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4:20

(In »Living religion versus deadly alienation«)

A clear example of an ideology where the left hemisphere runs amok at the expense of the right hemisphere is Auguste Comte’s positivist nightmare from the mid-19th century. Comte highly arbitrarily divides the history of ideas into three stages: the theological, the metaphysical and the scientific phases. With each stage, the human being becomes increasingly ennobled and perfect, and once she knows how matters actually stand, when she is completely scientific and thus also all-knowing – that is, when the human being becomes Comte himself – it is precisely then that history will be complete. Similar to thinkers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, Comte adheres to the scientistic conviction, the blind faith in the unlimited potential of not only rationality but also science.