Burke and Condorcet

France was bankrupt, and attempts to procure money were thwarted by the Parliament of Paris, and Louis XVI was forced to agree to the calling of the States-General. Elections ordered in 1788. For the first time since 1614, the States-General met at Versailles with the chief purpose being for the king to obtain the assembly’s consent to a general fiscal reform. Each of the three estates-clergy, nobility and the third estate, or commons-presented it particular grievances to the crown. Louis XVI wavered; the deputies of the third estate defiantly proclaimed thems

While in hiding Condorcet wrote a very interesting philosophical work Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. In this work he outlined the progress of the human race through nine stages, beginning with the primitive. He also outlined the concept of a tenth stage in which, largely through education, human perfection might be attained. Believing that his asylum had become unsafe, Condorcet attempted to escape. After three days he was arrested and imprisoned. Two days later he was found dead in his prison cell and it is not known if he died from natural causes, whether he was murdered, or committed suicide.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a British statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker that played a prominent part in all major political issues. Burke was Irish and born in Dublin. He married Jane Nugent in the spring of 1757 at which time he published one of his first major literary works about what constitutes beauty, an essay On the Sublime and the Beautiful. Burke was a lover of literature and philosophy, but turned his attention to a political career in 1765, when he became the private secretary of one of the Whig leaders in Parliament, the marquees of Rockingham. The crown had lost some influence under the first two Georges; one of the major political problems in 18th century Britain was the fact that both the kings and Parliament had considerable control over the executive.

Condorcet, was a French philosopher, mathematician, social scientist, economist, gentleman, politician, and humanitarian that was the only giant of the Enlightenment present at the revolution. He disliked religion very much, and this may have caused him to turn his attention to mathematics. Mathematically educated at Reims and Paris he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1769 and of the French Academy in 1782. In the mid 1770s, Condorcet was drawn from mathematics into the world of social mathematics, concerned with moral and political science. Here he fell in with the clique of Voltaire, Diderot, and others, namely Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), who would serve as his mentor until his death. Turgot was an economic and pol

Some topics in this essay:
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