Premodernity, Modernity, Postmodernity, and Eu-Modernity as the Four Stages of Civilizational Developmental Psychology: Comte’s Parallel Human-Civilizational Developments

Abstract

In this paper, the Auguste Comte’s parallel human-civilizational developments in the early nineteenth century are broadened and updated for the twenty-first century. Comte establishes the parallel between European civilizational development as the law of three stages (the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive scientific stage) and human development (childhood, adolescence, and adulthood). He holds that each individual human develops from the stage of a devout believer in childhood as in the theological stage, to a critical metaphysician to question the abstract notions of existence in adolescence as in the metaphysical stage, and to a natural philosopher in adulthood as in the positive scientific stage. The Comte’s parallel human-civilizational developments are broadened to include collectivism-individualism, human evolution, and developmental psychology from Erikson’s psychosocial development, and are updated to include the stages after the nineteenth century. The four stages of infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, and adulthood in the proposed human development are parallel to the four stages of premodernity, modernity, postmodernity, and eu-modernity (post-postmodernity) in the proposed civilizational development. Each individual human develops from believing infancy to believe in parent as believing premodernity to believe in authoritative religion, to autonomous toddlerhood to explore as rational autonomous modernity to explore, to diverse childhood to learn diversity as diverse postmodernity to learn diversity, and to eusocial adulthood to establish eusociality by interdependent division of labor, multigenerational generativity, and intergroup generosity as eusocial eu-modernity to establish eusociality by interdependent division of labor between individualism and collectivism, multigenerational generativity for long-term wellbeing, and intergroup generosity for long-distance wellbeing. Eusocial eu-modernity is the adulthood civilization.