The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between Comte and Mill, as to the forms of the Religion of Humanity. Mill criticized Comte for the Religion of Humanity, which was created by the latter but was not followed by the former except for the substitution of Humanity for God. Mill makes three protests against the religion of Humanity founded by Comte. According to Mill, firstly, Comte's positivism becomes quite a sentimental and ridiculous one in his later thought. Secondly, the Religion of Humanity founded by Comte has a character of anti-individualism. Thirdly, Comte makes an inordinate demand for unity and systematization in his later writings. But I think that these condemnations are invalid. As for Mill's first criticism, the element of sentiment in Comte's later thought should not be taken ridiculous. Rather, rightly interpreted, it demands to be social. Comte replies to Mill's second criticism that he identifies the nature of individuality in the recognition of sentiment. Thus Comte centers a sentiment in his religion. It is in Mill's last criticism that we find a fundamental difference between them. Mill's argument is grounded on his utilitarianism, above all, its harm principle. That means that utilitarianism is introduced into the Religion of Humanity in order that he may save one's proper province. Mill defends this province from all beliefs including the Religion of Humanity, whereas, in Comte's opinion, such an adherence to that province results in egoism and risks the society. Once you have accepted something common to other all, could you guard yours proper province from all beliefs absolutely? The Religion of Humanity founded by Comte aims at this adherence to one's proper province and egoism that this modern tendency produces. Having created a new religion, Comte tried to convince us that we could conquer egoism and then revive the society disorganized by that tendency.

  The thought of Giuseppe Ferrari (1811-1876) as historical thinker was just recently called back from oblivion. The fact that many of his writings were hardly available has contributed to the establishment of his position as a positivist thinker, who misconstrued objective history (as Benedetto Croce puts it). However, it seems doubtful to consider Ferrari's a positivistic, scientificaly based notion of historical objectivity. First of all, even during the period when his writings were published, only a few people in France were able to understand his true intentions. The character of his historical descriptions cannot be grasped without sufficient inquiry into the process of his thinking about history. The purpose of this paper is to show in what sense his late work “Histoire de la raison d' Etat” (1860) should be read.

  This paper actresses firstly Ferrari's early writings (from 1840 to 1843) discussing the “principle” of his philosophy of history. Ferrari grounded his conception of history on “principles,” rather than factual accumulation. He found out the “principle” in Vico, figure of the Renaissance. And the “principle” of the Renaissance was set on the origin of the Reformation and the French Revolution. As his theory of philosophy of history is based on commitment to the revolutionary principle, it receives suppression by the official philosophy represented by Victor Cousin, which had established the liberalist compromise between philosophy and ecclesiastic power. The “limit” of the philosophy of history which Ferrari has faced is the fact that the philosophical possibility is no more affirmed inside a philosophical system itself.

  I discuss, therefore, two other books, written from the perspective of the “limit” of the philosophy of history, in which Ferrari develops his new perspective on History : “Les philosophes salariés” and “Machiavel, juge des révolutions de notre temps” (1849). The first belongs to the genealogy of “refutation of eclecticism” by Pierre Leroux. In his “Réfutation de l' eclécticisme” (1839), Leroux explains how the official philosophy was constituted by the negation of the enlightnment philosophy of the 18^th century. For Leroux, the philosophy of the 19^th century signified the negation of the possiblity of philosophy itself. In the latter, written in the same year as the first one, Machiavel appears, in contrast to Vico, as a figure “without principle.” Through this topos of the figure of Machiavel, one can see that History consists in a discontinuous temporality, devoid of any principle. What Ferrari clarifies in his later “Histoire de raison d' Etat”, is also the discontinuity of History and historical temporality as “fate” (fatalité), itself irreducible to something like the positivist or theological “providence.” This work contains important references, which help reconsidering the historical recognition between the February revolution and the Second Imperial Regime of France, including Marx and Baudelaire. It will be hence necessary, from now on, to recognize the importance of his historical theory in the domain of 19^th century social and political thought.

  In the early stage of his work, Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) was influenced by the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler (1874-1928). Accepting this in a critical sense, Horkheimer then constructed his own method of critical theory. He clearly pointed out that Scheler's method rests on deductions drawn from a general image of human nature. In Horkheimer's view, the image of human nature is constantly subjected to historical changes in the value of human society, hence it cannot be fixed or an absolute. In contrast to proponents of modern metaphysics, Horkheimer took pains to emphasise the “function” of value in thought. The methodology of his “dialectical anthropology” is based on the idea that human images are determined, above all, by the “transitory” [vergänglich] aspirations of human beings to happiness and freedom, rather than by a stable and unchanging essential relationship [Wesenszusammenhang] of value.

  Following another line of development, we find that Arnold Gehlen (1904-1976), the leading postwar philosophical anthropologist, was also influenced by Scheler's thought. Gehlen, however, based his anthropology not on metaphysics, but on empirical sciences, such as behaviour theory. In addition, he criticized the Marxist theory of alienation, which presupposes that all subjects have a tendency, or a natural right, to demand the reclamation of their own individual products. Dismissing the ideological implications of this alienation theory, Gehlen attempted to recast it into a neutral and psychological form. According to his own account, his anthropology was based on the following ideas : that industrial society had been transformed from pure capitalism to a welfare-state situation, and, further, that the foundation for human life lies in the stability of social institutions. Human beings can realize their desires only by means of social institutions, which alter the immediate nature of these desires into a mediated and durable form.

  Comparing Horkheimer (along, generally speaking, with related schools established by critical theorists, including Adorno) on the one hand with Gehlen on the other, we are struck by the co-existence of points both of divergence and of similarity. One significant area of difference lies in their contrasting evaluations of human freedom or of autonomy. Whereas Adorno maintained that “dialectical exchange [Auseinandersetzung] between society and individuals” enables people to “go beyond the stage of monadological existence,” Gehlen accepted the behaviour theory that assumes arbitrary control of the human mind to be possible. Nonetheless, they both shared the view that human reason is not so strong as it is assumed to be in Scheler's classical-modem theory of human existence. In reference to this departure from Scheler, we may thus classify their approaches under the heading of “anthropologies of the postwar generation.” Scheler actually suggested the limit of the theory of the autonomous individual in Kant's practical philosophy, and this in spite of the fact that schools of critical theory and philosophical anthropology after World War II tended to confuse a popularized image of strong individuals in industrial society with Scheler's human image. In “The Status of human nature in the cosmos [Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos]” (1928), an article written in his last years, Scheler dismissed not only a one-sided assumption of strong human nature, but also the metaphysical idea of “mind/body” dualism. In their place, he propounded a new dualism of “spirit/life,” grounded on the idea that the human spirit [der Geist] has, essentially, no powers to “create [schaffen]” need nor to control them directly. A “special position [Sonderstelle]” of human nature lies solely in the ultimate independence of the human spirit from psychological and physical wants.

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