Franklin Foer

Brazil is a country largely resistant to ideology. This is a strange fact given its founding by followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who inscribed an epigram from his philosophy of positivism in the national flag: Order and Progress.

American Writer

Chauncey Wright

Such evidence is not the only kind which produces belief; though positivism maintains that it is the only kind which ought to produce so high a degree of confidence as all minds have or can be made to have through their agreements.

American Philosopher

Murray Rothbard

Positivism eliminates any kind of natural law principle - for example, that there are economic laws which can be transgressed only at your peril. With positivism, there is a tendency to leap into ad hoc economic theory.

American Economist

Positivism emphasizes knowledge from what can be seen or proven, not personal beliefs.

Observable Evidence

Positivism is closely tied to the sciences because it relies on empirical data.

Scientific Approach

Understand that positivism rejects any knowledge based on imagination or speculation.

Excludes Speculation

Positivism does not consider abstract or supernatural concepts as valid knowledge.

Avoid Metaphysics

Legal positivism focuses on law as it is written, not as it should be.

Legal Definition

In legal positivism, laws come from human decisions, not natural rights or morality.