Marquis de Condorcet

French mathematician, philosopher, and revolutionary

• Born: September 17, 1743
• Birthplace: Ribemont, France
• Died: March 29, 1794
• Place of death: Bourg-la-Reine, France

Condorcet’s works synthesized the thinking of the philosophes of the Enlightenment. He spent his life promoting educational, political, social, and religious change in France.

Early Life

The marquis de Condorcet (mahr-kee duh kohn-dawr-seh) was born into the very old aristocratic family of Caritat, which took its title, Condorcet, from a town in Dauphiné. The marquis spent his early years in pursuits typical of his class. He received his early education at the Jesuit school in Reims and then entered the Collège de Navarre in Paris. There he developed a lifelong commitment to science. In 1769, he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, followed by membership in the French Academy for his work in the science of statistics and the doctrine of probability. As a result of his reputation in mathematics, he was appointed inspector general of the mint in Paris.

While serving as inspector general, Condorcet met and married Sophie de Grouchy in 1786. Twenty years his junior and considered one of the great beauties of the day, Madame Grouchy presided over a salon of notable reputation, which attracted many of the leading personalities in Paris. There Condorcet conversed with people such as David Hume, the great British philosopher. At this time, Condorcet wrote the biographies, Vie de M. Turgot (1786; The Life of M. Turgot, 1787) and Vie de Voltaire (1789; The Life of Voltaire, 1790). These works reflected his appreciation for Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot’s Physiocratic economics and Voltaire’s revolutionary religious and social theories. Condorcet had become a philosophe.

He also frequented the Paul-Henri-Dietrich d’Holbach’s salon, the Café de l’Europe, where wide-ranging discussion included political and social reform, religion, education, science, and the arts. He wrote for Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie: Ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (1751-1772; Encyclopedia, 1965). While he respected Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work, it was Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s ideas that influenced him most strongly. When the marquis de Lafayette returned from his American success, it was with Condorcet that he conferred about the American Revolution and the future of France. Condorcet also knew Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and thought that the United States was the place most likely to implement the ideals of the Enlightenment. Not surprisingly, when the French Revolution began, Condorcet repudiated all the religious and aristocratic ideals of his background and became one of the few philosophes actively involved in the revolution.

Life’s Work

Although he would not survive the revolution, Condorcet is best remembered for the work that he produced during its first five years. On the eve of revolution, Condorcet and Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès founded the ’89 Club, a salon that became the meeting place for the politically moderate Girondists. Condorcet was elected as a representative from Paris to the legislative assembly. As secretary of this body, he wrote the address in 1791 which explained the revolution to the European powers. The following year, he drafted the declaration that suspended the monarchy, disbanded the assembly, and called for a new government, the national convention, to formulate a constitution for France. Though ultimately defeated in favor of the more radical proposal from the Jacobins, Condorcet’s was the first of the constitutions presented to the convention. In this government, Condorcet represented the Department of Aisne.

Although the first person to declare for republican government, Condorcet voted against the execution of the king and queen. By 1793, his independent and moderate attitude and his enormous prestige made him dangerous to Robespierre, who was by then in control of the revolution. When Condorcet objected to the arrest of his Girondist friends, Robespierre had him outlawed.

During these hectic but creative early years, Condorcet wrote his two most influential works. The first of these was his educational plan, submitted to the legislative assembly in 1792, which detailed a system for state education. It divided the proposed educational system into four parts: primary, secondary, higher, and adult education, all of which would be coeducational. All instruction would be based in free inquiry under the control of a corporation of scholars, independent of supervision by either the church or the state. The curriculum would be secular in emphasis. Primary education was to be free and compulsory for all children of the state. Characteristic of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s educational theory, students were to be allowed considerable freedom of choice in their curriculum, and administration would be minimal. The higher education component included a system of technical, medical, and teacher-training schools, which when finally implemented became the best in Europe. Condorcet assumed that all people would want and appreciate the opportunity to attend school and that they, like him, would recognize that only through education could the ideal of progress be attained. Although revolution and war prevented its immediate implementation, the plan became the basis of the education system ultimately adopted, not only by the French but also by other nations.

Equally influential was Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’espirit humain (1795; Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 1955), written just before his death in 1794. In this work, Condorcet analyzed all human history, past, present, and future; he used history to find evidence to justify his confidence that human progress was inevitable. The work is particularly significant, as it synthesized the major strains of Enlightenment thought and the goals of the French Revolution. It reflects the extent of Condorcet’s optimism.

Condorcet divided the history of humankind into ten epochs, eight in the past, the ninth in his own age, and the tenth in the future. Up to the Middle Ages, Condorcet thought that humankind had made great progress. For example, the Greeks had opened the way for humankind’s search for truth through the greatest of inventions, philosophy. Then the Dark Ages fell, thought to be shrouded in superstition, ignorance, and clericism. Condorcet saw only the unintended development of precision in argumentation made by the Scholastics and the contributions to poetry, nobility of spirit, and individual freedom made by Dante in La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802) as worthy contributions of this epoch.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brought renewed light to human understanding. Witness the development of the printing press, the tool that reawakened the mind of humans, creating, according to Condorcet, “cultural revolution.” The ninth epoch was his own, in which the revolution would destroy old ideas and institutions, thus paving the way for the tenth epoch, in which the perfect human would live in a perfect civilization.

All this progress was possible because science had revealed the secrets of nature and technology, which would relieve humans of labor so that they might use their free time for self-improvement. Although Condorcet conceded that the intellectuals would dominate paternalistically until all people had the benefit of education, he believed that once educated, each individual would use his or her time constructively. The improvement of the individual would lead to social and political progress, stop exploitation, and produce true equality. Condorcet recognized that this process was not an easy one and that often there were periods when things seemed bleak, but he firmly believed that the spirit and reason of humans would prevail, that the perfectibility of humans and society was inevitable. He believed in the unity of all knowledge and in the continuity of progress. He thought that this was the consummate lesson of human history.

Significance

As the youngest of the philosophes, marquis de Condorcet embodied the principles of the Enlightenment. He represented the moderate Girondist position in the French Revolution. Thus, he voted against the execution of the king, while still being one of the first revolutionaries to promote republicanism. He worked hard in several capacities to achieve the goals of the revolution. He was the leading educational theorist of the revolution and the creator of a secular education system that became the model for many state systems established during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Condorcet insisted that education and science were crucial to social progress and human perfectibility. His theory of history particularly influenced Auguste Comte and the development of sociology.

Outlawed with other Girondists during the Reign of Terror, Condorcet went into hiding. He spent the last weeks of his life writing the Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, which he is said to have been holding in his hands when he died. On March 24, believing that his hiding place had been discovered, Condorcet fled Paris and hid in the countryside for three days. On March 27, he wandered into the village of Clamart, where he was captured and taken to the prison in Bourg-la-Reine to await execution. Whether by poison or from exhaustion, Condorcet was found dead in his cell two days later. Despite this dismal death, Condorcet never lost his faith in the revolution or his optimism about the progress of the human spirit.

Bibliography

Becker, Carl. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1932. Reprinted many times and readily available, this provocative and brilliantly insightful essay has stimulated much research about the nature and influence of Enlightenment thinkers, including Condorcet. Any study of Enlightenment thinkers should begin with this book.

Bury, J. B. The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origins and Growth. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1932. This now-classic work on the idea of progress as the basic characteristic of Enlightenment thought contains an excellent analysis of Condorcet’s role in the development of this idea.

Condorcet, marquis de. Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. Translated by June Barraclough with an introduction by Stuart Hampshire. New York: Noonday Press, 1955. This is an excellent translation of Condorcet’s best-known work, which strongly influenced the work of Auguste Comte and the development of sociology.

Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Age of Voltaire. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965. This intelligent, urbane, highly readable, and readily available account of the Enlightenment contains excellent insights into the role and contributions of Condorcet.

Gay, Peter. The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. This stylistically excellent, soundly researched book is a brilliant synthesis of the various threads of Enlightenment thought. It clearly illustrates the environment that produced Condorcet as well as his contributions to the revolutionary quality of his age.

Goodell, Edward. The Noble Philosopher: Condorcet and the Enlightenment. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994. Examines Condorcet’s life and work. Goodell places special emphasis on Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind as an example of Condorcet’s thought and contributions to Enlightenment philosophy.

Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936. This standard work details the history of the ideas of natural law and progress.

Martin, Kingsley. French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Political Ideas from Bayle to Condorcet. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. Based almost exclusively upon primary sources, this book remains the best analysis of the development of liberal thought in the eighteenth century. As such, it describes Condorcet’s contributions, particularly his theories of history, social progress, and human perfectibility.

Shapiro, J. Salwyn. Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934. This biography is a thorough study of Condorcet and his contributions to the tradition of liberal thought in Western society.

Williams, David. Condorcet and Modernity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Analysis of Condorcet’s political theory, examining the connection between Condorcet as a visionary idealist and a pragmatic legislator.