Condorcet and the conflict of values

ABSTRACT Condorcet has been seen since the 1790s as the embodiment of the cold, rational Enlightenment. The paper explores his writings on economic policy, voting, and public instruction, and suggests different views both of Condorcet and of the Enlightenment. Condorcet was concerned with individual diversity; he was opposed to proto-utilitarian theories; he considered individual independence, which he described as the characteristic liberty of the moderns, to be of central political importance; and he opposed the imposition of universal and eternal principles. His efforts to reconcile the universality of some values with the diversity of individual opinions are of continuing interest. He emphasizes the institutions of civilized or constitutional conflict, recognizes conflicts or inconsistencies within individuals, and sees moral sentiments as the foundation of universal values. His difficulties call into question some familiar distinctions, for example between French, German, and English/Scottish thought, and between the Enlightenment and the ‘counter-Enlightenment’. There is substantial continuity, it is suggested, between Condorcet's criticism of the economic ideas of the 1760s (of Tocqueville's ‘first’ French revolution) and the liberal thought of the early nineteenth century.