Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Skepticism

Jouffroy considers skepticism a more prominent opponent of morality than all the systems he has considered thus far. One reason for this judgement is rather suspect: the Western mind is not as prone to mysticism and pantheism, Jouffroy thinks. The other reason is somewhat more credible: there is really only one way to be a pantheist, but there is an infinity of manners to be skeptic.

But how does skepticism then threaten morality? Simply put, Jouffroy suggests that since skepticism denies that we can know anything, it must also deny that we know how to separate right from wrong. If we cannot do that, he concludes, we cannot really have obligations.

As Jouffroy pointed out, skeptical arguments are plentiful, so he concentrates his attention only to the most prominent ones. He begins by noting that these arguments can target three things: the subject of knowledge or the intellect, the object of knowledge or the reality and the knowledge itself or our representations of the reality. Of these, Jouffroy thinks, the objections against the subject are the most dangerous – and some of them even unanswerable.

Jouffroy first presents an account of how we know things. He suggests that we have two sources of knowledge. First of these is the observation that acquires information on the portion of reality we are connected with, either externally, through senses, or internally, through consciousness. The second source is the reason that leads us to the universal principles, like causality and substance. These two sources, Jouffroy explains, are interconnected: the observation must at first produce its own elementary notions (such as perception of something existent), before the reason is awakened to discover its own notions (e.g. noting that what is perceived must have a cause), yet, the principles of reason must always be implicit in our observation (all perceptions whatsoever have a cause).

In addition to observation and reason, Jouffroy adds, our knowledge is based on two other faculties. First of these is reasoning, which derives further truths from results of observation and reason, either through induction or through deduction. The second faculty is memory that preserves all the notions acquired through observation and reasoning and thus makes the reasoning itself possible. Note that Jouffroy does not say that reason would require memory: because reason should always produce the same results, as long as something else is first given, memorising its results would be superfluous.

Jouffroy begins with the greatest objection against our faculties: we can not really prove their veracity, because such a proof would be based on the very faculties and would therefore be circular. He admits that this objection is truly unanswerable, but is still not very concerned about it, since it would work, no matter what our cognitive faculties would be. Even a divine intellect has no other proof for its veracity than unjustified reliance on itself. Thus, Jouffroy concludes, we can do no better than to have faith that our faculties are in principle reliable, and even skeptics actually do this in real life.

Once this major obstacle has been removed, no attack against our cognitive faculties is insurmountable. True, Jouffroy admits, our senses sometimes make faulty observations, and our memory and reasoning do fail us. Yet, he at once adds, all these problems do not cancel the fact that these faculties can work properly. Indeed, many philosophers and especially logicians have published works that aim to improve our use of these faculties and e.g. make reliable deductions and inductions.

One might note that Jouffroy does not list the reason among the faculties that can be at fault. Indeed, he suggests that due to its results being necessary and shared by all humans, reason can never make errors. True, Jouffroy admits, some philosophers have attacked various principles of reason (like Hume did with causality), but these attacks have been just academic and all humans really admit e.g. the validity of the notion of causality. At most some philosophers have had disagreements about the classification of rational principles, but this is just an academic struggle, Jouffroy thinks.

The only remaining weapon against our faculties that the skeptics has, Jouffroy says, is to say that passions and bodily changes can affect and thus disturb these faculties. He readily admits this, but again just points out that these are just known causes for making our faculties unreliable and that we have means to recognise and remove the effects of these abnormal conditions.

The skeptical attack on the objects of knowledge relies on the fact that the things we observe are ephemeral and variable and thus offer no reliable and lasting knowledge. Jouffroy answers this objection by pointing out that we are actually not interested in knowing these transient phenomena, but want to and can reach something permanent, namely, laws governing such phenomena. The question how we can find such hidden laws on basis of mere temporary appearances reduces again to the question of the reliability of our faculties, which Jouffroy thinks he has answered sufficiently.

Jouffroy considers two different objections against knowledge in general. First of them points out that our knowledge is ultimately incomplete, revealing only a small portion of reality. Jouffroy accepts this objection, but thinks it doesn’t really affect our capacity to know: even incomplete knowledge can be reliable, as long as we do not make any unwarranted leaps of induction from what we do know to what we do not yet know.

The second objection concerns the variety of opinions different cultures and even different people within the same culture have. Jouffroy notes that such a variety does not itself tell that any opinion could not be the truth or that the truth would be in principle unknowable. Furthermore, he points out that despite these diverse opinions, there are still many things humans agree upon. In addition, Jouffroy suggests that especially the diversity of opinions in different ages indicates just that human knowledge is constantly improving and becoming more and more reliable.

In addition to this rather academic skepticism, which can never really be endorsed by anyone else, but a scholar, Jouffroy recognises a skepticism of the masses that means nothing more than lack of faith due to ignorance of truth. Indeed, he names his own age one of those times, when such skepticism rules the world. Jouffroy suggests that introduction of this type of skepticism happens regularly: all religion has its faults, and when scholars find them and tell about them to a wider audience, faith in the old religion is gone, without any replacement.

Jouffroy thinks that this development began with the Reformation and that its first phase culminated with the Enlightenment, where Christianity was faced with scorching criticism. Jouffroy himself is not convinced with what was meant to replace the traditional faith – materialism and democracy – and suggests that there has already occurred a counterattack against these novelties. His own time, Jouffroy thinks, is then in an even more disarrayed state, where there is as yet no clear and shared criteria for good and bad.

The lack of consensus on morality has led, Jouffroy thinks, to a cult of individuality and anarchy, bolstered with a disdain toward everything ancient and contempt of reflection and historical study. In his opinion, people at large are weak of character and are enthused about novelties, like constant social and political revolutions, which fail to engage with the true problem of the era: the lack of faith. True solution, Jouffroy insists, would be religious, and political reformations can only succeed religious changes, just like it required the introduction of Christianity to cure the political corruption of the Roman state.

Jouffroy’s advice to his readers is that they should try to take a long view and raise themselves above the concerns of the present day: historical processes have their own cycles, and it took centuries to get from Socrates to the rise of the Christianity. Furthermore, he suggests that the readers should take the stance of the ancient Stoics, who searched for the criteria of morality and taught them to the populace at large. As a part of this enlightenment of the masses, Jouffroy thinks, an important task is to speak against unnecessary political revolutions that cannot really achieve anything before the constitution of a new faith.

Christian Hermann Weisse: System of aesthetics - History of an ideal beauty

The development of beauty, with Weisse, had to contend with immediate beauty not necessarily conforming to the sublime infinity beyond it and being thus ugly. Now, while we can see what an ideal beauty corresponding to the sublime should be like, he continues, originally the discovery of ideal beauty required the effort of generations, and indeed, several historical cultures.

Weisse connects the notion of ideal beauty especially to the notion of mythology. Mythologies at their best are for Weisse not just arbitrary creations of fantasy, but reflect the life and thoughts of a people. A mythology sums up the hopes and fears of a culture in a symbolic shape of mythical personalities. These symbols, Weisse says, resemble the previous aesthetic shape of comical humour, in that they both rise above the ordinary life of finite, momentary and decaying shapes, the difference being that while humour merely notes and rises above this decay, mythological symbols try to grasp something stable from this play of finite entities.

Mythology as such is not yet beauty. It is no surprise that Weisse would follow the general trend in thinking that the ancient Greek were the people responsible for transforming mythology into an ideal beauty, because Hellenic mythology was a particularly natural creation of the spirit of Greek life. Hellenic mythology, as Weisse envisions it, had two different types of mythological shapes. Firstly, the mythology tells about heroes living in the distant past, who express the essence of what the Greek thought being a Greek meant. Secondly, the heroes interact with the beautiful gods, who represent various aspects of the superhuman realm beyond human history.This mythology is then embodied in the Hellenic cult, which represents the relations of humans to this supernatural realm.

Just like Hellenic ideal was a result of historical development, it was also subject to further development, Weisse notes. While in Hellenic mythology gods were characterised by their beauty, such an external appearance was revealed to be frivolous compared to god being a self-conscious entity: beauty is replaced by something more valuable. This does not mean that beauty was completely ignored after this historical transformation, but its place in the hierarchy of values was just lowered.

With this transformation, Weisse explains, the ancient ideal of beauty turned into a romantic ideal, with its own mythology. While Hellenic gods were present as beautiful shapes, romantic God is something beyond the mythological or legendary figures - an unreachable infinity. This doesn’t mean that romantic God would never be thought to appear in the finite world, Weisse admits, but the relation of the divine and the finite was just reversed. While Hellenic gods were embodied divinities, romantic God could divinise a body - an obvious reference to the notion of incarnation. Furthermore, Weisse continues, unlike with Hellenic gods, this appearance of the romantic God in the world of finity was meant to be just temporary and God returned to the realm beyond.

The divination or at least spiritualisation of the corporeal world in the romantic mythology happened also in an opposite fashion from incarnation, Weisse notes. The finite world or at least some part of it still appeared to be severed from God - in terms of earlier concepts, it was an ugly world. Now, this inherent ugliness of the human world, Weisse continues, was presented in a non-bodily form as evil spirits opposing God. Indeed, often the beautiful gods of antiquity were now interpreted as these evil spirits or demons. Human world was then seen as a battleground between the spiritual forces of good and evil.

This battle was not supposed to be never ending, Weisse notes, but it was assumed to end with the overcoming of the forces of evil. Yet, this final victory was not really thought of as occurring at some definite point of time, but only in the hazy future - or, one might say, it had already been won, since nothing could hinder God's plans. This victory or salvation of the finite world was wrapped in the notion of divine love of the finite world.

While Hegel had ended the development of aesthetics with romanticism, which made his contemporaries assume he had assumed the death of aesthetics, Weisse continues further. Indeed, this very next step he assumes is inherent in the notion of divine love of finity - like the romantic God was supposed to do in the future or have done in an atemporal manner, we humans have again come to appreciate the beauty of the world around us. When this change has happened, yet another form of ideal has appeared - the modern ideal.

While many German romantics had supposed that a new ideal would require a new mythology, Weisse comments that all we really need now is the science of beauty itself or speculative aesthetics. Indeed, we need not even a complete aesthetical theory, but just a certainty that beauty is something equally eternal as truth and God are. This certainty is then accompanied with the historical appreciation of the former shapes of ideal beauty and with the expectation of further beauties of innumerable measure.

The historical development of the aesthetic ideals has stopped now, Weisse emphasises, but this does not mean that no further beauties would not be found. Instead, quite the opposite has happened, since by understanding beauty as such, we have liberated it from any necessary connection to further mythologies. We have thus learned to appreciate beautiful objects, which each in their unique manner express the modern ideal of beauty. In other words, Weisse implies, we now appreciate art for its own sake, not just as an expression of religious notions.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 1 (1830) - Toward the age of positivism

(1798-1857)

The style and topic of Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive feel strikingly modern. Indeed, it is one of the first examples of philosophy of science, field of study that became increasingly dominant in the philosophy texts of the 20th century, and its main thrust still feels topical today.

Of course, there are clear signs of Comte being a child of his time, especially in his idea of the three stages of human thought: theological, metaphysical and positive. Similar notions of progressive stages of humanity, leading from crude religious thoughts to scientific outlook had been a staple of French thought. One need mention just Saint-Simon, whose work indeed had an influence on Comtee. Compared to the systems of his predecessors, who might have distinguished a dozen stages, Comte’s version seems much more streamlined, which shows his attempt to transform such crude historical schemes into a real law of human progression.

A more important novelty is Comte’s idea that the three stages are not really distinct, but more like abstractions from a concrete continuum. Thus, he notes that we really cannot determine a specific spot where e.g. the positive stage began, because it has progressed in different manners in different sciences, and while physical sciences have already managed to eradicate theological and metaphysical notions, they still abound in human sciences.

While it is quite easy to understand what Comte means by the theological stage, where everything is explained by actions of divinities, the notion of metaphysical stage is not so simple to understand. Metaphysics should supposedly replace gods with abstract forces that act as explanatory causes. This description could fit a number of theories, for instance, Neoplatonic hierarchies of abstractions, but when we see Comte suggesting that metaphysics ultimately strives toward unifying all these causes in the notion of Nature, it appears that he is especially referring to various materialist philosophies that try to explain phenomena through some ultimate group of material existents.

Now, an obvious question such historical schemes suggest is whether they are meant to be just a very general description of past events or whether they imply that such progression has been necessary. Comte at least seems to take the latter route. He states that the three stages can be found even in the development of individual human beings, at least in the sense that we all must begin as theologians, searching for purposeful actors behind everything we experience. Indeed, Comte says, at the dawn of humanity such behaviour was quite rational, since there simply was not enough information to tell how e.g. the stars moved.

Even if the beginning of human history is necessarily theological, it seems to require more justification to state that it is necessary to move from this stage toward the so-called positive stage. Comte does not delineate any argument for this stance, at least in the first chapter of his Course, but he appears to have the idea that when we gather more and more information about the phenomena around us, we firstly notice that we really cannot find the ultimate causes of them, and secondly, also notice that we actually need no such explanations. In other words, moving toward the positive stage means rejecting all theological assumptions, but not by assuming other, materialistic assumptions. Thus, the positive stage is one of agnosticism and skepticism about ultimate causes, that is, in it we merely describe the laws or regularities of phenomena, but do not try to explain them.

The final justification of this historical scheme should apparently be given in the science of human societies, the foundation of which is one task Comte sets for himself in the course. This scientific study of humanity should replace psychology of his times, which he thinks to be still filled with theological and metaphysical assumptions. Comte especially criticises the use of self-observation as a method of psychology. In physical sciences, he notes, we have already learned that human observation might fake us, suggesting e.g. sun to be a much smaller object than it actually is. Why should we assume that observation of our own actions would be more trustworthy?

The task of creating a social science is in Comte’s eyes intricately linked to a second task, that of forming a system out of all individual sciences. Only through social science, Comte says, can we recognise logic, that is, scientific methodology, and so it helps us to understand relations between all sciences. Comte notes that creation of such a system or hierarchy of sciences satisfies our need for unification, evident in the earlier replacement of polytheism with monotheism and of pluralism of forces with monistic Nature. Comte speculates that this unification has its limits and that we can probably never reduce laws of different sciences into one law. Still, he notes, there’s at least a homogenous method combining all sciences into a unity.

In addition to these two tasks, Comte suggests several benefits his undertaking might have. Firstly, delineating the relations between scientific disciplines might suggest fruitful interdisciplinary studies. Comte mentions as examples Cartesian application of algebra into geometry and recent studies in organic chemistry. Another benefit lies in the reorganisation of education, where mere literary studies could be replaced by a curriculum designed around the system of sciences and beginning with their general methodology.

The final benefit Comte suggests links his undertaking again to the contemporary discussions in French philosophy. He notes that theological and metaphysical thinkers had disputed about the best possible form of governance: it is likely that he is referring here, on the one hand, to Catholic conservatives siding with absolute monarchy, and on the other hand, various materialist leaning thinkers speaking for more republican or at least constitutional state. Comte appears to be suggesting that this debate cannot be solved through philosophical disputations, but only through scientific description of how human societies work and how they could be organised most effectively - a task for the social sciences.

Charles Fourier (1808): Theory of the four movements and the general destinies

1772-1837

At times one reads a work where the conclusion appear to be - if not completely correct - at least plausible, but the argument is so flawed that one has difficulties to say what to think about the whole. This is particularly true of Fourier’s Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générales, which presents an interesting view of an ideal society, but fails to argue for it in a convincing manner.

The book itself is merely a prospect for a much larger series of works - it just advertises interesting facets of Fourier’s theory, without giving a complete justification for it. Still, even from this brief glimpse it is quite possible to see what Fourier is up to and especially where he must fail. Indeed, what else but a failure could be a work which tried to reduce four types of processes - mechanical movement of planets and stars, organic movement of living beings, animal movement and social movement of humans - into a single all-encompassing formula.

The metaphysical basis of Fourier’s theory is broadly Platonistic. We have three principles accounting for everything in the world: passive matter, divinity, which in Fourier’s ideas becomes little more than just a force providing existence and movement to the universe, and finally a mathematical schema, which God supposedly follows in forming the universe out of the matter. It is especially the third element or the schema of the world, which interests Fourier.

Although Fourier doesn’t express himself in this manner, we might say that Fourier sees the importance of Gaussian distribution for every level of universe - whenever some quality can be expressed as a quantitative scale between two extremes, most of the instances of this quality occur in the middle of the scale, while towards the extremes the instances become less and less frequent.

In the prospect, Fourier is especially interested of expressing human passions in this Gaussian manner. Fourier takes the example of florists. Let us assume that all florists have a passion for flowers. Now, most of the florists are especially interested of certain common middle-of-the-road flowers, which we ordinarily call beautiful, like daffodils, and only quite few florists are interested of certain specialties, like cactuses.

Fourier’s example shows already the problematic nature of his theory. He is keen to see Gaussian distribution everywhere, but in some cases, like with passion for flowers, it is hard to say what would be the two extremes, between which the distribution should exist. In fact, it would seem that flowers and therefore also our passions for them could be measured according to various criteria, leading to quite complex distributions. Indeed, although Gaussian distribution is a real phenomenon, in practice Fourier tries to fit it in too many places, making the more intricate parts of his theory into a mere Pythagorean number magic.

The important consequence of this rather far-fetched theory derives from a further metaphysical assumption - God is good and he has reasons for creating what he does. In the particular case of human passions this means that all the passions within our hearts are good by nature - whatever flowers a florist would want to grow, it is a part of a greater good. Indeed, it is just this variety of passions, which the society should embrace - everyone should be able to follow the calling of her heart. Now, because our society does not do this, but emphasises only the so-called middle-of-the-road passions, it is clearly far from a perfect society, Fourier concludes.

In a perfect society, then, we would have people passionately dedicated to all types of creativity. In fact, Fourier says, in a perfect society each village would have its own Homer and Moliere - and each village would also be filled with all kinds of flowers, one might add. But it is quite evident that in addition to being an example of all types of industries, florists and their passions are also a euphemism for something else, namely, sexuality. Indeed, Fourier is quite willing to admit, while in his time people became bored in their life-long marriages with their first love, in a perfect society we would admit that some people have more diverse tastes and like to sample a variety of persons with different characters.

We might say that this part of Fourier’s world is at least partly already in existence - although the ideal of a single life-long relationship is still endorsed by many, in practice people tend to do what Fourier thinks is more of the norm, that is, they spend their youth trying several people and only after cooling of their passions settle for a single person. We are still somewhat judgemental about people who never settle for anyone or settle for a number of people, but it has become a more viable option. Finally, Fourier even seems to have rightly foreseen the breaking of gender norms, both in sexuality and in life in general - while his main theory is ridiculously classified according to genders, down to having two different types of florists for male and female, he does accept as a biological fact that some members of one gender would have passions suitable for a member of the other gender.

Although the development of this part of our culture has progressed to the direction Fourier fathomed, we are still far from his perfect society when it comes to other parts. Notably, Fourier’s ideal society covers the whole globe and it appears to be heavily state organised - or at least the globe is segregated into small villages or cantons with intricate social structures and containing just enough persons for the development of all types of passions (here we see a perfect example of Fourier’s number magic). Of course, this is not meant to be a centralised dictatorship, but government merely provides the opportunity for every passion to flourish and the rest is done by human nature and its inherent needs.

A further element in Fourier’s theory is that we really don’t have to strive for the perfect society, but it is something that will happen eventually, in the course of time. You see, it is not just the range of human passions where Fourier applies the Gaussian distribution, but the whole human history. Here the distribution gets an evaluative character. The times of imperfect society, where human passions are stilted, are rare in comparison with the time of perfect society. In fact, it is the time of the extreme youth and the extreme old age of humanity in general, where the imperfection exists. This is just what God does even in case of individuals, who are at their prime in the middle of their life, and the longevity of this prime time exceeds the sufferings of the other ages (one might ask whether the inevitable corruption at the end doesn’t bring a sour taste to the life of the perfect age).

In yet another numerological outburst, Fourier suggests that his period is the fifth in the order of times, while the perfect society would start to appear around eighth period. At least in this prospect, Fourier is quite silent about the states between the current and the perfect society (and he has nothing to say about the future periods), but he does make some feeble attempts to account for the earlier history. The first period of human development already begun in a sense from a perfect society, because original humans could follow their passions without any cultural restrictions. Then again, due to the primitive nature of the first society, this paradisaical state of nature quickly succumbed to the forces of nature, such as ferocious beasts, and led to the second period of savagery. Fourier doesn’t really describe this second period that much, because “everyone knows what savagery is all about”, but he appears to refer to a kind of tribal life which native Americans were thought to live in westerns.

Savagery or second period was then replaced by the patriarchal life, found in the Old Testament tales of Abraham and Jacob. Fourier has almost nothing but scorn towards this supposed period, where all power resided in the hands of few men - it was certainly no paradise for women. Patriarchy was then replaced by barbarism - another nebulous period, but apparently Islam with its possibility of polygamy and supposed repression of women should represent that period of time. As one can already see, it is quite hard to put the whole of human history into the shackles of Fourier’s periods, since the assumedly fourth-period Islam was still a living factor in the fifth period Fourier thought he was living, or civilisation. In fact, Fourier himself admits as much, stating that many nations are actually combinations of many periods, for instance, China shows characteristics of patriarchy, barbarism and civilisation.

It is the period of civilisation, which Fourier describes in greatest detail in his prospect. It is in a sense progress, because monogamous marriages were improvement of the life of women, which according to Fourier has often been the sign of process in history. Of course, monogamy is still far from the sexual plurality Fourier endorses, wherefore civilisation cannot be the last stage of human history.

Indeed, Fourier continues, he is living at the declining period of civilisation, which began around the time when European nations started to navigate around the globe. It is especially the economic development where Fourier sees signs of decline. Embezzlements, financial speculations and series of bankruptcies all speak of an upcoming catastrophe, and philosophers like Adam Smith, Fourier ironically notes, speak highly of the economic savagery, which is destroying the civilisation and plunging world into a time of economic feudalism, in which stockbrokers and bankers live like parasites from the work of others.

Although Fourier’s furor against the speculators sounds quite moralistic, he is merely pointing out the flaws in a society, which allows such economical roguery - the individuals themselves are just living as well as they can in an perverted society. As an antidote Fourier regards the inevitably oncoming global government, which should put an end to such misuse of economy through instigation of a new world order. The main obstacle for this eventual unification in Fourier’s eyes has been Great Britain, which has through its position as the world’s foremost sea power used diplomatic means to keep Europe unifying under a single rule. Fourier at a time when Napoleon had been able to unite the nations of continental Europe against Britain, and Fourier was convinced that whichever side won, it would instigate first a European and then a global world order - a most far-fetched speculation in Fourier’s work.

Marquis de Condorcet: Historical picture of the progress of human spirit (1795)

Condorcet (1743-1794)

At least after World Wars, any talk of inevitable progress in history seems out of place – every apparent step forward appears to have led to even more horrible atrocities. Yet, the notion of progress seemed so natural for over a century that it should be seriously considered, even if the idea feels naive these days.

Condorcet's Tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain is as infatuated with the idea of progression as a book can be. Its picture of human history is not a straightforward line of progression, because Condorcet does accept that the development of humanity could stop from time to time – for instance, in quite a traditional fashion, Condorcet paints Middle Ages as a time of cultural stagnation and even decay. Still, the main theme of Condorcet's work is one of on-going development.

Condorcet begins from pre-historical times. Of course, he lived in time, when no reliable knowledge of the early development of humanity was available and he was thus forced to speculate on many important questions. Yet, he did raise a central question – why did particularly human beings gain the power to form huge civilisations? Condorcet notes some peculiarities in the physical form of humans – e.g. two hands give them advantage in forming tools. But the most important element explaining the rise of human kind was language, Condorcet says.

An important early invention was agriculture, which helped to sustain human life and allowed people to gather into large collections. This centralisation of human population is not just pure development, Condorcet says, because it also led to centralisation of wealth and power. More remote offspring of this current is warfare – it makes no sense to conquer a roving band of hunter-gatherers, but it is possible to conquer villages and towns. Such conquests led to even further imbalance in society, since the conquering class of people usually received more rights than the people conquered.

One major theme in Condorcet's writing – and indeed, in whole Enlightenment – is the supposed deviousness of clergy. Clerics had power, because they had some important knowledge, for instance, about movement of stars and about proper times for planting seeds. Clergy also had the access to alphabets, early versions of which were often cumbersome to read and write. Although holders of knowledge, priests also mixed truths with errors and even outright lies, which helped them to control the human population.

Condorcet's rather fanciful conspiracy theory sets the tone for the rest of the book. Greeks began the process of liberating reason from superstition, but because they couldn't obliterate the power of priests and other tyrants, the progress was halted and continued only in renaissance. Condorcet emphasises especially the development of science at the beginning of modern age, but also the invention of printing press, which kept truth alive, even under censure. Then final phase of the human development begins then with the American and French Revolutions, which helped to eradicate final social inequalities.

It is especially Condorcet's speculation of the future of humankind, which interests us. It comes as no surprise that Condorcet believes in even further progression, which could be forestalled only by a barbarian invasion. I already noted that Condorcet believed that French revolution had resulted in destruction of all privileges traditionally given to some class of people. Condorcet went even so far as to suppose that in the new society even the genders would have equal status. This does not mean that Condorcet would have held the idea that women could be as valuable as men in society. Especially in case of mathematical sciences, Condorcet believed that females could never obtain the highest rank of a creative genius – a common presupposition of his day.

Condorcet also didn't think that all inequality could be eradicated forever, because he supposed people to have different natural talents, which inevitably leads to e.g. differences in wealth. Yet, like any student of Adam Smith, Condorcet appears to have believed that a kind of invisible hand would keep economy balanced and fair, as long as all traditional privileges were cancelled.

We might ask if Condorcet's hope of diminishing inequality could be nothing but a phantom, if he was not willing to give the state any power to regulate the economy. Yet, Condorcet puts all his chips on education – a very Enlightenment-like move. Apparently all that is enough is just teaching everyone to look things from a more general perspective and especially making them learn probability calculus. Armed with this tool, a person could just calculate her chances of getting any profit from some actions – and by seeing, for instance, that potential punishments overcame all possible benefits of a crime, anyone would be convinced of not committing a crime.

We are starting to see the weak side of Condorcet's science fiction, that is, blind reliance on the powers of human reason. It is fantastic to think that everyone could become a master calculator, able and willing to use mathematics for finding out the best course of action. Yet, even if such a fabulous discipline could really exist in any but quite rudimentary fashion, we might still be skeptical of everyone actually using such a behavorial calculus – and having the strength of will to follow its advice, even against strong temptations.

Similar naivety occurs also in Condorcet's notion of international politics: he believes that the value of commerce would inevitably lead to a time of peace, since in the new liberated phase of human history no country would in the long run benefit from a war. Still, Condorcet does allow patriotism, and indeed, believes it to be a necessary part of the life of a good citizen – one must love one's country and all its denizens. Again quite naively, Condorcet thinks that in a good society, patriotism cannot be in conflict with cosmopolitan and open attitude toward other nations.