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Order and Progress

In the second half of the nineteenth century Comte’s positive philosophy (The nineteenth century) became, in Mexico and Brazil above all, the philosophy of the state: of its schools, its reformers and, in Brazil, its flag. Comte’s own formula ran “L’Amour pour principe; l’Ordre pour base, et le Progrès pour but”, love as the principle, order as the base, progress as the end.

Gabino Barreda (1818–1881) gave his Oración cívica at Guanajuato on 16 September 1867. He read the history of Mexico as “la emancipación mental, caracterizada por la gradual decadencia de las doctrinas antiguas”, mental emancipation, marked by the gradual decline of the old doctrines, and closed: “que en lo de adelante sea nuestra divisa libertad, orden y progreso; la libertad como medio; el orden como base y el progreso como fin”, let our motto from now on be liberty, order and progress: liberty as the means, order as the base and progress as the end, a “triple lema simbolizado en el triple colorido de nuestro hermoso pabellón nacional”, a triple motto symbolised in the three colours of our fine national flag. Where Comte’s formula has love as the principle, Barreda’s has liberty as the means. The way forward was “una plena libertad de conciencia, una absoluta libertad de exposición y de discusión”, full freedom of conscience and absolute freedom of exposition and discussion, and no revolution “que no sea meramente intelectual”, that is not merely intellectual.

In Brazil the republic’s flag of 1889 carries Ordem e Progresso. Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, vice-director of the Positivist Church, explained the motto in articles in the Diário Oficial. “O povo brazileiro, como todos os póvos ocidentais, acha-se vivamente solicitado por duas necessidades ambas imperiózas, que se rezúmem nas palavras — Órdem e Progrésso”: the Brazilian people, like all Western peoples, is pressed by two needs, both imperious, summed up in the words order and progress. The two had been taken for irreconcilable, the parties of each making the West a permanent battlefield. Comte’s social dynamics, he wrote, shows that they agree “em consequência da preponderância do amor”, as a consequence of the preponderance of love: “O Progrésso é o dezenvolvimento da Órdem, como a Órdem é a consolidação do Progrésso”, progress is the development of order, as order is the consolidation of progress. So “progressistas e ordeiros pódem hoje confraternizar”, the partisans of progress and of order can today fraternise.

Positivism, in Gracia and Vargas’s account in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “was even used to justify dictatorial regimes, as in the case of Mexico”. The generation that broke with it Romero called the founders (The founders and normality).