Condorcet in pseudo-translation

By the end of the ancien régime, when violations of strict censorship laws could be punished by book burning, fines, imprisonment, and even capital punishment [1], more and more printers and booksellers were taking measures to evade state repression [2]. As post-Enlightenment statesmen in France traded radical ideas with political revolutionaries in America and examined concepts of liberty after centuries of feudal rule, many protected themselves behind a veil of anonymity, obscuring their own names, the names of their publishers, and even the origin of the notions they put forward. To this end, translation – or the illusion of it – was a useful tool for the delegation of intellectual authority: to assume the role of translator was to write not as a controversial theorist, but merely as his messenger.

In his Déclaration des droits of 1789, the Marquis de Condorcet – himself a translator, alongside his wife Sophie de Grouchy, of the Examen du gouvernement d’Angleterre and Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l’Amérique Septentrionale – engages in this practice of pseudo-translation, anonymously claiming to have found the “original” text in America (see the ‘Avis de l’éditeur’ – the voice of the “publisher” here being, presumably, Condorcet’s own, p. 5) and pointing vaguely to "Londres" as the place of publication. Thomas Jefferson’s notes not only reveal Condorcet’s true authorship, but also credit Richard Gem with the English translation, posing as ‘l’original à côté’ [3]. The complex nature of this text’s transmission gives it a peculiar irony: although disguised as a translation from English into French, it is in fact a pseudo-translation that has itself been translated from French into English. Beneath the surface of political obscurity, the movement of his Déclaration is exemplary of the unique role Condorcet played between the American and French Revolutions, before the Estates-General (despite his failure to gain election) and in the life and science of Jefferson in Paris.

Image: Front page of Condorcet’s Déclaration des droits. [source declared on image]

The text aims to set out the five basic ‘natural rights of man’/‘droits naturels’, with a somewhat exegetic English translation:

1. The safety of his person. / [L]a sûreté de la personne.
2. The liberty of his person. / [L]a liberté de la personne.
3. The security of his possession. / [L]a sûreté des biens.
4. The free power over his possessions. / [L]a liberté des biens.
5. Entire independence, or natural equality. / [L]’égalité naturelle.

(p. 10/ p. 11)

The notion that the State should have a moral duty to assure such rights to every one of its citizens – rights to security, liberty, and equality; for example, the provision of a fair trial (including a rigid regulatory system for the judiciary body), the protection of private property, etc. – contradicted the basic principles of the ancient régime, a political order based upon deep divisions between the aristocracy and the common man. French feudalism granted disproportionate power to the former through the maintenance of an absolute monarchy, a seigneurial system of land tenure, and heavy taxation on the peasantry and (to a lesser extent) the bourgeoisie. Censorship laws served, first and foremost, to defend these policies: even in the context of the immense influence of the Catholic Church, ‘the government was never so much concerned about looseness of morals as it was about freedom of thought’ [4]. Had Condorcet attempted to officially publish his Déclaration in France before 26th August 1789, when the government sanctioned the freedom of the press [5], the text would have been refused a censor’s certificate of approval (which was necessary for publication) [6] and he could have been subject to prosecution by the State. Pseudo-translation therefore afforded him a forbidden freedom: in omitting his name and place of publication and disclaiming original authorship, he was able to separate himself from the work and delegate intellectual property to an unknown source text whose true non-existence could not be easily proven.

Condorcet takes up his fictional role as translator in the "Avertissement" (Preface), explaining through the voice of the anonymous “original” author that the text represents his best efforts to demonstrate the rights of men – as well as those of women, as we soon learn. Although Condorcet’s Déclaration tends to base rights in “men” – rather than in “persons”, as the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the U.S. Bill of Rights of 1791 notably did – it does make specific references to the rights of women; for example, in Section II, which deals with ‘Personal liberty: direct violations of that liberty’/‘Liberté des personnes : atteintes directes à la liberté’ (pp. 35-36), it asserts that women should not be at their husbands’ mercy:

The law shall not give a sanction to any autority in husbands, or parents, which may deprive children above the age of 16 years, or wives of any of the rights of natural liberty.

La loi ne pourra sanctionner dans les maris, ni dans les parens, aucune autorité qui prive les enfans au-dessus de 16 ans ou les femmes, d’aucun des droits de la liberté naturelle.

(pp. 38-39)

In this regard, Condorcet is considered to have been ahead of his time. He was one of the first writers to fully and openly support women’s political rights; in fact, his 1790 publication ‘Sur l’admission des femmes au droit de cité’preceded Olympe de Gouges’ Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791), and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).[7]

Condorcet’s Déclaration holds significance not only in the build-up to the National Constituent Assembly’s Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, which set the stage for the 1791 French constitution, but also in the development of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, ratified that same year. The late 1780s saw an influx of debate on human rights and the responsibility of the federal government to guarantee them; as Jefferson wrote in 1788, ‘All the world is occupied at present in framing, every one his own plan of a bill of rights’. Political ties between France and the United States – made all the more intimate by the Marquis de Lafayette’s involvement in the American Revolutionary War and the joint plenipotentiary commission formed by Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin in Paris [8] –facilitated the influence of Condorcet. As Jefferson’s friend and ‘intellectual soulmate’,[9] it seems certain that the grand philosophe would have shared his insights into this complex process – ‘If he did not get Condorcet’s list direct from him, Jefferson got it from his personal physician Richard Gem’ [10].

Having set out the text’s purpose – ‘to lay before the publick, a declaration of rights, as compleat, as I have been able to conceive it’/‘donner une declaration des droits aussi complette que j’ai pu la concevoir’– Condorcet appeals to readers to correct it and to build upon it:

I invite the friends of mankind to point out the defects of my performance, to correct it, to form an even better work on this subject.

J'invite les amis de l'humanité à relever les défauts de cet ouvrage, à les corriger, à daigner même le refaire.

("The Preface"/"Avertissement", pp. 6-7)

Indeed, this work did not appear in isolation. It was one of four major declarations of rights shared between France and America during this period, which also included one written by Jefferson, sent to Lafayette and to Rabaut Saint-Étienne on 3rd June 1789; the second of Lafayette’s three efforts to write such a text, written around the same time; and the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, as approved by the National Convention on 26th August 1789 [11].

The conversation that these texts represent would have been largely cultivated by the salons of high society, centres for cultural – and, increasingly, political – exchange amongst the intellectual elite. In the case of Jefferson and Condorcet, this is likely to have been developed principally at Mme Helvétius’ salon, as well as at that of fellow Cercle d’Auteuil member Sophie de Grouchy. Interestingly, Condorcet’s increasingly liberal ideas were often too radical for Jefferson, who believed that France would not be ready to adapt to his Déclaration [12]. It should also be noted that, despite his campaign to end the international slave trade, Jefferson was himself a slaveowner. This may have been at odds with the abolitionist politics of Condorcet, the president of the Société des Amis des Noirs.

Image: scan of a letter written by Condorcet, addressed to Jefferson. [© Library of Congress, Manuscript Division]

Nevertheless, it is clear from Jefferson’s written correspondence how Condorcet shaped his philosophy, largely through his mathematics. An important example can be found in Jefferson’s well-known letter to James Madison, 6th September 1789, where he refers to Condorcet’s idea of the half-life of a contract. He affirms the ownership rights of succeeding generations by reflecting on a quasi-axiomatic principle of liberal politics: ‘I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living”’ [13].

It is clear from the transmission of texts such as Condorcet’s Déclaration des droits across geographical and ideological borders how key players of the Revolution engaged in effective dialogue and made strides to establish a just constitution. Against this background, this text is somewhat unique: it is not only a political work of theatre, an opportunity for Condorcet to present his ideas to the Assembly whilst shielding his identity behind the mask of the anonymous translator, but also an essential layer in an international palimpsest of liberal democratic discourse.

[1] Pottinger, David T. The French Book Trade in the Ancien Regime, 1500 – 1791 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 76-81.

[2] Ibid., pp. 72-76.

[3] Williams, David. Condorcet and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 55.

[4] Pottinger, p. 59.

[5] Article 11 of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, promulgated on 26 August 1789, stated: ‘La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l'Homme : tout Citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l'abus de cette liberté dans les cas déterminés par la Loi.’/’ The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.’

[6] Pottinger, p. 71.

[7] Ansart, Guillaume. ‘Condorcet, Social Mathematics, and Women’s Rights’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 42.3 (2009), p. 347.

[8] McLean, Iain. ‘Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen’ (2004), p. 2.

[9] Ibid., p. 9.

[10] Ibid., p. 10.

[11] Ibid, p. 9.

[12] McLean (2004)., p. 10.

[13] McLean. ‘Did Jefferson or Madison understand Condorcet’s theory of social choice?’. Public Choice, 73 (1992), p. 447.