ABSTRACT

To identify the Enlightenment squarely with the popular connotations of “progress” would be an over-simplification; to identify such progress squarely with Marquis de Condorcet, however, would be entirely proper. Condorcet’s most famous work, the Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind, is characterized by an enthusiastic, unrestrained optimism regarding humankind’s potential for material, intellectual, and social improvement. Such confidence, in the breadth of human aspirations which it includes, and in their particular combinations, did not easily suit earlier Enlightenment thinkers. Condorcet was a mathematician by training, and his confidence in progressive potential of a “social calculus” may have its roots in his own attempt to use the mathematical study of probability to determine the proper number of jurors necessary for a true decision in judicial practice. Condorcet’s confidence that he could speak of the nature and mechanics of social progress with scientific certainty allowed him to view the expansion of Enlightenment culture to non-European peoples as an unqualified benefit.