In Our Time - Condorcet

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-94), known as the Last of the Philosophes, the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment who sought to apply their learning to solving the problems of their world. 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 those ideas and, while the Terror brought his life to an end, his wife Sophie de Grouchy 91764-1822) ensured his influence into the next century and beyond. WithRachel Hammersley Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle UniversityRichard Whatmore Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual HistoryAnd Tom Hopkins Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn CollegeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (University of Chicago Press, 1974)Keith Michael Baker, ‘On Condorcet’s Sketch’ (Daedalus, summer 2004)Lorraine Daston, ‘Condorcet and the Meaning of Enlightenment’ (Proceedings of the British Academy, 2009)Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago University Press, 2010)Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (eds), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially ‘Ideology and the Origins of Social Science’ by Robert WoklerGary Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1985)Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati (eds.), Condorcet: Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2009)Kathleen McCrudden Illert, A Republic of Sympathy: Sophie de Grouchy's Politics and Philosophy, 1785-1815 (Cambridge University Press, 2024)Iain McLean and Fiona Hewitt (eds.), Condorcet: Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 1994)Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, (Harvard University Press, 2001)Richard Whatmore, The End of Enlightenment (Allen Lane, 2023)David Williams, Condorcet and Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, Nicholas de Condorcet is known as the last of the philosopher,

the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment who sought to apply their learning to solving the problems of their time. Born in 1743, 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 1794, his wife, Sophie de Grouchy, ensured his influence into the next century and beyond. With me to discuss the Marquis de Condorcet are Tom Hopkins, Senior Teaching Associated 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 Condosso's childhood like? So his childhood was interesting. He was born in September 1743 in Piccadie in northern France.

His father was in the military, but his father died when Condorce was very young. And his mother, perhaps understandably, became very protective of him. And this involved her 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 to begin with. He's then educated at the Jesuit college in France 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. And then he moved in the late 1750s to the College de Navarre in Paris.

And it's there that his abilities of a mathematician were picked up and recognised. I guess then establishing himself in Paris in the learned world there. This is his period marked out by an extraordinary outburst of learning of shared learning, typified by the Encyclopedia, Diderot's Encyclopedia, but was a big part of it. What was that and how does it relate to Condosso? The Encyclopedia is a really interesting work, as you say, Dennis Diderot was fundamental and he was initially asked to produce a kind of French version. of an English encyclopedia at the time,

the Chambers' Cyclopedia, which had appeared in the 1720s. But the French encyclopedie ended up being a much more ambitious work than that initial encyclopedia or dictionary, resulting in 17 volumes of texts, 11 volumes of pictures, 72,000 entries.

And really, it's a collection of the state of knowledge at the time and particularly of knowledge that would be useful. So one of the interesting things about the encyclopedia 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,

their procedures, the way in which they did things, were also absolutely central and were set out in the dictionary alongside what we might think of as more kind of pure or abstract science and art, if you like. So it's an important work from that point of view. What did Condorce contribute to that, if anything? He did.

So he was associated with a figure called Jean Dallembert, who alongside Didero, was involved at the kind of foundation of the encyclopedia. And so in the 1770s, Condorce contributed a number of articles on mathematics to the supplement to the encyclopedia. But I think in some ways what's perhaps more interesting is what the encyclopedia contributed to Condorce, because I think there's a real connection there. So it's about advancing knowledge. You pull all that knowledge together and that provides a foundation for advancing knowledge in the future. But it's also very much about the dissemination of knowledge.

And that notion of disseminating knowledge is fundamental to the Enlightenment, but it's also particularly important to Condor say. And also in that notion of thinking about kind of manufacturers and things like that as well as what we might think of as scientists, there's a notion of practical knowledge, knowledge being practical and useful and having 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 is about in his later life. Thank you. Tom, Tom Humpkins, he became an extremely distinguished mathematician, some people through the word genius around. What do you make a bit? Yes, it was quite controversial for his family that he decided to pursue mathematics professionally. Because he was an Irish to catch him. Indeed, they wanted him to be a soldier like his father. And so when he comes back from the College to Navarre, the expectation is that he's going to return home for good,

going to the army and pursue a career in that direction. Instead, he spends the year 1762 to 3 writing a couple of papers that he then returns to Paris to present, firstly to Jean-Daronbert, who we've heard about already, and another prominent mathematician, Jean-Louis Le Grange, 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, which in Newtonian physics deals with the 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 who will come to. different ways of society. Can you give us 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 reshaping which he wanted to do in society?

The key moment is in 1772 when he becomes particularly interesting problems of probability. Now, he has recently met the important French philosopher and public. 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 French judicial decisions that Condorcet is particularly concerned with, particularly the trial and execution of the Chevalier de Labarre in 1766, 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 Condor Say agrees with him that there is a serious need of reform. He doesn't think Voltaire has the mathematical skills necessary to deliver And so he sets himself the task of showing how 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, how could you reason back from an effect to its causes, thinking about the probable value of a hypothesis? So Condole'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 member of the Academy of Sciences already in 1769, but by 1781 he's been appointed to the the French Academy, largely under the patronage of Dallembert, but this is a major sign that he is held in high esteem. Thank you. Richard, what more. Richard, with hindsight, we know the revolution wasn't far off,

but Condor Say wasn't a revolutionary at the time that we've been talking about. What was he? He was definitely in these years, 1770s, 1780s, 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 Dallanbert, 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 Condorc 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 an odd state called Britain has risen. It's an unnatural state, and it shouldn't be as powerful as it is. And they think 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 Montesquia had looked at Britain as an example before him. Well, Montesquier in the spirit of the laws in 1748, especially in the 11th 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 Condorce, and in a sense he's following Montesquia, but the physiocrats and Turgot, they all think that Britain's risen unnaturally. It's got a corrupt economy, it's got 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. And does he just brush aside the fact that it seems to be rather successful? 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 Britain is finally defeated in war by France, by the American colonies, it seems that all the predictions of the philosoph of the 1750s 1760s are coming true and a more natural world will emerge, guided by law and science,

expressed by the philosoph defining the common good, which is better for the entirety of humanity. In other words, it's a good thing if the free, state of Britain collapses. Rachel, Rachel Hummesey, let's turn now to the woman he married, Sophie de Grunce. Now, who was she? And what difference did it make to him?

So Sophie de Grouchy is in her life. She becomes a philosopher in her own right. Is she a philosopher mainly through translation of Adam Smith, say, and... So she's best known for her translation of Smith's theory of moral sentiments. But 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 Grouchy is that as well as translating the theory of moral sentiments,

she writes her own letters on sympathy, which she appends to that work. So she's translating him, she's making his ideas accessible, but she's also critiquing him as well. He sees their marriage as an exemplary marriage. People should be married as he is married. That is, in totally equal terms. And if he has a vote, she should have a vote and so forth. Absolutely. So not long after the marriage, Condor say rights work on 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 really strong argument. And for that argument to be 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, 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 the, them from tasks that they perhaps ought to be pursuing, bringing up family or whatever. But he says that that's not relevant in terms of the kind of representative system of government that he's thinking about.

And he would also want men who have to earn a living and work to be able to have rights. A representative system of government makes it possible for people to exercise their political voice, to be able to speak on political issues, but also to be able to engage in other activities as well, that politics doesn't have to take up the whole of your time and energies. Tom, Condorso was interested in representative government and you could also be a rational government. Can you develop that? Yes, so it had been a major plank of the programme of Torghau as Controlled General of Finances to begin to introduce provincial assemblies into France, begin building up an element of representative

government in France. in the 1770s. And Condolseille had been very interested in that. By the time Torg was dismissed from the ministry, Condole'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 1780s.

So in 1785, he publishes his major treaties, which is an essay on the application of mathematical analysis to majority decision-making, the probability of 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 policies, 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, power 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. He's dealing with a problem first laid out by a Houchon Charles de Bordeaux in a paper in 1770, who 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 Condorce 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, the elections that would allow you to sift through the initial results of a voting system to get at that head-to-head contest that would determine the final outcome. Thank you. Richard Wartmore, what change for Condor say and his ideas

when the revolution came to France in 1789? Well, the French Revolution is an enormous opportunity for reforms long canvassed 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 Turgos 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 aristocracy. So again, France rises by 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 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 Condorce focuses on is, you need to have a republic. And obviously that happens after the flight to Varenne when the king tries to escape. He shows that he's completely abandoned the revolution by 1791 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 a Republican? The flight to Varenne, I think, is key for him in terms of making him realise that the constitutional monarchy is not going to be... Well, they run away. Well, exactly.

And they return, but they're seen as having betrayed the revolution. And therefore, you can't rely on the king in order to put in place the kind of reforms that Condorsey and his friends want to put in place. So that moment 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 Condole say was wanting to institute. to be put into place under a Republican government than it might have been under a constitutional monarchy. So he was just looking for a way through? I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say he was looking for a way through,

but I think looking at it in hindsight, 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. So in terms of the kind of republic that he's, wanting to see, it is at that point a republic without a king. So the arguments being put forward in terms of the problems with the monarchy, the cost that the monarchy incurs, the notion that

actually you can have a better kind of system of government. But it's also, so there's no king, but it's also very much a representative form of government. And one of the things that Condorso 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 Condor say 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 CAES, for example, would say that you should have representation under that system as well. But for Condor, so that system,

you really need a popular endorsement of the constitution. And that brings in the notion 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, Tom Hopkins, which was a slave trade. You wanted it abolished. Yes, he'd been interested in this question for some time. He'd written a piece in early 1780. under the pen name Dr. Schwartz, so Dr. Black, he was presenting himself as a Swiss pastor concerned at the inhumanity of the slave trade. But by 1788, we get the foundation of the Society of Friends of Black Africans,

which is explicitly modelled after American and British anti-slave trade campaigns. And Condolso is very, very keen that this play a central role in what promises to be a particular particularly feebrile political moment. So he takes a lot of time in 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 slavery.

labour. So he doesn't think it at all worth 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 West Indies as far as he's concerned.

Thank you. Richard, Mr. Walthmore, can we spend some time on Kondor says ideas on progress? Some of these ideas became better enough for his 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 perfectability of the human species. And he makes these claims in the work that probably becomes his most famous, posthumously. It's published in 1795, known as the Esquise, 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 10 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 realized 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 10th 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 of education will continue this improvement. Science, mathematics, etc., will foster this as well. In a sense, arguments about Condorcet and progress, written at a time when the French Revolution 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 hasn't worked,

but he believes passionately in it for the future. And I think it marks the eschise, the sketch, it marks a real shift in Condorcet's thinking, because as we've talked about, as Tom and Rachel have said, Condorsay is obsessed with reform projects, 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 eschise, the sketch, is saying you have to get human nature right in communities, and that means changing the culture. Thank you. Can we just take that on, Rachel, end to what role did he see, education? playing in this progressive revolution.

If you think about, well, how do you go about changing culture? Of course, education is absolutely crucial to that. And in fact, one of the things I find interesting about the sketch is that... The sketch is the work. This is the work that he produces at this time. Which is in fact a very, very long essay. It is a very long essay. It's supposed to be a kind of plan for a future work that he never manages to produce.

but as a sketch, it's actually quite long in its own right. But people had thought about the sort of stages of civilisation 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 feudalism or whatever. And there's an element of that in what Condorce 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 really bring about a kind of sea change because they allow for that spread, for that communication of knowledge. And this for him is absolutely key. The other thing that I think is interesting is that it's not, although he is presenting a view of progress here, it's not the sense that everything's just always going in the right direction

from his point of view. And of course, that's kind of obvious, given the circumstances under which he's writing this work. So there was a sense of there are periods of the stagnation of knowledge, there are periods of ignorance and decline through the kind of history that he traces. And so again, I think that comes back to what Richards was saying, about the kind of final stage and the future, I think that gives a certain degree of hope

that even though the French Revolution 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, there's still this notion that actually, that's not necessarily the end. And there is still the possibility that this will, you know, things will improve again

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

And this had pitted followers of prominent politician named Briseau against the left of the Assembly, increasingly looking to Robespierre for leadership. And by the time that the Jeanne d'Hont d'Arts the followers of Briseau had become called, were driven out of the Assembly by Robs Pierre 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 above the political fray. Nevertheless, no one quite believes that he's that impartial. So he's seen as too close to the Géon d'Arcée and by the Géinéin,

too close to the Jacques-Bin by the Gendarndon. 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 Convention. against 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.

How did Condorcet come to be divorced and then condemned to death in 1794? Let's talk with the divorce. Well, the story is tragic, and, strictly speaking, he's divorced after death because one of the tragic elements is Sophie Grushy is not a woman, She 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 hiding from July 1793 to March 1794, and then he's arrested. Now, during this time, from the period that an arrest, arrest warrant is issued for his person, he's really declared an Emmy Gray. 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 1792, 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 emigre. You're not an enemy of the revolution yourself. So she actually, in order to survive, because she is destitute and the Condorcet's property is being sold,

she sets up a lingerie shop in Paris, and she paints portraits of revolutionary figures, some of 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, 1794, 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, traveling around looking for work. But the revolutionary committee that watches people moving around, they see that he has a silver stick, a 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 50 is dead.

Rachel, he became known as the lust of the philosoph, was he? I see him as a kind of pivot, if you like. So he does absolutely, as we've explored, he embodies the principles of the Enlightenment in terms of advancing knowledge, disseminating knowledge, putting knowledge to use. But he's also paving the way for things that follow, partly in terms of the development of what we might see as the beginnings of social sciences in the 19th 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 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 happen in the 19th century,

but also I think he prefigures ideas that we would still see as important and in some ways perhaps progressive today. Thank you. We're coming to the end now. but briskly though, Tom. How did Condos's ideas influence the social sciences of the next few decades, the next century even? 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 Comte, a great admirers of his. They're skeptical about his extreme anti-clericalism, 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 19th century. There's certainly a tradition of expanding on this idea of social mathematics and various directions, but the Condorcet voting paradox is largely forgotten until the 1950s,

when it's rediscovered by economists like Kenneth Arrow, who make it one of the foundation stones of modern social choice theory. Thank you very much. Finally, Brickley, what impact you think he's had on the whole, starting with you? What seems to me to be particularly interesting about Condor Say is that he's wanting a form of government that allows people to exercise their political rights 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 at the same time having a kind of democratic system is an 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. Without him, I think it's very hard to imagine mathematics being quite as firmly on the agenda for political theorists as it has subsequently become. Richard, Richard, Richard Wattmore, 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, 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 homogenous. 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 Whatmore, and to our studio engineer, Andrew Garrett. next week, Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen from the 14th 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, there are two things. And both around that period of the beginning of republicanism, the French Revolution, so not quite the beginning of the French Revolution, but the early 1790s. 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.

I think they recognised the differences between America and France, but there was a sense of that being a positive model that they could look to and bring some of those ideas into play in France. The other thing is that we talked about him at that point with the flight to Varan, him shifting to being a Republican, being anti the monarchy. But also I think it's interesting, we get a sense of his views on precisely that question when there are the debates around what should be done with the former King Louis XVI. And Condorcet and some of the people he's associated with are certainly in favour of establishing

Republican government, but they're not in fact. of killing the king, which is, of course, what eventually happens. And as part of that debate, one of the things that Condor says, which I think gives a sense of 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? Yes, I think what I like to emphasise most as the anti-clerical aspect of his

thinking, which was quite violent. Rachel mentioned... He never got over his education. He never got over his education, as Rachel mentioned. But we see this coming out in all sorts of ways. Torgho once branded in 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 kind of sociology of error to use a phrase 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 human society then to build up their own power. So the alphabet's a good example, the ways in which sacred languages can become a tool for power for priesthoods gives them 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 press, 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. Richard? I'd agree entirely with what Tom has just emphasised, but I'd just add one thing which is he hates churches, but my goodness, his ultimate vision of the Republic looks like a church.

And one of his critics, critic of the first, 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 Payne writes The Age of Reason. Who knows whether Condorcet would have come to similar conclusions that actually you need a civil religion to make a reality, make the revolution successful. So I think that's worth saying. The other thing is that if you read the sketch, he does sound, I guess, an 18th century equivalent of a tech entrepreneur from Silicon Valley telling you to have faith in the future of AI.

In other words, everything's going to 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 of success of the French Revolution and the terrible tragedy is that he didn't, he wasn't trusted. So for Sophie Grouchy,

for figures such as Arthur O'Connor, who's a United Irishman, who changes his name when he marries Eliza Condorcet to Arthur O'Connor Condorcet, he's responsible for the complete works of Condorcet in the early 19th century. So Condorcet kind of becomes 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 haven't, touched on very much is the notion of public instruction because he also wrote things about public instruction. So not surprisingly, he sees education as important. He sees the spread as knowledge is absolutely key to bringing about the kind of cultural change that he wants to see. But he also talks about, well, how do you go about implementing that and what kind of system would you have? And what he wants is a kind of state education that would be free for people to access. And that there's a really

close link between that and his understanding of kind of government, representative government, that you're providing people with the tools and the understanding that they need in order to participate in society and in politics in the way that he thinks they should be doing. Do you think if he hadn't been caught, if many had escaped to live another day, he would have continued to make a difference? Can I answer that? Yeah, go ahead. 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 Condorce 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-revely 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 Republican general slash patriotic monarchy, so he can trust him 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? I know, a cup of tea, please. A cup of tea. Two teas, two teas.

Go on then. Thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Will you please welcome the 2023 BBC wreath lecturer, Professor Ben Ansel? I don't think anybody expects to be asked to do the wreath lectures. So it's an enormous honour, but it's an enormous responsibility. Hello, I'm Anita Arndon. In this year's BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures, Professor

Ben Ansel explores our democratic future and what we must do to protect it. 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 Reith Lectures. Listen on BBC Sounds.