Condorcet: Assumptions and Relevance of Public Education

Abstract

As one of the last Enlightenment philosophers in France, the Marquis de Condorcet combined the ideal of human enlightenment with a political proposal for the realization of this ideal when, in 1792, he submitted a report proposing a complete plan for the organization of national instruction based on the exercise of freedom and the defense of equality capable of excluding any dependency. Such a proposal became known as the Five Memories on Public Instruction. In order to understand the content and relevance of this proposal, we will look at the following path: 1. We will analyze how the mode of instruction defended by it seeks to be the leading and conjugal bias of universal knowledge, as it is elaborated in a given historical moment, and elementary knowledge, a process that presupposes the understanding of human perfectibility; 2. We will present Condorcet's educational proposal in the three stages of his instructional project, seeking to include his presuppositions in an understanding of the human person and progress of the human spirit; 3. These presuppositions and methods produce some implications that can be expressed in the questions that will guide us: since every individual is naturally given to perfectibility, where does the need arise for us to be educated? In what way can freedom and "de facto equality", as a result of the proposal of a universalizing public education, be conjugated in educational practice? We intend, therefore, to shed some light on the conceptions that serve as a solid basis for Condorcet so that, as a mirror, we can reflect on the present condition of education.