Turgot

This article focuses on the alleged direct acquaintanceship between Condorcet and Adam Smith. Mistaken infor-mation about this issue was repeated many times in the literature of the late 1800s and 1900s. It is presumed that they met in France, during Smith’s journey there, chez Sophie de Grouchy. I will attempt to show that the meeting be-tween the two authors was not in fact arranged by Sophie de Grouchy, Condorcet’s wife, even though she was very interested in Smithian theories, especially about the category of “sympathy”, as confirmed by her French translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. My purpose is to demonstrate that Madame de Condorcet did never meet Smith and, as a result, she could not have introduced Condorcet to Smith. A greater degree of probability can be attributed to the version that indicates Turgot as the intermediary between Condorcet and Smith. In my opinion, not even this hypothesis is totally convincing, because neither Smith nor Condorcet ever talk about their meeting. Moreover, there is no evidence of correspondence between them.

This book investigates how a new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France with the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering. With the emergence of these practices, the future transformed from something that was largely believed to be predetermined and beyond significant human intervention into something that could be dramatically affected through actions in the present. I argue that specific mechanisms for constructing the future first arose through the development of practices and instruments aimed at countering degeneration. In attempts to regenerate a healthy natural state, Enlightenment philosophes created the means to exceed previously recognized limits and create a future that was not merely a recuperation of the past, but was fundamentally different from it. I analyze a number of historical developments in the book: various practical and philosophical foundations of Enlightenment ideas of time and the future; ideas of progress and the uncanny temporality of the philosophes assumptions of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous; the first economic modelling and forecasting device, the tableau économique (the economic picture) of the Physiocrats; the emergence of biological engineering in the work of the naturalist Buffon and some of his associates; and the creation of the Republican clock and calendar in the French Revolution, demonstrating that they were a new type of social engineering that radicalized the active orientation to the future that had been developed over the preceding fifty years.

"La science économique est devenue la forme dominante du discours politique. Elle se présente pourtant volontiers comme le plus neutre et impartial des savoirs. Que signifie cette dénégation du politique de la part d’une science si intimement liée au champ du pouvoir ? Arnault Skornicki propose un détour historique par la France des Lumières pour mettre au jour l’impensé de ce qui n’était pas encore une discipline universitaire, mais un simple genre intellectuel.
De la naissance du libéralisme d’État au Dialogue sur le commerce des blés de Galiani, de la science du commerce aux luttes entre Turgot et Necker en passant par la Physiocratie, le xviiie siècle apparaît en effet comme une période clé pour l’économie politique. Savants, hommes de lettres, philosophes et administrateurs mettent leur intelligence au service des Lumières qui s’officialisent et d’un État éclairé qui tente de se réformer. L’économie politique finira par accéder aux sommets du pouvoir, pour ne plus jamais les quitter. Une étude ambitieuse pour comprendre la naissance du libéralisme."

Author: Bridget Nichols
Publisher: CBE International

November 16 is the feast day of a remarkable woman: St. Marga­ret of Scotland. Margaret spent most of her early life in Hungary during her father’s exile. She returned to England with her family in 1056 or 1057, and, shortly after this her father died, leaving her brother as a possible heir to the childless Edward the Confessor. But, Edward died in January 1066, and then came the Norman Conquest. Her meeting with King Malcolm altered those plans and set Margaret on the course toward a career of queenship rather than the life of religious contemplation she seems to have wanted.

The paper examines the influence of the analysis of economic exchange in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, v, on subsequent economic theorizing. The approach is textual and selective. It traces the use of the relevant passage of NE v on Scholastic economic thought, the early mercantilists, natural law philosophy, the Scottish Enlightenment,
Galiani, Turgot, Smith and Karl Marx. It ends with the abandonment of Aristotelian equivalence of exchange in neoclassical economics.

« Libéralisme, économie politique et critique de la monarchie dans la France moderne », dans D. Cohen (dir.), Etat, pouvoirs et contestations dans les Monarchies française et britannique et colonies américaines, Paris, Ellipses, Coll. CAPES/Agrégation, 2018, p. 58-72.

In questo articolo si intende mostrare come la definizione dello spazio (geografico) e del tempo (naturale) interagiscano con la riflessione filosofica illuministica sulla ragione, la sua storicità e le sue tappe di sviluppo. Il saggio chiarisce come nel Settecento francese convivano e spesso si intersechino due paradigmi temporali, che si riflettono vicendevolmente in due distinti paradigmi spaziali. Da un lato, si colloca infatti una concezione della storia – della linea del tempo – unica e pertanto univoca, capace di giustificare una sola storia dell’uomo, teleologicamente indirizzata; dall’altro invece l’unità della linea del tempo viene meno, frammentandosi in rivoli che danno origine a molteplici storie. Se la geografia, nel primo caso, altro non è che il riflesso della storia, nel secondo caso è piuttosto la storia a mutarsi in geografia, nella geografia che si espande non geograficamente ma intellettualmente – non in quantità ma in qualità..
Si mostra allora come il passaggio da un livello di storicità all’altro – da una concezione della temporalità all’altra – sia mediato da un evento filosoficamente epocale: il terremoto di Lisbona del 1755, che ridefinisce i criteri stessi della temporalità e della sua pensabilità nella filosofia francese. Al fine di mostrare i tratti e i modelli della concezione della ragione umana e del suo sviluppo storico, si guarda a momenti peculiari della formazione dei due paradigmi: da un lato, alla filosofia di Lafitau (Mœurs des sauvages amériquains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps) e di Turgot (Tableau philosophique des progrès successifs de l’esprit humain; Plan de deux discours sur l’histoire universelle); dall’altro, a Diderot (Le rêve de d’Alembert; Supplément au voyage de Bougainville) e a De Pauw (Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains). Nel primo caso, si mette in luce la fisionomia di una storia che si riflette nella geografia solo per ordinarla: le varie civiltà, anche se convivono in un medesimo periodo, altro non sono che manifestazioni di un’unica linea di sviluppo. Nel secondo caso, invece, ci si sofferma sui tratti di una ragione umana che si diversifica infinitamente, in relazione alla storia e alla geografia dei singoli popoli, negando ogni modello o linea direttrice di sviluppo.

H-France Review Vol. 16 (July 2016), No. 108
Anne-Claire Hoyng Turgot et Adam Smith: Une étrange proximité, Paris, Honoré Champion, Avant-propos
d’Arnold Heertje, Préface de Jean-Pierre Chamoux, 2015, 212 p., 35€ (pb). ISBN 97-827-4-53289-84.
http://www.h-france.net/vol16reviews/vol16no108skornicki.pdf

La duchesse d'Enville est une figure marquante du siècle des Lumières à bien des titres, et son aura dépasse largement le cadre national. Après la mort de son mari, le duc d'Anville, en 1746 près de Halifax, et celle de son père, le duc Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, en 1762, la duchesse décide de gérer elle-même ses vastes domaines (duché de La Roche-Guyon, mais aussi domaines' en Poitou, en Limousin, etc...). Elle se lie d'amitié avec Turgot, les physiocrates, les philosophes, dont elle devient la protectrice. Son salon à Paris est fréquenté par des savants et par de nombreux étrangers. Aux côtés de son fils Louis Alexandre, elle prend fait et cause pour les Insurgents d'Amérique, si bien que Franklin puis Jefferson deviennent des familiers de son salon. A Genève où elle se rend à plusieurs reprises pour consulter le docteur Tronchin et soigner sa fille, elle noue des amitiés très fortes et sincères (Saussure, Bonnet, Le sage...). Ce colloque permettra de rappeler que la duchesse a tout fait pour valoriser ses domaines qui ont été un véritable laboratoire pour les Économistes, et pour améliorer le sort de ses sujets. Son château fut un lieu de travail, de villégiature, mais aussi un refuge pour les philosophes (Turgot, Mably, Condorcet...). L'accent sera particulièrement mis sur la stature cosmopolite du personnage, ses liens avec la Suisse, l'Italie et l'Amérique.
Daniel Vaugelade