Condorcet: Selected Writings

by Keith Michael Baker (Editor), Nicolas de Condorcet

The aim of this book is quite simply to make available to students a selection of some of the more important writings of Condorcet on philosophy, politics, social science, and history. His Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, often regarded as the very epitome of Enlightenment thought, is well known in the English-speaking world. But the great body of his writings remains untranslated; and, apart from a modern translation of the Sketch, those few works that have been rendered into English exist only in old, rare, or fragmentary translations. The new selection presented here attempts to convey the fundamental ideas and the range of interests of a man who was in one short career mathematician and political theorist, man of letters and social reformer, scientific statesman and revolutionary deputy: a man who, if he is still recognized by historians as the last of the great philosophes of the Enlightenment, is now also being discovered by contemporary social scientists as one of the founding fathers of modern social science.

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

Keith Baker is professor of early modern European history and, by courtesy, of French and Italian, J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities, and Jean-Paul Gimon Director of the France-Stanford Center. His research focuses on intellectual history and the history of political culture, and on the cultural and political origins of the Englightenment and the French Revolution. He is the author of Condorcet. From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics and Inventing the French Revolution. Prof. Baker has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, has been named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. In 2014, he won the American Historical Association's lifetime achievement award.

Reviews

[Yotpseudba · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a big fan of the author's abridgement. This is the only edition that i could find that included a translation of "Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Theory of Decision-making", but unfortunately is was so abridged to the point where most of the substance is removed. The famous "Sketch for the Historical Development of the Human Mind" is also gutted, with only two of the ten epochs (nine and ten) printed. I think i will need to read another edition for the full "Sketch" and try and track down translations of his social choice writings. Condorcet's writings themselves are fascinating, but the abridgement is atrocious and does them a disservice.

[Rosa Ramôa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Não basta que os direitos dos Homens estejam escritos nas obras dos filósofos e no coração dos homens virtuosos.É preciso que o homem ignorante e fraco possa lê-los no exemplo de um grande povo.A América deu-nos esse exemplo.A declaração da sua independência constitui uma apresentação simples e sublime desses direitos tão sagrados e tão esquecidos durante tanto tempo".