• Philosopher, Mathematician and Political Scientist Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, 1743
• Clergyman, Revolutionary and Social Scientist Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, 1748

Condorcet was born in Ribemont, Aisne, and descended from the ancient family of Caritat, who took their title from the town of Condorcet in Dauphiné, of which they were long time residents. Fatherless at a young age, he was raised by his devoutly religious mother. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Reims and at the Collège de Navarre in Paris, where he quickly showed his intellectual ability, and gained his first public distinctions in mathematics. When he was sixteen, his analytical abilities gained the praise of Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Alexis Clairaut; soon, Condorcet would study under d'Alembert.

From 1765 to 1774, he focused on science. In 1765, he published his first work on mathematics entitled Essai sur le calcul intégral, which was very well received, launching his career as a respected mathematician. He would go on to publish many more papers, and on 25 February 1769, he was elected to the Académie royale des Sciences (French Royal Academy of Sciences).

In 1772, he published another paper on integral calculus which was widely hailed as a groundbreaking paper in several domains. Soon after, he met Jacques Turgot, a French economist, and the two became friends. Turgot was to be an administrator under King Louis XV in 1772, and became Controller General of Finance under Louis XVI in 1774.

Condorcet was recognized worldwide and worked with such famous scientists as Leonhard Euler and Benjamin Franklin. He soon became an honorary member of many foreign academies and philosophic societies notably the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1785), in Germany, Imperial Russia and the United States.

His political ideas, however, many of them in continuity with Turgot's, were criticized heavily in the English speaking world, most notably by John Adams, who wrote two of his principal works of political philosophy to oppose Turgot and Condorcet's unicameral legislature and radical democracy.

In 1774, Condorcet was appointed Inspector General of the Monnaie de Paris by Turgot. From this point on, Condorcet shifted his focus from the purely mathematical to philosophy and political matters. In the following years, he took up the defense of human rights in general, and of women's and Blacks' rights in particular (an abolitionist, he became active in the Society of the Friends of the Blacks in the 1780s). He supported the ideals embodied by the newly formed United States, and proposed projects of political, administrative and economic reforms intended to transform France.

In 1776, Turgot was dismissed as Controller General. Consequently, Condorcet submitted his resignation as Inspector General of the Monnaie, but the request was refused, and he continued serving in this post until 1791. Condorcet later wrote Vie de M. Turgot (1786), a biography which spoke fondly of Turgot and advocated Turgot's economic theories. Condorcet continued to receive prestigious appointments: in 1777, he became Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences, holding the post until the abolition of the Académie in 1793, and in 1782 secretary of the Académie Française.

In 1785, Condorcet wrote Essai sur l’application de l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix (Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions), one of his most important works. This work described several now famous results, including Condorcet's jury theorem, which states that if each member of a voting group is more likely than not to make a correct decision, the probability that the highest vote of the group is the correct decision increases as the number of members of the group increases, and Condorcet's paradox, which shows that majority preferences become intransitive with three or more options – it is possible for a certain electorate to express a preference for A over B, a preference for B over C, and a preference for C over A, all from the same set of ballots.

The paper also outlines a generic Condorcet method, designed to simulate pairwise elections between all candidates in an election. He disagreed strongly with the alternative method of aggregating preferences put forth by Jean - Charles de Borda (based on summed rankings of alternatives). Condorcet was one of the first to systematically apply mathematics in the social sciences.

In 1786, Condorcet worked on ideas for the differential and integral calculus, giving a new treatment of infinitesimals – a work which was never printed. In 1789, he published Vie de Voltaire (1789), which agreed with Voltaire in his opposition to the Church. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population partly in response to Condorcet's views on the "perfectibility of society" as outlined in the Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. In 1781, Condorcet wrote a pamphlet, Reflections on Negro Slavery, in which he denounced slavery.

Condorcet took a leading role when the French Revolution swept France in 1789, hoping for a rationalist reconstruction of society, and championed many liberal causes. As a result, in 1791 he was elected as a Paris representative in the Assemblée, and then became the secretary of the Assembly. The institution adopted Condorcet's design for state education system, and he drafted a proposed Bourbon Constitution for the new France. He advocated women's suffrage for the new government, writing an article for Journal de la Société de 1789, and by publishing De l'admission des femmes au droit de cité ("For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women") in 1790.

There were three competing views on which direction France should go, embodied by three political parties: the moderate royalists or Feuillants, republican Girondists, and the more radical Montagnards, led by Maximilien Robespierre. The Feuillants wished to keep the constitutional monarchy as it was developed by the Assemblée, the latter two favored purging France of its royal past (Ancien Régime), each in their own way. Condorcet was quite independent, but still counted many friends in the Girondist party. He presided over the Assembly as the Girondist held the majority, until it was replaced by the National Convention, elected in order to design a new constitution. He led the Constitution Committee which drafted the Girondin constitutional project. The constitution was ordered to be printed, but was not put to votes. When the Montagnards gained control of the Convention, they wrote their own, the French Constitution of 1793.

At the time of King Louis XVI's trial, the Girondists had, however, lost their majority in the Convention. Condorcet, who opposed the death penalty but still supported the trial itself, spoke out against the execution of the King during the public vote at the Convention – he proposed to send the king to the galleys. From that moment on, he was usually considered a Girondist. The Montagnards were becoming more and more influential in the Convention as the King's "betrayal" was confirming their theories. One of them, Marie - Jean Hérault de Seychelles, a member, like Condorcet, of the Constitution's Commission, misrepresented many ideas from Condorcet's draft and presented what was called a Montagnard Constitution. Condorcet criticized the new work, and as a result, he was branded a traitor. On 3 October 1793, a warrant was issued for Condorcet's arrest.

The warrant forced Condorcet into hiding. He hid for five (or eight) months in the house of Mme. Vernet, on Rue Servandoni, in Paris. It was there that he wrote Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit), which was published posthumously in 1795 and is considered one of the major texts of the Enlightenment and of historical thought. It narrates the history of civilization as one of progress in the sciences, shows the intimate connection between scientific progress and the development of human rights and justice, and outlines the features of a future rational society entirely shaped by scientific knowledge.

On 25 March 1794 Condorcet, convinced he was no longer safe, left his hideout and attempted to flee Paris. Two days later he was arrested in Clamart and imprisoned in the Bourg - la - Reine (or, as it was known during the Revolution, Bourg - l'Égalité, "Equality Borough" rather than "Queen's Borough"). Two days after that, he was found dead in his cell. The most widely accepted theory is that his friend, Pierre Jean George Cabanis, gave him a poison which he eventually used. However, some historians believe that he may have been murdered (perhaps because he was too loved and respected to be executed).

Condorcet was interred in the Panthéon in 1989, in honor of the bicentennial of the French Revolution and Condorcet's role as a central figure in the Enlightenment. However his coffin was empty. Interred in the common cemetery of Bourg - la - Reine, his remains were lost during the nineteenth century.

In 1786 Condorcet married Sophie de Grouchy, who was more than twenty years his junior. His wife, reckoned one of the most beautiful women of the day, became an accomplished salon hostess as Madame de Condorcet, and also an accomplished translator of Thomas Paine and Adam Smith. She was erudite, intelligent and well educated, fluent in both English and Italian. The marriage was a strong one, and Sophie visited her husband regularly while he remained in hiding. Although she began proceedings for divorce in January 1794, it was at the insistence of Condorcet and Cabanis, who wished to protect their property from expropriation and to provide financially for Sophie and their young daughter, Louise 'Eliza' Alexandrine.

Condorcet was survived by his widow and their four year old daughter Eliza. Sophie died in 1822, never having remarried, and having published all her husband's works between 1801 and 1804. Her work was carried on by their daughter Eliza Condorcet - O'Connor, wife of former United Irishman Arthur O'Connor. The Condorcet - O'Connors brought out a revised edition between 1847 and 1849.

Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit (1795) was perhaps the most influential formulation of the idea of progress ever written. It made the Idea of Progress a central concern of Enlightenment thought. He argued that expanding knowledge in the natural and social sciences would lead to an ever more just world of individual freedom, material affluence and moral compassion. He argued for three general propositions: that the past revealed an order that could be understood in terms of the progressive development of human capabilities, showing that humanity's "present state, and those through which it has passed, are a necessary constitution of the moral composition of humankind"; that the progress of the natural sciences must be followed by progress in the moral and political sciences "no less certain, no less secure from political revolutions"; that social evils are the result of ignorance and error rather than an inevitable consequence of human nature.

Condorcet's writings were a key contribution to the French Enlightenment, particularly his work on the Idea of Progress. Condorcet believed that through the use of our senses and communication with others, knowledge could be compared and contrasted as a way of analyzing our systems of belief and understanding. None of Condorcet's writings refer to a belief in a religion or a god who intervenes in human affairs. Condorcet instead frequently had written of his faith in humanity itself and its ability to progress with the help of philosophers such as Aristotle. Through this accumulation and sharing of knowledge he believed it was possible for any man to comprehend all the known facts of the natural world. The enlightenment of the natural world spurred the desire for enlightenment of the social and political world. Condorcet believed that there was no definition of the perfect human existence and thus believed that the progression of the human race would inevitably continue throughout the course of our existence. He envisioned man as continually progressing toward a perfectly utopian society. However, he stressed that for this to be a possibility man must unify regardless of race, religion, culture or gender.

For Condorcet's republicanism the nation needed enlightened citizens and education needed democracy to become truly public. Democracy implied free citizens, and ignorance was the source of servitude. Citizens had to be provided with the necessary knowledge to exercise their freedom and understand the rights and laws that guaranteed their enjoyment. Although education could not eliminate disparities in talent, all citizens, including women, had the right to free education. In opposition to those who relied on revolutionary enthusiasm to form the new citizens, Condorcet maintained that revolution was not made to last and that revolutionary institutions were not intended to prolong the revolutionary experience but to establish political rules and legal mechanisms that would insure future changes without revolution. In a democratic city there would be no Bastille to be seized. Public education would form free and responsible citizens, not revolutionaries.

Rothschild (2001) argues that Condorcet has been seen since the 1790s as the embodiment of the cold, rational Enlightenment. However she suggests his writings on economic policy, voting and public instruction indicate different views both of Condorcet and of the Enlightenment. Condorcet was concerned with individual diversity; he was opposed to proto - utilitarian theories; he considered individual independence, which he described as the characteristic liberty of the moderns, to be of central political importance; and he opposed the imposition of universal and eternal principles. His efforts to reconcile the universality of some values with the diversity of individual opinions are of continuing interest. He emphasizes the institutions of civilized or constitutional conflict, recognizes conflicts or inconsistencies within individuals, and sees moral sentiments as the foundation of universal values. His difficulties call into question some familiar distinctions, for example between French, German and English - Scottish thought, and between the Enlightenment and the counter - Enlightenment. There is substantial continuity between Condorcet's criticism of the economic ideas of the 1760s and the liberal thought of the early 19th century.

Sieyès was born on March 3, 1748 as the fifth child of Honoré and Annabelle Sieyès at the town of Fréjus in southern France. Sieyès' father was a local tax collector who made a humble income, and while the family had some noble blood, they were commoners. Sieyès' first education came by way of tutors and of the Jesuits. He also spent some time at the collège of the Doctrinaires of Draguignan. Sieyès originally wanted to join the military and become a soldier, but his frail health combined with his parents' piety led him onto a religious career path. The vicar general of Fréjus offered aid to Sieyès because he felt he was obliged to his father.

The product of this was ten years at the seminary of Saint Sulpice in Paris. There, Sieyès studied theology and engineering to prepare himself to enter the priesthood. He quickly became known around the school because of his aptitude and interest in the sciences combined with his obsession over the "new philosophic principles" and dislike for conventional theology. Sieyès was educated for priesthood in the Catholic Church at the Sorbonne. While there, he became influenced by the teachings of John Locke, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, the Encyclopédistes, Quesnay, Mirabeau, Turgot, and other political thinkers, all in preference to theology. In 1770, he obtained his first theology diploma ranking at the bottom of the list of passing candidates, a reflection of his antipathy towards his religious education. In 1772, he was ordained as a priest, and two years later he obtained his theology license.

Regardless of Sieyès' embrace of Enlightenment thinking, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1773. In spite of this, he was not hired immediately. He spent this time researching philosophy and developing music until about a year later in October 1774 when, as the result of demands by powerful friends, he was promised a canonry in Brittany. Unfortunately for Sieyès, this canonry went into effect only when the preceding holder died. At the end of 1775, Sieyès acquired his first real position as secretary to the bishop of Tréguier where he spent two years as deputy of the diocese. It is here that he sat in the Estates of Brittany and became disgusted with the immense power the privileged classes held. In 1780 the bishop of Tréguier was transferred to the bishopric of Chartres. He became aware of how easy it was for nobles to advance in ecclesiastical offices compared to commoners. Sieyes was an ambitious man; therefore, he resented the privileges granted to the nobles within the Church system and thought the patronage system was a humiliation for commoners. Sieyès accompanied him there as his vicar general where he eventually became a canon of the cathedral and chancellor of the diocese of Chartres.

While remaining in ecclesiastical offices, Sieyès maintained a religious cynicism at odds with his position. By the time he took his orders to enter priesthood, Sieyès had "freed himself from all superstitious sentiments and ideas." Even when corresponding with his deeply religious father, Sieyès showed a severe lack of piety for the man in charge of the diocese of Chartres. It is theorized that Sieyes accepted a religious career not because he had any sort of strong religious inclination, but because he considered it the only means to advance his career as a political writer.

In 1788, Louis XVI of France proposed convocation of the Estates General of France after the interval of more than a century and a half, and the invitation of Jacques Necker to writers to state their views as to the organization of the Estates, enabled Sieyès to publish his celebrated January 1789 pamphlet, Qu’est-ce que le tiers - état? ("What Is the Third Estate?") He begins his answer:

"What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire to be? Something."

This phrase, which was to remain famous, is said to have been inspired by Nicolas Chamfort. The pamphlet was very successful, and its author, despite his clerical vocation (which made him part of the First Estate), was elected as the last (the twentieth) of the deputies to the Third Estate from Paris to the Estates General. He played his main role in the opening years of the Revolution, drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, expanding on the theory of national sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and representation implied in his pamphlet, with a distinction between active and passive citizens that justified suffrage limited to male owners of property.

Sieyès's pamphlet incited a radical reaction from its audience because it involved the “political issues of the day and twisted them in a more revolutionary direction”. In the third chapter of the pamphlet, Sieyes proposed that the Third Estate wanted to be ‘something’. But he also stated that, in allowing the privileged orders to exist, they are asking to become ‘the least thing possible’. The usage of such rhetoric in his pamphlet appealed to common causes to unite the audience. At the same time it influenced them to move beyond simple demands and take a more radical position on the nature of government. In this case, the radical position taken by the Third Estate created a sense of awareness that the problems of France were not simply a matter of addressing "royal tyranny," but that unequal privileges under the law had divided the nation. It was from this point that the Revolution’s struggle for fair distribution of power and equal rights began in earnest.

Sieyès's pamphlet played a key role in shaping the currents of revolutionary thought that propelled France towards the French Revolution. In his pamphlet, he outlined the desires and frustrations of the alienated class of people that made up the third estate. He attacked the foundations of the French Ancien Régime by arguing the nobility to be a fraudulent institution, preying on an overburdened and despondent bourgeoisie. The pamphlet voiced concerns that were to become crucial matters of debate during the convocation of the Estates General of 1789.

Whereas the aristocracy defined themselves as an élite ruling class charged with maintaining the social order in France, Sieyès saw the third estate as the primary mechanism of public service. Expression of radical thought at its best, the pamphlet placed sovereignty not in the hands of aristocrats but instead defined the nation of France by its productive orders composed of those who would generate services and produce goods for the benefit of the entire society. These included not only those involved in agricultural labor and craftsmanship, but also merchants, brokers, lawyers, financiers and others providing services. Sieyes challenged the hierarchical order of society by redefining who represented the nation. In his pamphlet, he condemns the privileged orders by saying their members were enjoying the best products of society without contributing to their production.

In perhaps the most daunting of his rhetorical repertoire, Sieyès essentially argued from the nobility's privileges that to establish the aristocracy as an alien body acting outside of the nation of France and deemed noble privilege “treason to the commonwealth”. As a consequence, the resulting conflict between the orders inspired the proper political sphere from which the revolution grew. The French Revolution could not have been what it was without this patriotic and radical message which was so eagerly distributed through a developing language of revolutionary politics within the third estate.

Perhaps most significant was the influence of Sieyès’s pamphlet on the structural concerns that arose surrounding the convocation of the Estates General. Specifically, the third estate demanded that the number of deputies for their order be equal to that of the two privileged orders combined, and most controversially “that the States General Vote, Not by Orders, but by Heads”. The pamphlet took these issues to the masses and their partial appeasement was met with revolutionary reaction. By addressing the issues of representation directly, Sieyès inspired resentment and agitation that united the third estate against the feudalistic traditions of the Ancien Régime. As a result, the Third Estate demanded the reorganization of the Estates General, but the two other orders proved unable or unwilling to provide a solution. Sieyes proposed that the members of the First and Second order join the Third Estate and become a united body to represent the nation as a whole. He not only suggested an invitation, however, but also stated that the Third Estate had the right to consider those who denied this invitation to be in default of their national responsibility. The Third Estate adopted this measure on June 5, 1789 and by doing so, they assumed the power and position to represent the nation. This radical action was confirmed when they decided to change the name of the Estates General to the National Assembly, indicating that the separation of orders no longer existed.

Although not noted as a speaker (he spoke rarely and briefly), Sieyès had major influence, and he recommended the decision of the Estates to reunite its chamber as the National Assembly, although he opposed the abolition of tithes and the confiscation of Church lands. His opposition to the abolition of tithes discredited him in the National Assembly, and he was never able to regain his authority. Elected to the special committee on the constitution, he opposed the right of "absolute veto" for the King of France, which Honoré Mirabeau unsuccessfully supported. He had considerable influence on the framing of the departmental system, but, after the spring of 1790, he was eclipsed by other politicians, and was elected only once to the post of fortnightly president of the Constituent Assembly.

Like all other members of the Constituent Assembly, he was excluded from the Legislative Assembly by the ordinance, initially proposed by Maximilien Robespierre, that decreed that none of its members should be eligible for the next legislature. He reappeared in the third national Assembly, known as the National Convention of the French Republic (September 1792 – September 1795). He voted for the death of Louis XVI, but not in the contemptuous terms sometimes ascribed to him. He participated to the Constitution Committee that drafted the Girondin constitutional project. Menaced by the Reign of Terror and offended by its character, Sieyès even abjured his faith at the time of the installation of the Cult of Reason, and afterwards he characterized his conduct during the period in the ironic phrase, J'ai vécu ("I survived").

Ultimately, Sieyès failed to establish the kind of bourgeois revolution he had hoped for, one of representative order "devoted to the peaceful pursuit of material comfort."

The shape the Revolution took was beyond what Sieyes wanted it to be. His initial purpose was to persuade changes in a more passive way and to establish a constitutional monarchy. His pamphlet in a sense set “the tone and direction of The French Revolution… but its author could hardly control the Revolution’s course over the long run”. Even after 1791 when the monarchy seemed to many to be doomed, Sieyes “continued to assert his belief in the monarchy” which indicated he did not intend for the Revolution to take the course it did. During the period he served in the National Assembly, he wanted to establish a constitution that would establish the rights of French men and would establish equality under the law as the social goal of the Revolution. In the end, he was unable to accomplish his goal.

After the execution of Robespierre, Sieyès reemerged as an important political player during the constitutional debates that followed. In 1795 he went on a diplomatic mission to The Hague, and was instrumental in drawing up a treaty between the French and Batavian republics. He resented the constitution of 1795 (that of the Directory), and refused to serve as a Director of the Republic. In May 1798 he went as the plenipotentiary of France to the court of Berlin, in order to try to induce Prussia to ally with France against the Second Coalition; despite his efforts, this was not to happen. His prestige grew, and he was Director of France in place of Jean - François Rewbell in May 1799.

Nevertheless, Sieyès was considering ways to overthrow the Directory, and is said to have taken in view the replacement of the government with unlikely rulers such as Archduke Charles of Austria and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick (a major enemy of the Revolution). He attempted to undermine the constitution, and thus caused the revived Jacobin Club to be closed while making offers to General Joubert for a coup d'état.

The death of Joubert at the Battle of Novi, and the return of Napoleon Bonaparte from the Egypt campaign put an end to this project, but Sieyès resumed it by reaching a new understanding with Bonaparte. Sieyes was a theorist who sought to put his plans of political organization into action. His alliance with Bonaparte, a man of action, was seen by Sieyes as a means of putting his theories into practice. After 18 Brumaire, Sieyès produced the constitution which he had long been planning, only to have it completely remodeled by Bonaparte, who thereby achieved a coup within the coup – the Constitution of the Year VIII favored by the latter became the basis of the French Consulate.

Sieyès soon retired from the post of provisional Consul, which he had accepted after Brumaire, and became one of the first members of the Sénat conservateur (acting as its president in 1799); pasquinades at the time linked this concession to the large estate at Crosne that he received from Napoleon. After the plot of the Rue Saint - Nicaise in late December 1800, Sieyès the senator defended the arbitrary and illegal proceedings whereby Bonaparte rid himself of the leading Jacobins.

During the Empire (1804–1814) Sieyès rarely emerged from his retirement. When Napoleon briefly returned to power in 1815 he was named to the Chamber of Peers. After the Second Restoration Sieyès was expelled from the Academy in 1816 by Louis XVIII. He then moved to Brussels, but returned to France after the July Revolution of 1830. He died in Paris in 1836.

In 1795 Sieyès became one of the first members of the class of moral and political sciences, the future Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France. When the French Academy was reorganized in 1803, he was elected in the second class replacing, in chair 31, Jean Sylvain Bailly, who had been guillotined 12 November 1793 during the Reign of Terror. However, after the second Restoration in 1815, he was expelled for his role in the execution of King Louis XVI, and was replaced by the Marquis of Lally - Tollendal, who was named to the Academy by a royal decree.

The recent publication of his unpublished works shows that in 1780 he was the first to use the term 'sociologie'. The term was used again fifty years later by Auguste Comte to refer to the science of society.