Condorcet

Writings on the United States

Guillaume Ansart

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780271053813
• eBook ISBN: 9780271058962
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: Literature

Condorcet (1743–1794) was the last of the great eighteenth-century French philosophes and one of the most fervent américanistes of his time. A friend of Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine and a member of the American Philosophical Society, he was well informed and enthusiastic about the American Revolution. Condorcet's writings on the American Revolution, the Federal Constitution, and the new political culture emerging in the United States constitute milestones in the history of French political thought and of French attitudes toward the United States. These remarkable texts, however, have not been available in modern editions or translations. This book presents first or new translations of all of Condorcet's major writings on the United States, including an essay on the impact of the American Revolution on Europe; a commentary on the Federal Constitution, the first such commentary to be published in the Old World; and his Eulogy of Franklin, in which Condorcet paints a vivid picture of his recently deceased friend as the archetype of the new American man: self-made, practical, talented but modest, tolerant and free of prejudice—the embodiment of reason, common sense, and the liberal values of the Enlightenment.

Table of contents

• COVER Front
• CIP Page
• Table of Contents
• Translator’s Note and Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Condorcet and America
• Notes to Introduction
• Influence of the American Revolution on Europe (1786)
• Notes to Influence of the American Revolution on Europe
• Supplement to Filippo Mazzei’s Researches on the United States (1788)
• Notes to Supplement to Filippo Mazzei’s Researches on the United States
• Ideas on Despotism: For the Benefit of Those Who Pronounce This Word Without Understanding It (1789)
• Notes to Ideas on Despotism
• Eulogy of Franklin: Read at the Public Session of the Academy of Sciences, November 13, 1790 (1790)
• Notes to Eulogy of Franklin
• Appendix: Notes to the French Translation of John Stevens’s Observations on Government (1789)
• Notes to Appendix
• Chronology
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography in English
• Index of Proper Names
• COVER Back