Raison, Happiness And Progress

This paper including four parts began with rethinking about the idea of history and intellectual history. After introducing three paradigms in the past study of intellectual history, I explained why and how to study Condorcet's idea of progress.In the second part, I firstly tried to research the intellectual context of Condorcet's idea of progress in the perspective of idea history which stressed the continuous process of idea. His predecessors, Fontenelle, Saint Pierre and Turgot , supplied Condorcet with the base of《progress》which included the function of knowledge, the general rule of mental progress and the relationship between mental progress and social progress etc. With the help of Skinner's paradigm,I managed to look into the intellectual context of condorcet's idea of progress in three dimensions including time, space and reason. In christianism's view , time was like a line with an end and history was composed of the original sin, the redemption of Jesus and the justice of doomsdays. Condorcet chose the secular happiness to take the place of the justice of doomsdays. Influenced by Newton's view of time, Condorcet regarded time as the absolute time which lost its divinity and can be measured exactly and discarded the view of circular. In Condorcet's epoch, people compared the world to a machine more than an organic body, so the nature didn't have holiness any more and was dominated by certain rules. This idea inspired Condorcet and let him believe that human being could use the reason to find the rules of every field. The idea of reason also had changed a lot from ancient Greek to his current time. In ancient Greek's view, reason was the logical reason and only through logical reason can they recognize the logos. However, the Christian regarded reason as the pride of human being and people should get knowledge by revelation instead of reason. Descartes and Leibniz created new tools and enriched the forms of reason. In the age of Condorcet, reason became a weapon to criticize the tradition and authority. The use of reason made Condorcet realize the potential of human being and that with reason people can achieve the freedom, equality and happiness. In the third part, I explained the meaning of progress and introduced Condorcet's practice on his idea. Based on Locke and Descarte's epistemlogies, Condorcet not only found the impetus of progress and the specific rule of mental progress,but predicted the bright future of human beings. Then I introduced Condorcet's practice in two aspects—critiques and construction—on the ways to perogress and happiness. He criticized the despotism, superstition and blindness and tried his best to construct public education system,voting model, republic regime and constitution.I made a conclusion in the last part that Condorcet's idea of progress was a new world view, because he stressed the absolute independence of man and the potential of man and because he focused on the secular life intead of eternal life. His belief in the reason and secular progress replaced the position of God and as Baker said,he created《a holy city of philosophies》.