Condorcet

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Hello, Nicholas de Condorcet is known as the last of the philosoph, the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment who sought to apply their learning to solving the problems of their time. Born in seventeen forty three, he became a passionate believer in the progress of society, an advocate for equal rights for women and the abolition of the slave trade, and for representative government.

The French Revolution gave him a chance to advance these ideas, and while the terror brought his life to an end in seventeen ninety four, his wife, Sophie de Grucci, ensured his influence into the next century and beyond. With me to discuss the Marquis de Condorce are Tom Hopkins, Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College.

Richard Wartmore, Professor of Modern History at the University of St. Andrews and Co Director of the St. Andrews Institute of Intellectual History, and Rachel Hammersley, Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle University. Rachel, what was Condos' childhood like?

So his childhood was interesting. He was born in september seventeen forty three in Picadie in northern France. Mae'n llawer oedd yn y llywodra, ond mae'n llawer oedd yn ysgrifennu, ac mae'n llawer oedd yn ysgrifennu, ac mae'n llawer oedd yn ysgrifennu yn ysgrifennu. and this involved her um devoted dedicating him to the Virgin and insisting that he wore a skirt and pinafore until he was eight years old. So he had quite a protected childhood, um, to begin with.

He's then educated at the Jesuit College in Khan. um, in France that was near to his home, which didn't endear the Jesuits or religion to him, I don't think. And there's some sense that that contributed to his opposition to some of those religious ideas later in his life. In Paris in the learned world there.

This is his period marked out by an extraordinary outburst of learning, of shared learning, uh typified by the encyclopedia, Diderot's encyclopedia. Uh that was a big part of it. What was that and how does it relate to Condorce? The encyclopedia is a really interesting work, as you say, uh Denis Diderot was was fundamental and he was initially at To produce a kind of French version of an English encyclopedia at the time, the Chambers Cyclopedia, which had appeared in the 1720s.

Ond mae'r franswch yn cyklopedi wedi bod yn fwy ambythio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. 11 volumes of pictures, 72,000 entries, and really it's a collection of the state of knowledge at the time and and particularly of knowledge that would be useful. So one of the interesting things about the encyclopédie is it is about arts and sciences, but it's also about

practical arts if you like. So people who were tradesmen at the time, producing things, manufacturers. Mae'r pryseddiadau, mae'r pryseddiadau, mae'r pryseddiadau yn ymwneud â'r pryseddiadau, yn ymwneud â'r pryseddiadau, yn ymwneud â'r pryseddiadau. Mae'r pryseddiadau'n ymwneud â'r pryseddiadau. Mae'r pryseddiadau'n ymwneud â'r pryseddiadau'n ymwneud â'r pryseddiadau.

And so in the 1770s, Condorcet contributed uh a number of articles on mathematics to the supplement to the encyclopédie. But I think in some ways what's perhaps more interesting is what the encyclopedie contributed to condorcate, because I think there's a real connection there. Mae'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw.

Ond mae'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd And also in that notion of thinking about kind of manufacturers and and things like that as well as what we might think of as scientists. There's a notion of

practical knowledge, of knowledge being practical and useful and having a a kind of value in the world. And I think those three things, the advancement of knowledge, the dissemination of knowledge, and the practical application of knowledge.

really inform what Condorcet i is about in his later life. Thank you. Um Tom, Tom Hopkins. Um he became an extremely distinguished mathematician. Some people threw the word genius around. What do you make of it? Yes, it was quite controversial for his family that he decided to pursue mathematics professionally. Because he'd be an aristocrat, you mean? Indeed. They wanted him to be a soldier like his father. Uh and so when he comes back from the College de Navarre

the expectation is that he's going to return home for good, go into the army and pursue a career in that direction. Instead, he spends the year seventeen sixty two to three writing a couple of papers that uh he then returned to Paris to present, firstly to Jean Dalmbert, who we've heard about already, and another prominent mathematician, Jean Louis Le Grand And what these papers deal with are two very important problems that are being tackled by many mathematicians across Europe at that point.

Firstly, he's interested in integral calculus. Secondly, he's interested in what's called the three body problem, uh which in Newtonian physics deals with the uh motion of bodies that are simultaneously attracted to each other.

He used mathematics in all sorts of ways, didn't he? I mean he used it to talk about society. We'll come to that in different ways of society. Can you give us uh the first ways in which he decided that the knowledge he'd gained and the methods he'd gained from studying mathematics at the level he studied at would be useful in sh reshaping which he wanted to do society. A key moment is in seventeen seventy two, uh, when he becomes particularly interested in problems of probability.

Now, he has recently met the important French philosopher and public servant Turgot, and Turgot has interested him in problems about public administration.

He's also at that time quite closely connected with Voltaire, and Voltaire has interested him particularly in questions of injustice and problems of evidence in court cases. So there's a number of... scandals around uh French judicial decisions that Condorcet is particularly concerned with, particularly the trial and execution of the Chevalier de La Bar in seventeen sixty six. which he saw as a major injustice sparked by prejudice, bigotry, and poor rules of justice.

Now Voltaire was interested in the ways in which standards of evidence could be improved through the use of probability theory. And Condorcet agrees with him that there is a serious need to reform. He doesn't think Voltaire has the mathematical skills necessary to deliver And so he sets himself the task of showing how uh improvements in probability theory could give a secure standard of proof in judicial trials.

And this is very useful for two reasons. Firstly for pursuing this thought about how do you estimate the use of particular kinds of proof in judicial trials. Secondly, it has important implications for thinking about induction in natural science. Uh how could you reason back from an effect to its causes thinking about the probable value of a hypothesis?

Uh so Condol Sai's work in this area has quite significant implications for a range of matters both scientific and social. And it does get noticed. He's made a uh member of the Academy of Sciences already in uh seventeen sixty nine, but by seventeen eighty one he's been appointed to the French Academy, uh largely under the patronage of Dalembert, uh, but this is a uh major sign uh that he's held in high esteem.

Thank you. Richard Watmore. Richard, uh with hindsight we know that the revolution wasn't far off, but Condorcet wasn't a revolutionary at the time that we've been talking about it. What was he? He was definitely in these years, seventeen seventies, seventeen eighties, the antithesis of the Republican revolutionary he was to become.

And it's also worth saying that in a sense he has an anti politics because he sees around him like Turgot, like Dalambert, like Voltaire, he sees a corrupt French court, he sees a corrupt church. He sees selfishness and Machiavellianism all around him, and he thinks that he can define the public good for everybody. remove all political contestation and pass laws that ensure that people adhere to this public good. So it's a vision of the public good shared by a community.

And the claim which Condorcet es expresses and all of these figures do, and obviously they're philosoph, but they're also associated with the physiocratic movement, the reform movement in France. which is very influential in these years. It's based on land. It's based on the reform of land, but the main consequence is really going to be the restoration of French fortunes. You know, the perception is that the world is unnatural because France is not as great as it ought to be.

that a an odd state called Britain has risen. It's an unnatural state. And they think it's the f it's the fault of the French or they want to do something about it and doing something about it is passing laws systematically to guide French people towards the common good. and they think French greatness will follow. So there's quite a lot of national pride associated with the anti politics that he's expressing in these years.

He wasn't the first Montesquieu had uh looked at Britain as an example before him. Well Montesquieu in the spirit of the laws in seventeen forty eight, especially in the eleventh book. said that Britain was the most free state in history and also that it was a republic hiding beneath the form of a monarchy.

Now the presumption is that Montesquieu is therefore praising Britain, but actually it's the opposite. It's too free, it's a state that France cannot model itself on, and the message really is that States as free as Britain, with as much liberty as Britain, are likely to turn fanatic and they must not be followed as a political model. And that's certainly what Condorcet thinks and in a sense he's following Montesquieu.

But the Physiocrats and Turgot, they all think that Britain's risen unnaturally. It's got a corrupt economy. It's got a an odd political system where the common good is not followed and therefore you really need to avoid Britain as a model. And that is something that he that is a view that he adheres to to his dying day.

The irony is that they don't think Britain's successful at all. They think that it's risen because of trade. The trade that it pursues is associated with an enormous national debt. It's associated with the pursuit of war and corrupt forms of empire, and it must fail. It's also the prediction of Voltaire after the Seven Years' War, he thinks Britain's in decline, and it seems to be coming to pass.

with the American Revolution and the relative well, the defeat of Britain in war. When Br Britain is finally defeated in war by France, by the American colonies, it seems that all the predictions of the Philosoph of the seventeen fifties, seventeen sixties are coming true and a more natural world will emerge, guided by law and science, expressed by the philosophical

defining the common good, which is better for the entirety of humanity. In other words, a good thing if the free state of Britain collapses. Rachel, Rachel Hamersley, let's turn now to the woman he married, Sefer de Grunchy, who now

Who was she? And uh what difference did it make to him? So Sophie de Gucci is in her life she becomes a philosopher in her own right. Is she a philosopher mainly through translation of Adam Smith, say and uh So she's she's best known for her translation of Smith's theory of moral sentiments, but I I think what's interesting about that work is that she does she translates Smith's text and it's not

Entirely unusual for women to translate works at that time. That is an area that women do appear in. But what's interesting about Sophie De Gucci is that as well as translating the theory of moral sentiments, She wrote her own letters on sympathy, which she appends to that work. So she's she's translating him, she's making his ideas accessible, but she's also critiquing him as well.

Mae'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'.

Condorcet writes a work on the uh the admission of women to the rights of the city, in which he basically argues for political rights for women. And the arguments that he puts forward are incredibly powerful, so his basic premise is People having rights are based on the fact that human beings are rational creatures. Women are rational creatures, just like men are, and therefore women should also have political rights.

And in response to the idea that, well, you know, women haven't made great scientific discoveries, so perhaps they're not as rational as men, his response is to say, Well, then you'd have to restrict political rights only to the men who make great scientific discoveries.

If you're going to allow political rights for a wider proportion of men, then you need to allow those rights for women as well, or you have to provide your explanation as to, you know, what justifies excluding them from those rights. And at that time that's a a really strong argument and for that argument to be m being made by a man, I think, is really significant. He also he responds, he tries to engage with what might be the objections to rights for women.

So for example, he says, Okay, well, people might say that if you give women political rights, then they have influence that they shouldn't have. But actually, he says, influence without rights, so so you know, women are going to try and exert influence anyway, and if they're doing it without those rights, that's more dangerous than if you give them a voice and allow them to express their views.

He also says, well, you could argue that the problem with giving women rights is that it distracts from them from tasks that they perhaps ought to be pursuing, bringing up family or whatever. Ond mae'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud hynny'n dweud.

A representative system of government makes it possible for people to exercise their political voice. ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n mynd.

Tom, Condorcet is interested in representative government and he could also be a rational government. Can you develop that? Yeah, so it had been a major plank of the programme of Turgot as controller general of finances to begin to introduce provincial assemblies into France, begin building up. uh an element of representative government in France uh in the seventeen seventies. And Condorcet had been very interested in that.

By the time Togo's dismissed from the ministry, Condorcet's interests have drifted into subjects of political economy, he's interested in public administration, but that thought about representative government never quite leaves him, and we see it emerge in his mathematical works in the seventeen eighties.

So in seventeen eighty five he publishes his major treatise, which is an essay on the application of mathematical analysis to majority decision making, the probability of mod uh majority decision making. And he treats a number of problems in that work of how to think about rational collective decision making. And the reason why he says he's interested in this is because of a distinctive feature of modern politics. Whereas if you were to look at ancient polities

you could very easily identify who was exercising power and why. The assembly of a people gathered together, making democratic decisions. There was no question whose will was in charge of the state. In modern politics. Powell was always going to be delegated. It didn't matter whether you had a monarch appointing agents to act for him or a people appointing representatives in an assembly.

You needed a new way of thinking about the legitimation of power, and the only way he could see that that would work would be if the exercise of power was rational. So what he's interested in thinking about a theory of representative government is in thinking about how you can secure rational outcomes. And he has two very particular ways of thinking about this. In the case of thinking about juries, he's confronting a problem where the decision to be made is either true or false.

And in thinking about this problem, what he thinks is significant is that If the general level of education, of enlightenment of those comprising the jury is higher, the probability that they will make the correct judgment is higher. If the absolute majority of voters voting in the right direction, as he thinks of it, is higher, the probability that the judgment as a whole will be correct is also higher.

When he turns to voting, things get rather more complicated. Uh he's dealing with a problem first laid out by Jean Charles de Borda in a paper in seventeen seventy. He identified identified a rather intriguing problem in cases where voters were asked to rank their preferences. for different candidates. A could win more votes than B, B more votes than C, and yet C would win in a head to head contest with A.

Condorcet worried. What he wanted to show was that the most sensible way to proceed with this voting paradox was to seek what's become known as a Condorcet winner, one who would win in a head to head contest against any other candidate. And what that prompted him to think about is ways of establishing two step or three step or four step even elections that would allow you to sift through the initial results of uh a voting system to get at that head to head contest.

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Richard Whatmore, what changed for Condorcet and his ideas when the revolution came It's France in seventeen eighty nine. Well the French Revolution is an enormous opportunity for reforms long canvast to be put into practice. At first in a sense nothing changes except that all of a sudden his friends, you know, people like Sayez, Mirabeau, Fellow members of the Society of 1789, they have power and they can put Turgot's program into practice.

It'll change the world, but it'll change the world gradually. The reason it's not necessarily a radical revolution is because the end result is going to be a patriotic monarchy. Initially the king, they think, is on board. and they can go forth together with the king and the nation, rooting out Machiavellianism, corruption in the church and amongst the aristoc aristocracy. So again, France rises by this these practical measures and the laws that they're going to pass.

But then everything changes as the revolution proceeds because this reform project fails. The king's not on board, the court's not on board. there's such opposition to the to the revolution not only among its natural critics, but the revolutionaries themselves begin to disagree about the reform projects that they've initiated. And the result is really revolution after revolution debating how do you put these rational laws into practice.

And the solution in the end that Condorcet focuses on is you need to have a republic. And obviously that happens after the flight to Varennes when the the king tries to escape. He shows that he's completely abandoned the revolution. by seventeen ninety one and France has to become a republic. Thank you very much. Rachel, so we're at that we've taken to a particular point in the revolution. Did this alone turn Condorcet into being a republican? And if so, what sort of Republican?

The flight to Varenn, I think, is is key for him in terms of making him realise that the constitutional monarchy is not going to be Well they run away. on the king in order to put in place the the kind of reforms that Condorcet and his friends want to put in place. So that moment is is kind of key. I think when you look at what happens after that point I think it was perhaps much easier for the kind of things that Condor Say was wanting to institute.

to be put into place under a Republican government that him than it might have been under a constitutional monarchy. So he was just looking for a way through. I I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say he was looking for a way through but I think it

Looking at it in hindsight, that that looks like a more natural route for him, if he's arguing in terms of things like representative government, in terms of people's rights, in terms of rationality, than trying to fit that into a constitutional monarchy. Um, so in terms of the kind of republic that he's he's wanting to see

It is at that point a republic without a king. So the arguments being put forward in terms of But it's also so so there's no king, but it's also very much a representative form of government. And one of the things that that Condorcet developed during this period of time is a particular understanding of how representation should work.

And it's one that sets him apart from some of the other people who are also arguing for Republican representative government at this time. The key distinction for for Condorcet is that you separate The way in which you think about legislation from the way in which you think about the kind of constitution if you like.

So for him, representation has to happen in terms of legislation. So the legislation that's made, you need a representative body that's going to draw up those laws and put them into practice. But when you're talking about the kind of fundamental constitutional powers, the kind of foundation of the system, if you like.

He feels that actually that should not operate via representation. Whereas CAS, for example, would say that you should have representation under that system as well. But but for Condor say That system, you really need a popular endorsement of the constitution. And that brings in the notion of a of a kind of plebiscite.

So the population as a whole will agree to the constitution, and then once that's established, you can have representative government operating through a legislative representative body. Thank you very much. Let's switch now to another area which concerned him, Tom, Tom Hopkins.

Which was a slave trade. He wanted it abolished. Yes, he'd been interested in this question for some time. He'd written a piece in uh as early as seventeen eighty, uh under the pen name Doctor Schwartz, so Doctor Black. He was presenting himself as a Swiss pastor concerned at the inhumanity of the slave trade. But by seventeen eighty eight uh we get the foundation of the Society of the Friends of Black Africans. which is explicitly modelled after American and British anti slave trade campaigns.

And Gondal says very, very keen that this play a central role in what promises to be a particularly febrile political moment. So he takes a lot of time in uh preparing the rules for this society. What's driving him in this interest is that same thought about natural rights. that Rachel was exploring in relation to women earlier. he thinks it's self evident that there can be no natural basis for slavery.

If there were, then there wouldn't be restrictions on the use of white Europeans as slave labour. So he doesn't think it at all worth uh getting into an argument about whether or not slavery is justified morally. It's not, end of story. The real question is how do you go about abolishing it? And there what he wants to do is demonstrate to slave owners that their interest, their economic interest in particular, lies in the abolition of the trade, the improvement in the conditions of their slaves

and gradually their emancipation. Free labour makes for more productive labour and this is what's going to end the slave trade to the the West Indies as far as he's concerned.

Thank you. Richard, Richard Walkmore. Can we spend some time on Condorcet's ideas on progress? Some of these ideas became bitternaphis death because he wrote this sketch about human progress, but can you just give us a brisk summary of his ideas on progress? The bottom line is that he believes in the perfectibility of the human species. and he makes these claims in the work that probably becomes his most famous.

Posthumously, it's published in seventeen ninety five, known as the Esquisse, the English translation is the sketch for a historical picture of the progress of the human mind. And in a sense it's Condorcet's response to the utter failure of his revolutionary career. And he writes it in hiding, obviously during the period of the terror. And it says, Don't worry, humans will find solutions to all problems. Science progresses.

and he outlines ten stages of human development through history. It's a story from rudeness to refinement. The Philosoph, of course, play a major role in the ninth stage and they really set out the plans that are realised in the French Revolution and then frustrated because he says humans so many humans are really still children. They're not sufficiently rational. They need to be educated and that will happen in the tenth stage. when human nature itself will change.

So human communities will ultimately be so successful that nature itself will change, you'll live longer, you'll become more rational. and projects for education will continue this improvement, science, mathematics, etcetera, will will foster this as well. In a sense, arguments about Condorcet and Progress, written at a time when the French Revolution has has failed to produce a stable republic. You could say that he only believes in progress if

human nature itself changes. So he doesn't believe in progress for the present, because manifestly it hasn't worked, but he believes passionately in it. for the future. And I think it marks a the esquisse, the sketch, it marks a a real shift. in Condorcet's thinking. Because as We've talked about, as Tom and Rachel have said, Condorcet is obsessed with reform projects, getting th getting everything really precise, getting the laws right, getting the rules right.

I think as a Republican, he moves to the point of view that you have to get the culture right. And the esquisse, the sketch, is s saying you have to get human nature right in communities and that means changing the culture. Thank you. Uh can we just take that on, Rachel, and to What role did you see education playing in this uh progressive revolution? If you think about well, how do you go about changing culture? Of course Education is absolutely crucial to that. Um and in fact

One of the things I find interesting about the sketch is that The Sketch is the work this this is the work that he he produces at this time. It is a very long essay. plan for a future work that he never manages to produce. But a as a sketch it's actually qu quite long in its own right. But but people had thought about um the sort of stages of civilization before, but often those had been based around

economic foundations, if you like. So moves from a kind of pastoral society to an agricultural society to to feudalism or or whatever. And and there's an element of that in what Condorcet is saying. But what I think is really interesting about the way he presents that kind of development there is that knowledge. The development of knowledge, the spread of knowledge, is absolutely key to the story. So, for example, he picks up on the invention of the alphabet.

and the invention of printing as fundamental moments that that really bring about a kind of sea change because they allow for that spread, for that communication of of knowledge. And this for him is absolutely key. The other thing that I think is interesting is that it's not although

uh he is presenting a view of progress here. It's not the sense that everything's just always going in the you know, in the right direction from his point of view. And of course that's it that's kind of obvious given the circumstances under which he's writing this work. So there was a sense of there were periods of the stagnation of knowledge, there were periods of ignorance and decline. uh uh uh through the kind of history that he traces.

Um, and so again I think that coming back to what Richards w was saying about the the kind of final stage and the the future, I think that gives a certain degree of hope that even though the French Revolution, that that what he was wanting to see had failed, that Republican project has failed, he's writing this in hiding because he's fallen from power. Mae'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n mynd.

instru education, public instruction, as he would put it, is absolutely key to bringing that about. But as you mentioned, Heiding, he was a he had been a great star, uh, and then he crossed Robespierre This to put it very simply, but that's what happened, isn't it, Tom? Uh and Robespierre went for him and you'll take the story on from there. Yes, so there had been a brewing conflict within the n Assembly now rebranded as the National Convention with the uh beginning of the Republic.

And this had pitted followers of prominent politician named Brissot uh against the left of the assembly, uh, increasingly looking to Robespierre for leadership. And by the time that the Journdins, as the followers of the Br Brissot had become called, were driven out of the assembly by Robespierre and the population of Paris under the Paris Commune.

Condorcet is in a very isolated position. He's been trying to play both sides against each other in a way, presenting himself as a above the political fray. no one quite believes that he's that impartial. So he's seen as too close to the Jacquemin by the Jacquemin, too close to the Jacquemin by the Jacquemin, and this catches up with him. He's not expelled immediately, but...

Particularly when he sets out to defend his constitutional plan that he presented to the uh the Convention against uh a new Jacobin version of the document, he is seen as a traitor to the Jacobin cause. Richard, Richard let's take two steps back and one step sideways. Um how did Condorcet come to be divorced?

and then the contempt of death in 1794 let's start with the divorce Well, the story is tragic and strictly speaking he's divorced after death because one of the tragic elements is uh Sophie Gruschy is not aware that he is in fact dead. And that is because after an arrest warrant is issued for him, he goes into hiding and he's worried about the safety of the people that he's lodging with. and he stays in in hiding from July seventeen ninety three to March seventeen ninety four.

and then he's arrested. Now, during this time, from the period that he that an arrest warrant is issued for his person He's really declared an emigre. It's the case that when the revolutionary authorities are searching for you, you lose your property, it can be sold, and that is an utter crisis. for his wife and their daughter. And Sophie is desperate. She knows that reform laws have been passed in September seventeen ninety two which allow divorce for the first time.

It's possible to get a divorce on the grounds that you disagree with an emigre. You're not an you're not a an emigre, you're not an enemy of the revolution yourself. So she actually in order to survive because she is destitute and the the Condorcet's property is being sold. She sets up a a lingerie shop in Paris and she paints portraits of revolutionary figures, some of whom whom are destined very soon for the guillotine.

So that's how she survives, but she's so desperate that she institutes proceedings for a divorce, and that doesn't actually occur until may seventeen ninety four. by which time he's already dead. but she doesn't know that he's dead because when he's arrested he's operating under a pseudonym. He calls himself Pierre Simon.

He's pretending to be an unemployed servant travelling around looking for work. But the revolutionary committee that watches people moving around, they see that he has a silver stick, a s silver watch. and he's carrying a book in Latin by Horace. They know he's an aristocrat. He's arrested not as Condorcet but as Pierre Simon and by the end of March, within two days of his arrest,

He's dead. We don't know whether it's natural causes, we don't know whether it's suicide, we don't know whether it's murder. But condors say at the age of fifty is dead.

Rachel, he became known as the Lust of the Philosoph, was he? I I see him as a as a kind of pivot, if you like. So he does absolutely as as we've explored, he he embodies the principles of the Enlightenment in terms of yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw But he's also paving the way for things that follow, partly in terms of develop the development of what we might see as the beginnings of social sciences in the in the nineteenth century and particularly that notion of applying

ways of operating, mathematical principles, those sorts of things, to think about how to make the world a better place, so to think about moral and political questions. He's also, of course, somebody I mean, some of the things that we've touched on today Sound very modern to us. His notion of political rights for women, his take on slavery, and and also some of the things he has to say in the sketch about the way in which

European nations have treated other countries around the world. These things sound incredibly positive. So I think he builds directly into some of the things that happened in the nineteenth century, but also I think he prefigures ideas that that we would still see as um important and in some ways perhaps progressive today. Thank you, we're coming to the end now, but uh so briskly though, Tom. Condos's ideas influence the social sciences

Of the next uh few decades. The next century even. I th I think there's two main directions. Firstly, starting from the sketch, you get a lot of interest in his philosophy of history and the ways he thinks about progress. So particularly the founders of sociology, Henri Saint Simon and Auguste Gonte are great admirers of his. They're a sceptical about his extreme anti clericalism, uh, but they build very much on what he'd had to say about progress. The other direction is the mathematics.

There isn't very much direct interest in what he was saying in the nineteenth century. There's certainly a tradition of expanding on this idea of a social mathematics in various directions, but the Condorcet voting paradox is largely forgotten until the nineteen fifties, uh when it's rediscovered by economists like Kenneth Arrow, who make it the uh one of the foundation stones of modern social choice theory.

Thank you very much. Finally, Bristol, what impact do you think he's had on the whole, starting with you? What seems to me to be particularly interesting about Condorcet is that he's wanting a form of government that allows people to exercise their political right. um to to voice those rights. But he's also aware that although he's operating on the idea that human beings are rational, he recognises that people don't always act.

rationally all of the time. And it seems to me that that question of producing government that is rational that is in the interests of the public and and at the same time having a kind of democratic system is a issue that we still grapple with today and I think that makes his ideas important and interesting. Tom, Tom Hopkins. I think where he has left a lasting legacy is in this commitment to the expansion of the range of tools available to the social sciences.

Uh without him I think it's it's very hard to uh imagine uh mathematics being quite as firmly on the agenda for political theorists as it has subsequently become. Richard, Richard, what more last last word for you. I think slightly differently that he lives through the end of Enlightenment. The French Revolution fails. And the real challenge is how is still the old challenge, how to put the French Revolution into practice, how to put reform into practice.

He imagines a world without a sinner or a saint, where everybody is part of this very strong, ultimately Republican community. It's very homogeneous, it's very rational. He doesn't manage to make a reality of it, nor have we. Thank you very much. Thanks to Rachel Hammersley, Tom Hopkins and Richard Watmore, and to our studio engineer, Andrew Garrett. Next week Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen from the fourteenth century BC and the reasons for her fame today. Thank you for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What didn't you say that you'd like to have said? I guess one of the things that perhaps didn't come out in the conversations that we were talking about well well there are two things.

Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r 1790 One is that I think another important model for Condorcet and some of the people that he associated with was the example of the American Revolution and the Republic in America and that in some ways they were

Looking to that, not I think they recognized the differences between America and France, but there was a sense of that being a a a positive model that they could look to and and bring some of those ideas into play in France. The other thing is that we talked about hi him at that point with the the flight to Varenne himself. shifting to being a Republican, being anti the monarchy.

But also I think it's interesting we we get a sense of his views on precisely that question when there are there are the debates around what should be done with the former king uh Louis XV. Ond Condorcet, ac mae'r bobl sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n mynd.

And and as part of that debate, one of the things that Condorcet says, which I think gives a sense of his his views and his insight, is that to judge an accused king is a duty, to pardon him can be an act of prudence. So there's a notion that he doesn't want the king within the political system, but he doesn't necessarily think that executing him is a good step to take.

Tom, would you like to think what I I'd like to emphasise most is the anti clerical aspect of his his thinking, which was Quite violent, uh uh Rachel mentioned he never got over his education. He never got over his education, as uh as as Rachel mentioned. But we see this coming out in all all all sorts of ways. Turgot once branded him a rabid sheep, placid most of the time, but inflamed to violence, particularly by thoughts of the injustices perpetrated by the church.

And when we turn to the sketch we can see that playing out in quite interesting ways. One of the most prominent aspects of that text is the way in which he's interested in If you like a a a kind of sociology of error, uh to use a phrase, uh th that Keith Baker's given us, he's interested where does opposition to progress come from? And it seems to him that it's always coming from groups that have delivered progress in the past.

have used the tools that they've developed for the advancement of uh human society then to build up their own power. So the alphabet's a good example. Uh the ways in which sacred languages can become a tool for power for priesthoods

gives them a a means of controlling the lives of others. And the great thing about modern science as he sees it is that by virtue of its empiricism, by virtue of its alliance with the printing brand, That idea of a monopoly of knowledge and power has been broken and there will be no return to that kind of clerical society in the future.

I'd agree entirely with with what Tom has just emphasised. But I'd I'd just add one thing, which is he hates churches, but my goodness, his ultimate I vision of the republic looks like a church. and one of his critics, critic of the French Revolution, Bonal, said that Condorcet's sketch was the apocalypse of a new gospel.

And that's the way Republicans were seen at the time. Obviously Thomas Paine writes The Age of Reason. Who knows whether Condorcet would have come to similar conclusions that actually you need a a civil re religion to make a a reality s make the re revolution successful.

So I think that's worth that's worth saying. The other thing is that if you read the sketch, he does sound I guess an eighteenth century equivalent of a of a tech entrepreneur from Silicon Valley telling you to have faith in the future of of AI. In other words, everything's gonna be all right. once human nature changes, whereas actually it didn't.

And the following generation they're obsessed with Condorcet because he looks as if he's the kind of person who could have made a success of the French Revolution and the terrible tragedy i is that he didn't, he wasn't trusted. So for Sophie Grusy, for figures such as Arthur O'Connor, who's a a United Irishman, who changes his name when he marries Eliza Condorcet to Arthur O'Connor Condorcet, He's responsible for the the the complete works of Condorcet in the early nineteenth century.

So Condorcet kind of becomes a a revolutionary, a kind of Republican poster boy, and future revolutionaries are definitely channeling their inner Condorcet. with a view to making a reality of the French Revolution

to combat this failure that Condorcet himself lived through. Anything else? So the only other thing that I guess we we haven't touched on very much is the notion of of public instruction because he also wrote things about public instruction. So Not surprisingly, he sees education as important, he sees the spread of knowledge as absolutely key to bringing about the kind of cultural change that he wants to see.

Um, but he also talks about well how do you go about implementing that and what kind of system would you have and and what he wants is a kind of state education that would be free for people to to to access.

And that there's a really close link between that a'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i' the the tools and the understanding that they need in order to participate in society in the way and and in politics in the way that he thinks they should be doing.

Do you think if he hadn't been caught if when he'd escaped to live another day, he'd have continued to make a difference? Can I answer that? I think the really fascinating thing would have been How he fell out with Bonaparte. because the attempt to make a success of the French Revolution continues. Obviously the sketch becomes a manifesto for Republican reform during the directory. Bonaparte ruins everything. And how Condorcet, who would definitely have been embraced by Bonaparte

probably turned into a nobleman in the same way as Sayez was, how would he have re reacted? That's the question. Sophie, of course, she falls out with him. Initially she's fascinated by Bonaparte. thinks he's a patriotic monarch in the uh republican general slash patriotic monarch so you can trust him to to undertake Republican reform, then it all goes wrong. Yes well thank you all very much. Thank you very much. Does anybody want tea or coffee? No, a cup of tea. A cup of tea. A cup of tea.

In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Will you please welcome the 2023 BBC Reath lecturer, Professor Ben Angler? I don't think anybody So it's an enormous honour but it's an enormous responsibility. Hello, I'm Anita Arnand. In this year's BBC Radio 4 Reath lectures, Professor Ben Ansel Democracy is our legacy from past generations, and it's an obligation of ours to secure for future generations. It's up to us. That's the 2023 Reath Lectures. Listen on BBC Sound.