Condorcet

Condorcet by John Morley (1835)

The book explores the life and ideas of Nicolas de Condorcet, a French philosopher and mathematician who was a key figure in the Enlightenment. It examines his contributions to the development of utilitarianism, his advocacy for women's rights and education, and his vision for a more rational and just society. The text also discusses his role in the French Revolution and his eventual persecution by Robespierre's regime.

By John Morley · First published 1835 · Genre: Biography, Political Philosophy, History · 6 chapters · 26,998 words

First lines

Until the outbreak of the Revolution, the circumstances of Condorcet's life were as little externally disturbed or specially remarkable as those of any other geometer and thinker of the time. He was born at a small town in Picardy, in the year 1743. His father was a cavalry officer, but as he died when his son was only three years old, he could have exerted no influence upon the future philosopher, save such as comes of transmission through blood and tissue. Condillac was his uncle, but there is no record of any intercourse between them. His mother was a devout and trembling soul, who dedicated her child to the Holy Virgin, and for eight years or more made him wear the dress of a little girl, by way of sheltering him against the temptations and unbelief of a vile world. So long as women are held by opinion and usage in a state of educational and political subjection, which prevents the growth of a large intelligence made healthy and energetic by knowledge and by activity, we may expect pious extravagances of this kind. Condorcet was weakened physically by much confinement and the constraint of cumbrous clothing; and not even his dedication to the Holy Virgin prevented him from growing up the most ardent of the admirers of Voltaire. His earliest instructors, as happened to most of the sceptical philosophers, were the Jesuits, then within a few years of their fall. That these adroit men, armed with all the arts and traditions which their order had acquired in three centuries, and with the training of the nation almost exclusively in their hands, should still have been unable to shield their persons from proscription and their creed from hatred, is a remarkable instance how little it avails ecclesiastical bodies to have a monopoly of official education, if the spirit of their teaching be out of harmony with those most potent agencies which we sum up as the spirit of the time.

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Biography · French Revolution · Philosophy · Politics · History · Condorcet's Life · Mathematics · Science · Social Contract · Liberalism · Radicalism · Enlightenment

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