1

SUMMARY Comte is not only the first to have explicitly said that each science needed its own philosophy ; he also developed a new conception of the relations between science and philosophy : the Cours aims not so much to make philosophy scientific as to make science philosophical. If, from now on, we must philosophise from a sociological point of view, it is because sociology is not just a science among others : it is also in charge of the co-ordination of knowledge as a whole. This priority of the social standpoint has two main reasons. First, it is in agreement with the move from absoluteness to relativity, which is one of the best characteristics of positivism. Every cognition is relative in two respects : to its object, but also to its subject. Second, it has to do with the social role of science, which conversely justifies a social control of science, either directly by the citizens, or indirectly by some experts. We end with some remarks about the subjective method, which Comte adopted after 1848 and which is often held responsible for the many oddities of his late philosophy.