AHMET RIZA BEY AND POSITIVISM
AHMET RIZA BEY VE POZİTİVİZM

Author : Emel KOÇ
Number of pages : 21-39

Abstract

Having been affected by Auguste Comte’s positivism in Paris, Ahmet Rıza Bey is the person who brought this positivist movement to Turkey. The main reason why positivism affected Rıza Bey so deeply was the fact that he thought that the analysis of Comte for the French society after the 1789 Revolution was also applicable for an analysis of the Ottoman society in the 19th century. Comte, who thought that the basic problem the French society encountered after the Revolution stemmed from the spiritual gap caused by the Revolution itself, believed that this very problem could be overcome through an intellectual and moral leadership, and considered the order and progress formula as the basis for the tendency to give shape to the changing societal life, and maintained – in an effort to reject revolutionism – that progress could only be achieved through an order. A positivist political doctrine guided by a positive society utopia based on the universal and rationalist principles of Comte was alluring for Ahmet Rıza, who thought that the Ottoman society which had already passed through a depression period could not take a further depression.

Keywords

Positivism, modernisation, progress, order, union.

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