Condorcet and Modernity

The Marquis de Condorcet was one of the few Enlightenment ideologists to witness the French Revolution and participate as an elected politician at the centre of events during France’s transition from monarchy to republic. Condorcet and Modernity explores the interaction between Condorcet’s political theory, legislative pragmatism, public policy proposals and the management of change. David Williams examines key topics including rights, the civil order, the Church, the slave trade, women’s civil rights, judicial reform, voting and representation, economics, monarchy, power and revolution. He explores the complex links between Condorcet as the visionary ideologist and Condorcet as the pragmatic legislator, and between Condorcet’s concept of modernity - the application of ‘social arithmetic’ to government policies. Based on an extensive array of both printed and manuscript sources, this major contribution to enlightenment studies is a full treatment of Condorcet’s politics.

• A comprehensive study of a major enlightenment thinker and Revolutionary participant • Condorcet’s intellectual legacy has grown - a major figure in the development of the social sciences • David Williams is one of the world’s leading scholars of eighteenth-century France

Acknowledgements; References and abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Profile of a political life; 2. Human nature and human rights; 3. The civil order; 4. Managing enlightenment; 5. Reform and the moral order; 6. New constructions of equality; 7. Justice and the law; 8. Representative government; 9. The economic order; 10. Managing the Revolution; Conclusion: the human odyssey; Bibliography; Name index; Subject index.