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² Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795)Google Scholar, in Oeuvres de Condorcet, ed. Arago, M. F. and O'Connor, A. Condorcet (Paris, 1847–1849) (OC), VI, 263.Google Scholar

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⁷ Havel, V., Living in truth, ed. Vladislav, J. (London, 1989), pp. 159, 177Google Scholar; Havel, , ‘Planting, watering and waiting’, International Herald Tribune, November 13 1992Google Scholar. ‘The rational reorganisation of society’, in Berlin's words, ‘would create the happy, free, just, virtuous, harmonious world which Condorcet so movingly predicted’, and ‘this kind of omniscience was the solution of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle’ – Berlin, , The crooked timber, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

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¹¹ Taylor, C., Hegel (Cambridge, 1975), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, , Sources of the self: the making of modern identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), p. 319.Google Scholar

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¹³ See the ‘avertissement’ of the first editors and the report of the first distributors (the parliamentary Committee of Public Instruction of 1795) in OC, VI, 4, 8. Arago himself, in his biographical introduction to the edition of the 1840s (which is still the only extensive edition of Condorcet's non-scientific works), describes his ‘mission’ as the ‘rehabilitation’ of a fellow academician, ‘scientific, literary, philosophical and political’: OC, I, vi. Condorcet's most important modern interpreters – including K. M. Baker, and L. Cahen and F. Alengry at the beginning of the century – comment on the striking concentration on the ‘Esquisse’, and on ‘utopianism’, in most readings of Condorcet: Baker, K. M., Condorcet: from natural philosophy to social mathematics (Chicago, 1975), pp. 343–4Google Scholar; Alengry, F., Condorcet Guide de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1904), pp. 835, 854.Google Scholar

¹⁴ ‘Il fallait oublier un moment la France que nous voyons, et aller interroger dans son tombeau la France qui n'est plus’: de Tocqueville, A., L'ancien régime et la révolution (1856), ed. Mayer, J.-P. (Paris, 1967), p. 44.Google Scholar

¹⁵ ‘Éloge de M. D'Alembert’ (1788), in OC, III, 78–9; Baker, , Condorcet, pp. 176–189.Google Scholar

¹⁶ ‘Tableau Général de la Science’ (1793), OC, I, 567.

¹⁷ ‘Réflexions sur le commerce des blés’ (1776), in OC, XI, 242; ‘Sentiments d'un républicain’ (1788), in OC, IX, 143.

¹⁸ Condorcet, Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix (1785) (New York, reimpr. 1972)Google Scholar; Condorcet uses the word ‘impossibility’ himself, in his letter presenting the Essay to Frederick II: OC, I, 306.

¹⁹ Essai, pp. lxv–lxviii, 116–7; ‘Sur les assemblées provinciales’ (1788), in OC, VIII, 594. The question of ‘bad reasons’ for political preferences arises, here, when individuals, confronted with three different constitutional proposals, prefer both ‘extremes’ to the ‘centre’ position.

²⁰ ‘Sur les élections’ (1793), in OC, XII, 643.

²¹ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’ (1791–2), in OC, VII, 201–2.

²² ‘Sur le commerce des blés’, OC, XI, 145.

²³ ‘Dissertation’ (1790), in OC, V, 371.

²⁴ Henry, C., ed., Correspondance inédite de Condorcet et de Turgot 1770–1779 (Paris, 1883), pp. 141, 148.Google Scholar

²⁵ ‘If he is speaking of the reflective, calculated interest, by which man compares himself to others and prefers himself, it is false that even the most corrupted men always behave according to this principle’: Henry, , Correspondance, pp. 143–4.Google Scholar

²⁶ ‘Vie de M. Turgot’ (1786), in OC, V, 175.

²⁷ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 234.

²⁸ ‘Vie de M. Turgot’, OC, V, 175, 194.

²⁹ On Helvétius and Bentham, see Morley, J., Diderot and the encyclopaedists, II (London, 1886), 136–41.Google Scholar

³⁰ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 235–6.

³¹ ‘Vie de M. Turgot’, OC, V, 187.

³² ‘Sur le commerce des blés’, OC, XI, 155.

³³ ‘Sur l'admission des femmes au droit de cité’ (1790), in OC, X, 126.

³⁴ A nation is an ‘abstract being’, and as such it ‘can be neither happy nor unhappy’: ‘Thus, when one speaks of the happiness of a nation collectively, one can only understand two things: either a sort of median value, seen as the result of the happiness or unhappiness of individuals; or the general means of happiness, that is to say of tranquillity and wellbeing, which the land, laws, industry and relations with foreign nations can provide for the citizens generally. It is enough to have some idea of justice to feel that one should hold to the latter sense. Otherwise, one would have to adopt the maxim, too prevalent among ancient and modern republicans, that the few can legitimately be sacrificed to the many’ – ‘De l'influence de la révolution d'Amérique sur l'Europe’ (1786), in OC, VIII, 4–5.

³⁵ ‘Réflexions sur l'esclavage des nègres‘ (1781), in OC, VII, 80–1, 120.

³⁶ ‘Sur le commerce des blés’, OC, XI, 145, 161, 191.

³⁷ Ibid., OC, XI, 179.

³⁸ Esquisse, OC, VI, 191; ‘Plan d'un emprunt publique’ (1789), in OC, XI, 361.

³⁹ ‘Sur l'esclavage des nègres’, OC, VII, 122.

⁴⁰ This is from a fragment published by L. Cahen: Cahen, , ‘Un fragment inédit de Condorcet’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 22 (1914), 590.Google Scholar

⁴¹ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 201–2.

⁴² Ibid., p. 202; Constant, B., ‘De laliberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes’ (1819)Google Scholar, in Constant, , De l'esprit de conquête, p. 270.Google Scholar

⁴³ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 203, 211–13, 326; ‘Discours sur les conventions nationales’ (1791), in OC, X, 209.

⁴⁴ Condorcet questions Pietro Verri, in one of his very first writings on political economy, about the enlightened self-interest of despots. You are trying, he says, ‘to make them understand that their true interest lies in making the people happy … But are you not afraid that you will degrade the people a little in the eyes of their masters, that they will come to see them as beasts of burden who are worth no more than what they bring in?’: ‘Condorcet au Comte Pierre Verri’ (1771), in OC, I, 285.

⁴⁵ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 215, 327. The characteristic of true morality, Condorcet says in his ‘Lettres d'un théologien’ of 1774, is that it ‘orders the powerful to regard the weak as his brother, and not as an instrument which at his will he can use or break’: OC, V, 334. In his ‘Vie de Voltaire’ (1789), too, he denounces those who seek to make of other men ‘the blind instruments of their ambition and greed’: OC, IV, 181.

⁴⁶ OC, VII, 215; ‘Sur les assemblées provinciales’, OC, VIII, 482.

⁴⁷ Esquisse, OC, VI, 263.

⁴⁸ ‘This purported opposition of interests … has until now been one of the principal causes which has slowed the progress of liberty, of peace, of the true equality which is still so little known’: ‘Sur le préjugé qui suppose une contrariété d'intérêts entre Paris et les provinces’ (1790), in OC, X, 134. If people's interests were really opposed, Condorcet wrote, ‘society would be perpetually disturbed by a silent war between these enemy classes’: ‘Que toutes les classes de la société n'ont qu'un même intérêt’ (1793), OC, XII, 646.

⁴⁹ Condorcet, Essai, p. iii. It is not entirely clear which ‘ancients’ Condorcet had in mind; Cicero, perhaps.

⁵⁰ One of Condorcet's continuing preoccupations was indeed with the competing uses of political nouns. ‘Of all the words which console and reassure men’, he wrote in 1776, ‘justice is the only one which the oppressor does not dare to pronounce, while the name of humanity is on the lips of all the tyrants’: ‘Sur le commerce des blés’, OC, XI, 167. His principal argument for some sort of instruction in moral reflection, during the revolution, is that it will make it possible for people to defend themselves against ‘seduction’: ‘plunder in the name of justice, tyranny in the name of liberty or equality, barbarism in the name of humanity’ – ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 329.

⁵¹ One illustration of the problem is taken from preferences over constitutional arrangements: voters must choose between outcomes in which distinct orders have distinct chambers, in which different orders have distinct arrangements in a single chamber, and in which different orders sit without distinction in a single chamber: ‘Sur les assemblées’, OC, VIII, 589–98.

⁵² Ibid. p. 574.

⁵³ Lord, Acton, ‘Sir Erskine May's Democracy in Europe’ (1878), in Acton, Essays in the history of liberty (Indianapolis, 1985), p. 82.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ ‘Examen sur cette question: est-il utile de diviser une assemblée nationale en plusieurs chambres?’ (1789), in OC, IX, 358.

⁵⁵ ‘Avis aux Espagnols’ (1792), in OC, XII, 131–2.

⁵⁶ ‘Sur les élections’, in OC, XII, 639–40, 643.

⁵⁷ ‘De la nature des pouvoirs politiques dans une nation libre’ (1792), in OC, X, 607.

⁵⁸ The decision would follow a ‘reasoned discussion’ of ‘all the opinions and all the grounds on which these opinions could be based’, it would consist of successive rounds of voting on propositions, and it would – in the case of a decision which might in any way violate individual rights, including property rights – require a plurality of three fourths or more; this method might at first sight seem, Condorcet says, to entail ‘des lenteurs insupportables’ – ‘Sur les assemblées’, OC, VIII, 213–16, 601.

⁵⁹ The individual is ‘led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention‘, or to ‘without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society’: Smith, A., The wealth of nations (Oxford, 1976), p. 456Google Scholar; The theory of moral sentiments (Oxford, 1976), p. 185Google Scholar; see also Rothschild, E., ‘The “bloody and invisible hand”’ (Cambridge: Centre for History and Economics, 1994).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Arago, , ‘Biographie de Condorcet’, in OC, I, clxii–iiiGoogle Scholar; Badinter, E. and Badinter, R., Condorcet (Paris, 1988), p. 42Google Scholar; letter of Turgot to Condorcet in Henry, , Correspondence, pp. 175–6Google Scholar; Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre (Paris, 1967), x, 456Google Scholar. See also, on Condorcet's writings of the revolutionary period, Delsaux, H., Condorcet Journaliste (1790–1794) (Paris, 1931).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Diannyère, A., ‘Notice’, in Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (Paris, 1797), p. 54.Google Scholar

⁶² Bonald, , ‘Observations’, pp. 721–2.Google Scholar

⁶³ Morley, J., Diderot, II, 229.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Voltaire's support for Russian over Turkish despotism, for example, could have been inspired by political principles as well as by the desire to charm the Empress Catherine, Condorcet says. One can be against despotism because it violates the rights of individuals, including the rights of individuals as women, oppressed in the ‘tyrannical customs of the East, which condemn an entire sex to shameful slavery’; ‘this is what Voltaire should have thought, this is what Turgot did think.’ – ‘Vie de Voltaire’, OC, IV, 145–6.

⁶⁵ J. S. Mill, ‘Autobiography’, in Mill, , Collected works (Toronto, 1981), I, 115.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ ‘Universalism’ is in fact one of the nouns (like ‘rationalism’ and ‘nationalism’) which is mostly used, at least in its secular sense, by people who are opposed to the positions which it denotes; Condorcet and Voltaire did not describe themselves as universalists.

⁶⁷ See, on universalism, Berlin, , The crooked timber, pp. 85, 175–7, 245Google Scholar; Lovejoy, A. O., The great chain of being (1936) (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 290–3.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ ‘Esquisse’, OC, VI, 86–7; Hume, D., A treatise of human nature (1739) (Oxford, 1965), pp. 272–4Google Scholar. See, on the influence of Hume on Condorcet, Baker, , Condorcet, pp. 138–55Google Scholar, Baker, , ‘L'unité de la pensée de Condorcet’Google Scholar, in Crépel, P. and Gilain, C., Condorcet: mathématicien, économiste, philosophe, homme politique (Paris, 1989)Google Scholar, and Popkin, R., ‘Condorcet and Hume and Turgot’, in Condorcet studies II, ed. Williams, D. (New York, 1984), pp. 47–62.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Burnyeat, M. F., ‘Can the skeptic live his skepticism’, in Burnyeat, , ed., The skeptical tradition (Berkeley, 1983), p. 129.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ ‘Dogmatism’ in general does not pose problems of this sort. It is not incoherent in the same sense that skepticism seems to be; one can conceive of fully coherent dogmatists, so attached to themselves that they do all they can, all the time, to promote their own dogmas. The difficulties arise with Condorcet's particular version of dogmatism, in which the belief (the ‘dogma’) to be asserted is a belief that one's beliefs should not be asserted, or at least not if one will thereby interfere with the rights of others to determine their own beliefs. The incoherence of belief and life is a problem for all skeptics, and for some dogmatists.

⁷¹ B. Williams, ‘Conflicts of values’, in Williams, , Moral luck (Cambridge, 1981), p. 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷² Séance du 18 Floréal An II (1794), in Oeuvres de Robespierre, X, 442–64. Stoicism, for Robespierre, was so evidently superior, or ‘sublime’, as to merit a special revolutionary holiday – along with ‘Malheur’ and the Supreme Being, the festival ‘au Stoïcisme’. Condorcet does indeed discuss Zeno and Epicurus in the Esquisse; he speaks of ‘two new sects, who founded morality on opposing principles, at least in appearance’, adds that both sects were infiltrated by men who were, respectively, ‘hard, proud, and unjust’, and ‘voluptuous and corrupt’, and concludes that ‘the philosophy which aspired to elevate itself above nature, and that which wished to do no more than obey it; the morality which knew no other good than virtue, and that which found happiness in voluptuousness, led to the same practical consequences’ – OC, VI, 89–92.

⁷³ Burke, E., Reflections on the revolution in France (1790), ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Indianapolis, 1987), p. 76Google Scholar; Bonald, ‘Sur l'economie politique’ (1810) – an attack on Adam Smith – in Oeuvres, II, 299.

⁷⁴ ‘Lettres d'un bourgeois de Newhaven’ (1787), in OC, IX, 14.

⁷⁵ ‘Sur l'admission des femmes’, in OC, X, 122. Condorcet gives a similar definition in the letters from ‘New Haven’, OC, IX, 14, and in the Esquisse, OC, VI, 176.

⁷⁶ In the Aristotelian schemes with which he was familiar, Condorcet was following the order in which children are supposed to develop, but reversing the order of ‘nature’: the state is not prior by nature to the individual, and the emotions are not subject by nature to the governance of the mind: Aristotle, Politics, 1253a, 1254b, 1334b.

⁷⁷ ‘Vie de M. Turgot’, OC, V, 207.

⁷⁸ This is in his extended argument in favour of equal instruction for women: ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 219.

⁷⁹ It is ‘not the present sensation or momentary pain or pleasure, which determines the character of any passion, but the general bent or tendency of it from the beginning to the end’, Hume writes: ‘the passions, therefore, must depend on principles’; Hume, , Treatise, pp. 384–5, 387Google Scholar. Condorcet's sentiments are much closer to Hume's than to the sensations (or ‘vibrations’) of Hartley or Condillac; on Condorcet's differences with Condillac, see Baker, , Condorcet, pp. 114–17.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Cousin, V., Philosophie écossaise (Paris, 1857), p. 151Google Scholar. Condorcet was much influenced by Smith at the end of his life; his wife, the philosopher Sophie Grouchy, translated the 6th edition of The theory of moral sentiments into French during the Revolution, adding an extensive study of the nature of sympathy.

⁸¹ Plato, Protagoras, 322C–323C. Condorcet's version of this thought, with its emphasis on the details of domestic conduct, is in something of the same spirit as Bernard Williams's; ‘the capacity for creative emotional response has the advantage of being, if not equally, at least broadly, distributed’ – Williams, , Problems of the self (Cambridge, 1973), p. 229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸² Condorcet is close, here too, to Hume: in Baier's description, ‘at the very heart of Hume's moral theory lies his celebration of family life and of parental love. Justice, the chief artificial virtue, is the offspring of family cooperativeness and inventive self-interested reason’; Baier, A., Moral prejudices (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), pp. 57–8.Google Scholar

⁸³ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 234–6. ‘The American forgets that the negroes are men; he has no moral relation with them’, Condorcet writes of the colonial plantation owner; he must also make special efforts to harden the hearts of his children, for example by making his daughters watch slave trials– ‘Remarques sur les pensées de Pascal’ (1776), in OC, III, 647–8.

⁸⁴ ‘Sur l'instruction publique’, OC, VII, 198; ‘Vie de M. Turgot’, OC, V, 181–2.

⁸⁵ ‘Sur les pensées de Pascal’, OC, III, 640.

⁸⁶ Esquisse, OC, VI, 91. The phrase ‘hors d'oeuvre’ had by then, in fact as early as the Encyclopédie of 1765, taken on the modern culinary connotation of ‘small dishes which accompany big dishes’; Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, VIII (Neufchastel, 1765), 313.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Esquisse, OC, VI, 261–2.

⁸⁸ Ibid., pp. 264–5; ‘Vie de M. Turgot’, OC, V, 195.

⁸⁹ Sainte-Beuve, , ‘Causeries’, p. 267.Google Scholar

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⁹¹ Cassirer, E., La philosophie des lumières, transl. Quillet, P. (Paris, 1966), p. 303.Google Scholar

⁹² Thus, on society as a Maschiene, Herder, J. G., ‘Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildungder Menschheit’ (1774)Google Scholar, in Herder, , Sämtliche Werke, ed. Suphan, B. (Berlin, 1891, reimpr. 1967), V, 516, 529, 533–6, 538, 546, 549, 564Google Scholar, or on man as a mere Werkzeug, pp. 524, 526, 547, 564. Are we ‘beings destined to do something for ourselves in the world,’ Herder asks, or are our ‘needs, our ends and our decisions the objects of a political calculation: everyone in the uniform of his estate, a machine?’ (p. 539).

⁹³ This is Posa speaking to King Philip in Don Carlos: Schiller, F., Don Carlos (1787), III. 10, 3051–3Google Scholar; transl. Kirkup, J. (Garden City, 1959)Google Scholar. The scene was Hölderlin's ‘favourite’: Hölderlin, , Oeuvres, ed. Jaccottet, P. (Paris, 1967), p. 98.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ On the state as Sittenschule, see Hölderlin, F., Hyperion (1797) (Stuttgart, 1976), p. 35.Google Scholar

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⁹⁶ ‘Éclaircissements sur la versification allemande’ (1761), in Oeuvres de Turgot, ed. Schelle, G., I (Paris, 1913), 631–65Google Scholar; see, on Hume in Germany, ‘Hume and the sources of German anti-rationalism’, in Berlin, Against the current.

⁹⁷ Kant, , Critique of pure reason (1781), transl. Smith, N. Kemp (New York, 1965), p. 412.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ ‘Moral philosophy divides itself in the 18th century into three principal schools, which are themselves divided between the three principal countries of Europe: France, Great Britain and Germany’, Paul Janet writes; the (French) doctrine of pleasure and interest is counterposed to the (Anglo-Scottish) doctrine of moral sentiments and to the (German) doctrine of pure understanding – Paul, Janet, Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale (Paris, 1913), II, 574.Google Scholar

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¹⁰¹ Ibid. p. 257.

¹⁰² Diderot is thus distinguished from other figures of the Enlightenment in that he accords an ‘important place to emotion in the life of men’: R. Hausheer, ‘Introduction’, in Berlin, , Against the current, p. xxxiiiGoogle Scholar. Tocqueville, by contrast, saw Diderot as the most transient of philosophers: he asks, of the books of Diderot and Helvétius, ‘Who would want to read them? I am tempted to say, who even knows their titles?’ – L'ancien régime, p. 249.

¹⁰³ ‘J'y retrouvais une foule de sentiments que j'avais crus nés de la Révolution’: Tocqueville, , L'ancien régime, pp. 44–6, 231.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Ibid. pp. 259–261, 309.

¹⁰⁵ Furet, F., Penser la révolution française (Paris, 1978), pp. 36, 280.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Quoted in Furet, , Penser la révolution française, p. 281.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Tocqueville, , L'ancien régime, p. 231.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ It is quite inappropriate, Condorcet wrote early in 1789, to judge Voltaire on the basis of positions – ‘une disposition des esprits’ – which are subsequent by 10 years to his death, and by half a century to his philosophy; to condemn him, for example, for ‘having distinguished the good which can exist without freedom, from the happiness which comes from liberty itself’: ‘Vie de Voltaire’, OC, IV, 182.

¹⁰⁹ Tocqueville says that the Économistes, of all the men of the 1750s, would be most at home in the socialism of the mid-19th century, and for Furet, their ideas ‘prefigured’ the tyranny of 1793, rather than the liberalism of 1789: L'ancien régime, p. 262; Penser la révolution française, p. 248.

¹¹⁰ One consequence of Tocqueville's journey, for his modern exegetes, is to show the unimportance of the revolution in the genesis of revolutionary thought. But there is a different consequence as well: it is to suggest that the counter-revolution, or the political thought of the revolution's critics, is similarly unimportant in the genesis of liberal, ‘diversitarian’ individualism. The critique of centralising uniformity is to be found within the ancien régime and within the Enlightenment; within the disputes, well before Burke's Reflections, over the economic theories of the first Economistes.

¹¹¹ B. Constant, ‘Des réactions politiques’ and ‘Des effets de la terreur’ (1797), in Constant, Écrits et discours politiques, ed. O. Pozzo, di Borgo, I (Paris, 1964), 55, 99, 105, 109, 111.Google Scholar

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¹¹³ Constant, , ‘De la Liberté’, p. 289.Google Scholar

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