Condorcet

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.

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Guests

• Rachel Hammersley 2 episodes
  Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle University
• Richard Whatmore 6 episodes
  Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History
• Tom Hopkins No other episodes
  Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College

Reading list

• Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics
  Keith Michael Baker (University of Chicago Press, 1974) Google Books →
• On Condorcet's Sketch
  Keith Michael Baker (Daedalus, summer 2004)
• Condorcet and the Meaning of Enlightenment
  Lorraine Daston (Proceedings of the British Academy, 2009)
• The Enlightenment: A Genealogy
  Dan Edelstein (Chicago University Press, 2010) Google Books →
• The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought
  Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (eds) (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Ideology and the Origins of Social Science
  Robert Wokler (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
• The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution
  Gary Kates (Princeton University Press, 1985) Google Books →
• Condorcet: Political Writings
  Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• A Republic of Sympathy: Sophie de Grouchy's Politics and Philosophy, 1785-1815
  Kathleen McCrudden Illert (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
• Condorcet: Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory
  Iain McLean and Fiona Hewitt (eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 1994)
• Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment
  Emma Rothschild (Harvard University Press, 2001) Google Books →
• The End of Enlightenment
  Richard Whatmore (Allen Lane, 2023) Google Books →
• Condorcet and Modernity
  David Williams (Cambridge University Press, 2004) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m001v3wy

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001v3wy

Auto-category: 194 (Modern philosophy of France)

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