This article aims to analyze the influence of Comte's positivism in the thinking of the Uruguayan author José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917). Rodó writes in a period marked by the need for a historical readjustment in Latin America; his lesson addresses those men who should take over the reins of the society, in order to inspire them through an intellectual discipline able to give back the culture of spiritual values lost with the advance of the capitalist order. We can notice that the influence of positivism in Rodó's thinking appears in the following aspects: a generalized view of the Latin American society, seen as one and an indivisible whole, the mental organization, the importance of the intellectual activity as an instrument responsible for assessing the progressive history of the human spirit, the knowledge as a social intervention; also the absence of opposition between science and religion.
Positivism; José Enrique Rodó; Auguste Comte; Intellectuality; Traditional thinking