Nicolas de Condorcet
Enlightenment mathematician and politician, he holds that humanity can improve with no fixed limit.
Life
French mathematician, philosopher and politician (1743-1794), permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences and a deputy during the Revolution. He defends equal rights, public education, equality of the sexes and the unlimited progress of humanity. Arrested during the Terror, he died in prison; his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind was published after his death.
Main works
Traces ten epochs of history and foresees unlimited improvement of humanity.
Studies voting mathematically (the "Condorcet paradox").
In his own words
« that no limit has been set to the improvement of human faculties; that the perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; that the progress of this perfectibility, henceforth independent of any power that would wish to stop it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe on which nature has cast us. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe follows Locke and Condillac: ideas come from sensations, and knowledge grows with observation and calculation.
Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795)
He treats religious dogma as an obstacle to progress and trusts reason and science to judge all beliefs.
Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795)
Humans are perfectible with no assigned limit: knowledge and equality can keep progressing.
Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795)