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Thinkers

Marquis de Condorcet

Enlightenment · Europe · 1743 to 1794

French mathematician and thinker who held that reason and education can improve society, and that rights belong to everyone.

What it is

The Marquis de Condorcet (1743 to 1794) was a French philosopher and mathematician of the Enlightenment. He believed that human knowledge and freedom could grow without limit, and he used mathematics to ask how groups should reach decisions.

He was born at Ribemont, studied at a Jesuit college in Reims and at the College of Navarre in Paris, and showed early promise in mathematics. He joined the Academy of Sciences in 1769, became its permanent secretary in 1777, and entered the French Academy in 1782. He supported the French Revolution, later went into hiding as a fugitive from the revolutionary authorities, and was found dead in a prison cell in March 1794.

The main ideas

  • Progress. He held that history is one of advance in the sciences, closely tied to the growth of human rights and justice, and that no fixed limit to that advance can be named.
  • Education. He argued for free and equal public education, and during the Revolution he drew up a plan for a system of state education.
  • Rights for everyone. He spoke for equal rights for women and for people of all races, opposed slavery, and wrote in favour of admitting women to citizenship.
  • Mathematics of choosing. His 1785 essay on the probability of majority decisions applied calculation to voting. It includes what is now called Condorcet's paradox: a majority can prefer A to B, another B to C, and another C to A, so that no choice wins clearly.
  • Against the death penalty. He opposed capital punishment, and spoke against the execution of King Louis XVI even though he supported putting the king on trial.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine three friends choosing a place to eat by a series of two-way votes. Two prefer the café to the diner, two prefer the diner to the bistro, and two prefer the bistro to the café. Every choice has a majority behind it and yet the group goes round in a circle. Condorcet saw this kind of puzzle early and asked what a fair way of deciding would be. This is an illustration of the paradox, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions (1785) is his work on voting and chance.
  • Lives of Turgot and of Voltaire (1786 and 1789) are biographies of Turgot and of Voltaire.
  • Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind is the book he is best known for. He wrote it while hiding from the authorities during the Revolution.
  • March 1794. After leaving his hiding place he was arrested near Paris and taken to the prison at Bourg-la-Reine, where he was found dead two days later.

Questions and criticism

  • How did he die? Accounts differ. Exhaustion, poison taken from a friend, and murder have all been suggested. Nobody knows for sure.
  • Is progress without limit believable? He thought nothing fixed the limit of human knowledge, virtue or even long life. Thomas Malthus is said to have written partly in reply to him.
  • Is fair voting possible? His paradox shows that majority rule can lead to a circle with no winner. He disagreed strongly with the rival method of counting votes put forward by Jean-Charles de Borda, which adds up the rankings of the choices.

Close neighbours

Voltaire's views on the church were close to his, and the page on Voltaire shows the writer whose life he wrote. The page on Denis Diderot shows the great reference work project in which he took part.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Voltaire · He was a friend and admirer of the Enlightenment writers, and wrote a life of Voltaire.

Other Enlightenment thinkers

Sources we used

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