linguistic:translation, quality:correction
Auguste Comte and reflexivity

Beyond Comte’s substantive theoretical corpus, a less well-known yet interesting aspect of his work is his reflections upon the relation between self and knowledge production. Comte was troubled by the problem of how an individual that is the product of actually existing society could produce science aimed at transforming said society, and speaks in Positive Polity of a process of self-transformation aimed at improving himself as a knowledge producer. As the methodologist Audrey Alejandro has elaborated, these considerations by Comte foreshadow key concerns in contemporary social science regarding the importance of reflexivity, meaning by this the necessity to be critically aware and to assess the ways personal dispositions and unconscious discourses shape the production of knowledge. Moving forward, Alejandro has seen in Comte a foundation to develop a reflexive discourse analysis (RDA) framework, so as to provide social scientists with applicable tools from discourse analysis for the task of implementing reflexivity in practice.