Marquis de Condorcet

MEHAP-Andrew Fortugno

Perry Marquis de Condorcet The Evils of Slavery

Marquis de Condorcet argues that slavery is a crime worse then theft and defends the position of philosphes who have brought positive change to France

1. Marquis de Condorcet

a. French mathematician and historian of science

b. Contributed to the Encyclopedia

c. Campaigned for religious toleration and abolition of slavery

d. Help to fond the Society of the Friends of Blacks

2. On Slavery

a. Argues that blacks are no different than whites, same spirit, same reason, same virtues

b. Through slavery everything that nature has given man is taken away

c. Abolition will not harm the commerce of wealth of the nation

d. Slavery is not a property right but a crime

3. The philosophes have accomplish much for France

a. Advocates for slavery simply brush the cause away because it is simply another argument brought up by the philosphes

b. Philosophes have made progress with the dangers smallpox

c. Violent tortures has been suppressed

Progress of the Human Mind

· The perfectibility of man is truly indefinite, from now onwards independent of any power that might wish to halt it

· Man is a sentient being, capable of reasoning and of acquiring moral ideas

· The superstitions of antiquity and the abasement of reason before the rapture of supernatural religion disappeared from society as from philosophy

· Force or persuasion on the part of governments, priestly intolerance, and even national prejudices, has lost all their deadly power to smother the voice of truth

· Hopes of the future condition can be of the human race can be subsumed under three important heads

· The abolition of inequality between nations

· The progress of equality within each nations

· The true perfection of mankind

· The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason