Marquis De Condorcet Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794), was an influential French philosopher, mathematician, political activist, and political scientist. Condorcet is a typical representative of the French Enlightenment tradition, bringing scientific and rational arguments into political and philosophical debates. Educated as a mathematician, he tried to promote moral and political progress by approaching political debates from a scientific point of view. Especially with regard to education and elections, his work has been hugely influential. Condorcet worked as a senior administrator before the French Revolution (1789–1799) and was elected a member of parliament in 1791. In the assembly, he championed moderate and liberal causes, argued in favor of equal rights for women, for the abolishment of slavery, and for the advancement of general education in France. In October 1793, he was prosecuted for his opposition to the death penalty for the former King Louis XVI. In March 1794 he died in prison, leaving the young philosopher Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822) as his widow. In 1989, Condorcet was symbolically reburied in the Pantheon in Paris, the burial place for the most important figures in French history.

Condorcet is best known for his work on elections. In particular, his Jury Theorem states that large juries are an ideal mechanism to arrive at right answers to policy questions. The larger the number of votes being cast (in a jury or in a general election), the higher the probability the assembly will arrive at the right decision. The mathematical evidence for this claim basically rests in large numbers: If every single juror has slightly better than 50 percent chance of arriving at the right decision, a high number of jurors makes it all the more likely that there will be a majority for the right decision within the assembly. As such, the theorem has been used to legitimize the use of juries in courts, or to advance general suffrage (thus maximizing the number of voters). Condorcet himself indicated some limitations to the jury theorem, asserting that if the same jury has to reach a series of decisions, there is no guarantee that there will be logical order in these decisions. Condorcet’s paradox claims that jury decisions are not necessarily transitive: If a jury prefers A over B, and B over C, it is still possible that in a third decision, C will be preferred over A.This caveat implies that in its pure form, the jury theorem only applies to single decisions, not to a series of decisions.

The same desire to use the cognitive possibilities of a large group led Condorcet to defend voting rights for women and general education for all children. His great hope was that if more people were introduced to logical reasoning, this would lead to a more humane society. In an ironic twist, Condorcet wrote his final work on the method to improve human moral progress while he was in hiding from his persecutors, just months before his death.

Bibliography:

Badinter, Elisabeth, and Robert Badinter. Condorcet, 1743–1794. Un intellectuel en politique. Paris: Fayard, 1988.
Baker, Keith Michael. Condorcet. From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Condorcet, Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de. Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, translated by June Barraclough, with an introduction by Stuart Hampshire. London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955.
Originally published as Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1795).
Sur les élections et autres textes [On Elections and Other Texts]. Fayard: Paris, 1986.
Goodell, Edward. The Noble Philosopher: Condorcet and the Enlightenment. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1994.