De la République des lettres aux réformes de Turgot. Autour de deux lettres inédites de Condorcet

Laurence Macé : From the Republic of Letters to Turgot's reforms. Concerning two unpublished letters by Condorcet. Although the history of relations between French and Italian scholars has been admirably studied by Françoise Waquet for the period 1680-1750, nothing has been done on the years leading up to the French Revolution. We publish two letters from the University library in Pisa, from Condorcet to the Tuscan ecclesiastic and man of letters Angelo Fabroi, who probably met Condorcet during his first visit to Paris in late 1772 or early 1773. While the first letter illustrates, through Cordorcet's aspirations, the continuing influence of the practices and institutions of the Republic of Letters in groups close to the Encyclopédie, the second, from February 1776, bears a rare witness to the great hopes aroused by the imminent registration of Turgot's reforms, as well as to the change in the role of the scholar, whose political struggle already includes, in 1776, the vision of a historical progress of science and Enlightenment.Macé Laurence. De la République des lettres aux réformes de Turgot. Autour de deux lettres inédites de Condorcet. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°29, 1997. Le vin, sous la direction de Jean Bart et Élisabeth Wahl. pp. 343-352