Mathematics and Philosophy
Condorcet is considered as the last of the eighteenth-century French philosophes who powerfully shaped the intellectual landscape in France and Europe. Born on 17 September 1743 in Ribemont, in the province of Picardie, he was first educated at the Jesuit school in Reims and the celebrated College de Navarre in Paris.
Possessed of a talent for mathematics, he studied with the mathematician and philosophe Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783) - the co-editor, with Denis Diderot (1713-1784), of the flagship of the French Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers (1751-72). He quickly gained the reputation of a prominent geometre, his domains of predilection being integral calculus and probability theory. But as many scientists and philosophes of the time he had an encyclopaedic mind, and he showed a great interest in the “sciences morales et politiques” or “sciences sociales” (see, for example, Granger 1956; Baker 1975; Kintzler 1984; Crepel and Gilain 1989; McLean and Hewitt 1994).During the 1760s and early 1770s, he became a disciple and friend of Voltaire (1694-1778) and Turgot (1727-1781). He later published a celebrated Vie de M. Turgot (1786) - immediately translated into English (1787) and much appreciated by the British reformers - and a Vie de Voltaire (1789). A promising member of the clan of the Encyclopaedists, he was quickly elected at the Academie des Sciences (1769) - of which he became the secretaire perpetuel in 1776 - and the Academie Franςaise (1782). Thanks to Turgot, he also held the official position of Inspecteur des Monnaies from 1775 to 1791. His first publications in economics, such as “Monopole et monopoleur” (1775) and Reflexions sur le commerce des bles (1776), were made to support Turgot’s free trade program of reforms during his ministry (August 1774-May 1776).
After the fall of Turgot, he turned back to mathematics and sciences but never abandoned his political and philosophical concerns. This can be seen in particular in Vie de M. Turgot, or in his attempts to apply mathematics and probability either to the traditional problems of insurance - for example, in some 1784 texts for C.-J. Panckoucke’s Encyclopedie Methodique: “Absent”, “Arithmetique politique (supplement)” or “Assurances maritimes” - or to the fields of law (decisions to be taken by a panel of judges) and elections. He shared Turgot’s project to transform the French political system with a series of elected assemblies: he wished not only to define their tasks but also sought the best way to organize ballots and decisions. These last points were mainly developed in the voluminous and complex Essai sur l’application de l’analyse a la probability des decisions rendues a la pluralite des voix (1785), in Essai sur la constitution et les fonctions des assembliesprovinciales (1788), Lettres d’un bourgeois de New Haven a un citoyen de Virginie, sur l’utilite de partager le pouvoir legis- latif entre plusieurs corps (1788) or Sur la forme des elections (1789).While not elected to the 1789 Etats Generaux du Royaume - the convening of which is the emblematic starting point of the French Revolution - he was an enthusiast supporter of the revolutionary process, either as a member of the Commune de Paris or as a careful observer and journalist in various newspapers. He was also the co-founder of a political club, the Societe de 1789, and two periodicals, Bibliotheque de l’homme public in 1790 and Journal d’instruction sociale in 1793. Finally elected to the Assemblee Legislative in 1791 and to the Convention Nationale in 1792, he demanded the deposition of the King and the proclamation of the Republic after a failed attempt by the Royal family to leave the country. His activities encompassed a wide range of subjects: money, finance, taxes, public debt, public instruction and the new constitution - continuing also his former fights in favour of the equality of men and women and the abolition of slavery.
As regards political economy proper, the most significant texts from this period are “Sur l’impot progressif” and “Tableau general de la science, qui a pour objet l’application du calcul aux sciences politiques et morales”, both published in 1793 in Journal d’instruction sociale. After he refused to vote for the death sentence for the King - he was against capital punishment - and criticized the Jacobins in power, the Convention decreed his arrest. While hiding, he wrote his philosophical testament, Esquisse d’un tableau his- torique desprogres de l’esprit humain, posthumously published in 1795, which provoked T.R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) and formed the starting point of some nineteenth-century developments in political philosophy. After having been arrested, Condorcet died in jail, probably on 30 March 1794.The large number of Condorcet’s writings on mathematics, philosophy, politics and economics present a problem of interpretation (for a brief history of some reactions, see Faccarello 1989). Commentaries generally referred to a vague theory of evolution and progress associated with the 1795 Esquisse, and, after the Second World War, to his ideas on elections to which Georges-Theodule Guilbaud (1952), Gilles-Gaston Granger (1956), Duncan Black (1958) and Kenneth Arrow (1963) drew attention - they had been almost forgotten for some 150 years, with the exceptions of Edward John Nanson (1882 [1907]) and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll 1876 [1958]). While much is still to be done, recent research has made it possible to identify a quite different intellectual stature of Condorcet. Leaving aside the widely commented Esquisse - which is a small part of a wider project, the Tableau historique des progres de l’esprit humain proper (Condorcet 2004), of which it was supposed to be the Prospectus - it is first necessary to understand the main characteristics of his approach.