Destutt de Tracy, Antoine Louis Claude (1754–1836)

Abstract

French philosopher and economist, Tracy was born into a noble family of the ancien régime at Paris on 20 July 1754 and died in the same city on 10 March 1836. His life spanned the most tumultuous period of French history, from the twilight of the Old Regime to the dawn of capitalism, romanticism and socialism. One of the last philosophes, Tracy began as an 18thcentury classical metaphysician, preoccupied with the sensationalist doctrine of Locke and Condillac, and ended up, in the words of Auguste Comte, as the philosopher ‘who had come closest to the positive state’. In the interim he knelt at the feet of Voltaire; served alongside Lafayette in the Royal Cavalry, and as deputy to the French Estates General and the Constituent Assembly; was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror; released after Thermidor (escaping the guillotine by a mere two days); subsequently helped to establish his country’s first successful national programme of public education; led the opposition to Napoleon from his seat in the French Senate; regained his title under the Bourbon Restoration; counted among his associated the likes of Mirabeau, Condorcet, Cabanis, DuPont de Nemours, Jefferson, Franklin, Lavoisier, Ricardo and Mill; and retained his early sympathies for liberty throughout.