The forerunners: Saint-Simon, Comte, Fourier, Proudhon, Courcelle-Seneuil and Frédéric Le Play

Jean-François Chanlat

Chapter 1 in Against Amnesia, 2026, pp 7-46 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The long history of the French administrative sciences begins in contemporary times at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This chapter comes back to some great figures of the nineteenth century and gives a synthesis on each of their contributions and influence on society: the industrialism of Saint-Simon, the positivism of Auguste Comte, the phalansterist harmony of Fourier, the federalist anarchism of Proudhon, the modern management of Courseulle-Seneuil, and the social method of Le Play. Recalling these early schools of thought enables current thinking on organisation, administration, and management to reconnect with enduring issues such as the relationship between the economic and the social, the individual and the collective, theory and practice, order and change, freedom and constraint, authority and power, competition and cooperation, and imagination and reality. So, many issues presented as “new” today are merely old issues revisited under new terms, overshadowed by these ancient currents.

Keywords: Saint-Simon; Comte; Fourier; Proudhon; Courselle-Seneuil; Le Play (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781049400242
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