophic theory, the establishment of deep and harmonious psychosocial ties, the moral system of interactions is associated with a special form of community - psychocracy. In its creative expression, psychocracy extends to the whole world, embraces all layers of reality, and the human history turns into a theogonic process.