Great Ideas of Philosophy

B. Given that so much energy is needed to keep this sort of social organization in place, there must besomething horrifically unnatural about it. If that much work has to be done to preserve it, it must bebecause it opposes natural forces.IX. Condorcet (1743–1794), at the end of the century, offers the promise of progress. To my mind, he representswhat is most defining in this age of Enlightenment.A. Jesuit-educated Condorcet established his originality in mathematics early, publishing a treatise on integralcalculus in 1765.B. Four years later, he was elected to the Academie des Sciences, rising to the prestigious office of Secretaryof the Academy in 1777. A master of the emerging field of probability theory, Condorcet may be accordeda place among those who have developed what is called decision theory. His 1785 treatise on the subject ofmajority decisions is still instructive.C. Condorcet supported the Revolution, served as a member of the Assembly, and drafted a plan of educationfor the coming Republic.D. Though a son of the Revolution, he was committed to the more moderate Gerondist faction, arguingagainst the killing of the king and other extreme measures of the Jacobins. This landed him in prison,courtesy of Robespierre. In 1793, Condorcet went into hiding. During this period, he composed his Sketchfor an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.E. In 1794, Condorcet was discovered, arrested, and imprisoned; he was found dead in his cell within twodays.F. Condorcet reflects the dominant idea of his age and does so with special brightness and poignancy. It isthe idea of progress.1. In its Enlightenment form, it is more analytical and scientific, more political and self-conscious thanthe earlier Renaissance version.2. Whereas the classical worldview conceives of a cosmos organized by principles of harmony andproportion, the notion of progress says that what is stationary is stagnant and the future is under noobligation to mimic the past.3. Condorcet’s Sketch defends the plan to liberate the human imagination and, in the process, achievesomething new, untried in world history.4. He concludes—in the shadow of his own impending death—with the hope that a grand association ofthe scientifically enlightened, drawn from diverse nations, “would meet no obstacles; and it wouldassure among all the sciences and all the arts directed by their principles… an equilibrium ofknowledge, industry, and reason necessary for the progress and the happiness of the human race.”X. The Enlightenment is, at once, a critique of traditionalism and a forward-looking movement of thought andaction impelled by the methods and perspective of science. France would host some of the movement’s mostpersuasive writers and thinkers, including Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Condorcet. Their revolution inthought was to be matched by political and social revolutions based on the recovery of natural rights.Recommended Reading:Condorcet. Selected Writings. K. Baker, ed. Bobbs Merrill, 1976.Rousseau, J. J. “The Social Contract,” in Social Contract and Discourses, E. Barker, ed. Dent, 1993.Voltaire. Philosophical Letters. Downloadable at www.classicsnetwork.com.Questions to Consider:1. Conclude whether there is good evidence to support the view that it is by way of science that society’s mostenduring problems are to be solved.2. Summarize whether it is obviously the case that, only through the appearance of modern science can we saythat the human mind has significantly progressed over the state it was in at the time of, say, Socrates.24©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership