Condorcet: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107021014 ISBN 13: 9781107021013

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794), the innovating founder of mathematical thinking in politics, was the last great philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a central figure in the early years of the French Revolution. His political writings give a compelling vision of human progress across world history and express the hopes of that time in the future perfectibility of man. This volume contains a revised translation of 'The Sketch', written while in hiding from the Jacobin Terror, together with lesser-known writings on the emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, the meanings of freedom and despotism and reflections on revolutionary violence. The introduction by Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati sets these works in context and shows why Condorcet is of real interest today as we reinterpret the meaning of Enlightenment, the very idea of progress and the founding ideas of social democracy.

About this title

Book Description:

Revolutionary, mathematician, economist, philosopher and politician, Condorcet (1743-1794) wrote a compelling view of human progress across world history and a remarkably prophetic view of the future. Set in context by the editors' introduction, this revised translation of 'The Sketch' and lesser-known writings shows why Condorcet is of growing interest today.

About the Author:

Steven Lukes is Professor of Sociology at New York University. He has previously held posts in politics and sociology at Balliol College, Oxford, in political and social theory at the European University Institute in Florence, in moral philosophy at the University of Sienna and in sociology at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and an editor of the European Journal of Sociology. His writing and teaching have ranged over political science, political and moral philosophy, sociology, anthropology and the philosophy of the social sciences. He has published widely on these subjects, most recently Moral Relativism.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1107021014
• ISBN 13: 9781107021013
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 262
• Editor: Lukes Steven, Urbinati Nadia