The Enlightenment Transformed: The Institute Prize Contests

Abstract

FROM MONTESQUIEU'S MASTERWORK De 1'esprit des lois (1748) to Condorcet's parting hymn to perfectibility, the Esquisse d'un tableau historique ... (1795), French Enlightenment philosophes sought to deepen the systematic understanding of human nature and society. Du Pont de Nemours and the Physiocrats thought they discovered natural laws of the order, and Condorcet ascertained the same degree of certainty in the moral as in the physical sciences.1 Theories of the sciences seemed to be forerunners of an effective social art. While the major philosophes held diverse political views, they most often wished to use the art to reform abuses-of privilege, of corporate bodies, of despotic rule, or of clerical power. In the late Revolutionary era, the Class of Moral and Political Sciences of the French National Institute (1795-1803) briefly embodied Condorcet's dream of a sciences academy.2 By then the impetus to reform had largely yielded to an overriding concern