Condorcet's critique of the social contract and his praise of Locke's political philosophy
In this post I want to resolve a major oddity in Condorcet’s posthumously published (1794) Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind that also illuminates the eighteenth-century reception of Locke very helpfully. The oddity is that in his political theory, Condorcet is hypercritical of social contract theory and yet he praises Locke’s political philosophy!
Before I continue: Condorcet builds his own interpretation of natural equality on a Lockean anthropology (as mediated by Condillac). That’s rather important to his overall argument. In many ways, Condorcet treats Locke systematically such that the Second Treatise and Essay mutually reinforce each other. That material converges with what I demonstrate below. But I am going to leave this material aside in what follows.
In the eight chapter (which Condorcet calls ‘Epochs’), Condorcet introduces a distinction between a group of thinkers that sought “the recovery of rights too long forgotten, or which rather had never been properly known and understood.” Some of these rights we now tend to associate with Locke’s philosophy.* In this context Condorcet mentions only “Althusius and Languet, and afterwards Needham and Harrington.” (Here’s the French.) All four of these are republicans in some sense or other. So, I will treat this side of the distinction, as ‘republican’ in character. But as Condorcet’s argument unfolds (especially in subsequent chapter), one may also call this stream, ‘republican-majoritarianism.’ (In fact, Condorcet is rather hostile against Machiavelli and the Romans whose empire he treats as despotic.) Condorcet clearly favors this stream of thought.
He contrasts this approach with nameless advocates of social contract theory (which he is rather critical of). I quote the passage in which he does so because it is instructive of the tenor of his argument:
Meanwhile other philosophers, more timid, contented themselves with establishing, between the people and kings, an exact reciprocity of duties and rights, and a mutual obligation to preserve inviolate settled conventions. An hereditary magistrate might indeed be deposed or punished, but it was only upon his having infringed this sacred contract, which was not the less binding on his family. This doctrine, which sacrificed natural right, by bringing every thing under positive institution, was supported both by civilians and divines. It was favourable to powerful men, and to the projects of the ambitious, as it struck rather at the individual who might be invested with sovereignty, than at sovereignty itself. For this reason it was almost generally embraced by reformists, and adopted as a principle in political dissentions and revolutions. [Here’s the French]
I am unsure who Condorcet has in mind, but his description fits some of the more important elements in Suarez’s social contract theory (1548–1617; recall this digression). This may also explain the lack of charity in Condorcet’s description since throughout the book Condorcet is polemically against Catholic theologians and the political activities of ‘priests.’ (But since Suarez can also be understood as a natural right theorist, Condorcet is a bit confusing. But the confusion can be avoided, if we read Condorcet as saying ‘that Suarez’ social contract theory is incompatible with natural right properly understood,’ that is, as Condorcet interprets them.) either way, Condorcet treats the social contract approach as status quo friendly (“to preserve inviolate settled conventions”) and useful toward would be rulers.
In the ninth chapter/epoch, Condorcet returns to the contrast between republican-majoritarianism and social contract theory. After favorably expounding the doctrines of the former (about which more below), Condorcet writes,
[Hereby] men discovered the folly of former notions respecting the validity of contracts between a people and its magistrates, which it was supposed could only be annulled by mutual consent, or by a violation of the conditions by one of the parties; as well as of another opinion, less servile, but equally absurd, that would chain a people for ever to the provisions of a constitution when once established, as if the right of changing it were not the security of every other right, as if human institutions, necessarily defective, and capable of improvement as we become enlightened, were to be condemned to an eternal monotony. [French]
A few observations: Condorcet clearly treats the social contract theory as out date (‘former notions’), and best lumped in with a (less servile) conservative sensibility. This anticipates (recall this post) a point emphasized in Duncan Bell’s (2014) “What is Liberalism?” — that nineteenth century (and pre-Rawlsian 20th century) liberals thought of the social contract as “primitive” (p. 695) and “obsolete.” (P. 697) In this sense, Condorcet anticipates nineteenth century progressive/Benthamite thought.
The other, progressive view that Condorcet endorses is republican-majoritarianism:
They saw that the maintenance of his rights was the only object of political union, and that the perfection of the social art consisted in preserving them with the most entire equality, and in their fullest extent. They perceived that the means of securing the rights of the individual, consisting of general rules to be laid down in every community, the power of choosing these means, and determining these rules, could vest only in the majority of the community: and that for this reason, as it is imposible for any individual in this choice to follow the dictates of his own understanding, without subjecting that of others, the will of the majority is the only principle which can be followed by all, without infringing, upon the common equality.
Each individual may enter into a previous engagement to comply with the will of the majority, which by this engagement becomes unanimity; he can however bind nobody but himself, nor can he bind himself except so far as the majority shall not violate his individual rights, after having recognised them.
Such are at once the rights of the majority over individuals, and the limits of these rights; such is the origin of that unanimity, which renders the engagement of the majority binding upon all; a bond that ceases to operate when, by the change of individuals, this species of unanimity ceases to exist. There are objects, no doubt, upon which the majority would pronounce perhaps oftener in favour of error and mischief, than in favour of truth and happiness; still the majority, and the majority only, can decide what are the objects which cannot properly be referred to its own decision; it can alone determine as to the individuals whose judgment it resolves to prefer to its own, and the method which these individuals are to pursue in the exercise of their judgment; in fine, it has also an indispensible authority of pronouncing whether the decisions of its officers have or have not wounded the rights of all. [See here for the French.]
I have added emphasis to Condorcet’s treatment because it really highlights pure majoritarianism is here in Condorcet’s thinking. The political exists in order to secure individual rights, but, crucially, it does so by way of majoritarian politics and, crucially, the majority gets to decide which and what rights to secure for everyone equally.
As republican views go this one illustrates nicely how certain forms of republicanism knowingly risk introducing tyranny of the majority. It is quite astonishing Condorcet was hiding from the Jacobins when he wrote this.
Now, you may recall that there is an interpretive tradition that treats John Locke as defending republicanism. In the eighteen century this was articulated by the great jurist Blackstone, who draws on Second Treatise III.19. Blackstone even treats Locke as a “zealous” and “extreme” republican.
More subtly, and pertinent to twentieth century political philosophy, in (1941) [1959] John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule, Willmoore Kendall (a student of Collingwood at Oxford, who later became associated with the National Review) treated Locke as a majoritarian. In particular, he very much treats Locke in the way that Condorcet treats majoritarianism. I recall two crucial features:
Now, first, Kendall’s interpretation is built on Locke’s account of power:
Kendall interprets this as follows: “the truth of the matter is that Locke did not “begin” with individual in a state of nature, but with a definition of political power so authoritarian and collectivist in its bearing that no genuine individualist (e.g. Rousseau) could conceivably accept it.” (p. 66; this is the Rousseau of the Discourse on Political Economy, presumably, and, as Kendall insists (p. 83), Lettres de la montage.) For Locke even the preservation of property is subservient (that’s how I read the “all this only”) to the public good.
The next, second, main step in Kendall’s argument is his privileging of VIII.95: “When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.” (p. 113; Kendall cites the correct section but puts it in VII.) It’s crucial for Kendall that this “right to act” is the same right mentioned in I.3, “the RIGHT of making laws with penalties of death,” (etc.) in the service of the common good. Crucially, for Kendall whatever “inalienable rights” of the individual are, they must be compatible with the public good of her society and “designated” so by the “majority.” (p. 113)
Kendall’s republican-majoritarian interpretation of Locke is wholly out of fashio nown. But, you will not be surprised by now, this is also how Condorcet explicitly reads Locke in context: “These principles, which were vindicated by the generous Sydney, at the expence of his blood, and to which Locke gave the authority of his name, were afterwards developed with greater force, precision, and extent by Rousseau, whose glory it is to have placed them among those truths henceforth impossible to be forgotten or disputed.” (French here; note that Kendall would deny that Rousseau is a majoritarian in Locke’s sense!)
Together with John Thrasher, I am working on a paper trying to explain how the major pillars of the twentieth century ‘liberal’ reading of Locke as social contract theorist and rather absolute defender of property rights (as a foundational natural right) are actually rather selective. Inspired by William Robertson’s letter to Adam Smith (in 1776), we tend to treat Locke as a mercantilist-imperialist, and so in many respects echo the eighteenth and nineteenth century readings of Locke. In our argument we want to use Kendall’s interpretation as evidence of some illiberal tendencies in Locke. But today’s post suggests that Kendall’s interpretation may well have been the historically predominant one before the middle of the twentieth century because Condorcet’s impact on 19th century views of progress (not the least Comte’s) was so important.
*Condorcet has the following in mind: “that liberty is a blessing which cannot be alienated; that no title, no convention in favour of tyranny, can bind a nation to a particular family; that magistrates, whatever may be their appellation, their functions, or their power, are the agents, not the masters, of the people; that the people have the right of withdrawing an authority originating in themselves alone, whenever that authority shall be abused, or shall cease to be thought useful to the interests of the community: and lastly, that they have the right to punish, as well as to cashier their servants.”