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In 1868 the young Brentano (1838-1917) publishes a very laudatory essay on Auguste Comte (1798-1857). If we except the question of metaphysics, the study reveals deep affinities between Comte’s positivism and the philosophy of Brentano : both philosophers indeed decline to separate philosophy from science. Beyond these affinities, the study of Comte’s work left its mark on Brentano’s thinking. This fact explains that his philosophy played an important part in the birth of neo-positivism in Vienna in the first decades of the 20th century. The peculiar position Brentano holds in relation to Comte and the Vienna Circle raises two major problems. The first relates to the part Brentano may have played in the transmission of Comte’s ideas to Austrian philosophy. The second is more fundamental and pertains to those relations which exist between neo-positivism and Comte’s work and which are generally underestimated.