Voltaire y Condorcet: del Essai al Esquisse

Abstract

En 1770, Condorcet conoció a Voltaire en su residencia de Ferney. Desde ese momento mantuvieron un estrecho contacto. En 1789, Condorcet escribió una Vie de Voltaire, en la que reconoce su deuda con la filosofía de la historia de Voltaire. El objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar que existen, sin embargo, tensiones entre sus trabajos históricos e historiográficos y que en ciertos aspectos el Esquisse de Condorcet es un paso atrás con respecto al Essai de Voltaire.

In 1770, Condorcet met Voltaire at Ferney. From that moment they kept in close contact. In 1789, he wrote Vie de Voltaire, where he acknowledges his debt with the philosophy of the history of the author of the Henriade. The aim of this paper is to show, from the analytical examination of different sources, that there are, nevertheless, some tensions between historical and historiographic works of the philosophers and that to a certain extent Condorcet´s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain is a step backwards from Voltaire´s Essai sur les mœurs. In order to reach that objective, we briefly rebuild the historiographic programme that Voltaire developed during Cirey´s 40´s, then his famous Essai is analysed in order to observe the application of the method and finally we study the Esquisse in the light of the Voltairean project, to which Condorcet declares himself indebted.