0745685749 enemies democracy

30 The Inner Enemies of Democracy
to the powerful of this world, or else to the crowd. The
demand for autonomy emerges from the academies and
salons and is debated out on the streets; the struggle is
led, not by scholars, but by men engaged in the public
arena. In this way, the issues first mooted in private and
personal publications led to the French Revolution.
In the years leading up to the outbreak of the
Revolution, the moderate attitude, as it could be seen in
the thought of Montesquieu (and even Rousseau), was
subjected to strong criticism from other representatives
of the Enlightenment, thus introducing a real split in this
line of thought. The iconic figure here is Condorcet, who
wrote a commentary on the work of Montesquieu. On
the crucial issue of the appropriate legislation for each
country, he condemned the pluralism of his predecessor
and what he saw as his conservatism. If, through science
and reason, it has been established what the right
laws must be, why not give these laws to all people?
More generally, we find in Condorcet an optimism of
the will: in a thoroughly Pelagian spirit he thinks that,
if we apply ourselves to the task, we will be able to
eradicate evil from the face of the earth; the march of
progress will continue indefinitely, and all men will one
day lead lives of fulfilment. Faith in continuous and
unlimited progress, a faith of which Condorcet is one
of the main promoters, applies to mankind as a whole
the individual’s capacity for development, affirmed by
Pelagius. Here, within the Enlightenment, we move
from what might seem like a ‘wait and see’ attitude (that
of Montesquieu) to a spirited activism.
The shifts in the themes and place of the debate
blended with the voluntarism of Condorcet, and together
they provided an appropriate framework for the ardent
longings that were now widespread. The new thinking
found favour with the protagonists of the Revolution.
Moreover, Condorcet would be one of them: no longer
satisfied with being secretary of the French Academy, he