'proper' sociologist. Along with his countryman Henri Saint-Simon they set about devising a 'science of society'. A 'science' in the manner set down by the scientists and philosophers of the Enlightenment. One leading Enlightenment philosopher had been Immanuel Kant. This German philosopher had issued the proclamation that still to this day defines the principal objective of the Enlightenment: 'Dare to Know'! Briefly put Kant had defined the role of the philosopher as 'investigator' (compare this view with that of the British philosopher, John Locke, who, a hundred years earlier had defined the role of the philosopher as an 'underlabourer' (to the scientist).Comte and Saint-Simon 'dared to know' about this entity; 'society'. But, and this is a controversial point, their 'daring-ness' (!) was somewhat constrained by the contexts in which they lived as well as the social interests they saw themselves as representing. Robert Nisbet, a 20th century North American sociologist, describes them as seeking to assist with the 'conservative reaction' then dominant in post-revolutionary France by developing a plan or schema for a well ordered society. Nisbet suggests that Comte and Saint-Simon were acting as 'spokespersons' for the new industrial classes whose main objective was stability. Sociology doesn't 'get going' however as the institutionalised and professional discipline that we know today until the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. And this is an extremely uneven and gradual process. It begins in France largely through the efforts of one of the so-called 'founding fathers' of sociology Emile Durkheim. It spreads to the then new nation of Germany largely through the efforts of other 'founding fathers' such as Max Weber and to a lesser extent Georg Simmel. And all the time this new sociology is, as it were, 'looking over its shoulder' or to put it as the philosopher, Jacques Derrida, might; this new subject of s...
