I ntrodu C t I on
For a quarter of a century now, and more particularly over the last decade, the thinking of Antoine-Augustin Cournot has inspired a growing literature embodied in two types of works. First, we fnd a number of studies by economists, published for the most part in scientifc journals, which are often of considerable technical value with their proposals for concrete application of the economic models that Cournot developed primarily in his early writings. Then come the studies that spring from the history of ideas and epistemology: these are entirely devoted to a particular facet of Cournot’s work, either to place it in its scientifc context or to discuss it on the basis of fundamental cognitive issues. It is this second perspective that is adopted in this book.
It is impossible here to summarize or synthesize the thinking of Cournot, which would be far too vast an undertaking for an exercise of this kind. Rather, we shall confne ourselves to focusing on one essential aspect: his sociological thought. It is true that this thought does not always stand out explicitly. And while we can gain an inkling of that concept in his earliest works, those of his maturity give it a particularly important treatment. Cournot accords sociology a multiple status. As its founding fathers conceived it, it is historical and evolutionary; it is at times “vitalist”; and in the end it is philosophical. It seeks, in the fnal analysis, to grasp the meaning of rationality. Cournot was keenly aware of the most pressing epistemological and methodological questions surrounding the nascent sociology. He thought about the place of biology in the study of social life, he posed the problem of the role
of psychology, he considered the application of statistics. Better yet, he asked what a society really is: is it the sum total of a multitude of particular consciences, or is it instead an independent reality, distinct from its parts, one that has a life of its own?
Although not widely known, Cournot’s refections on sociology did not go unnoticed. They were in fact frequently evoked, if rarely beyond a passing reference or a short chapter in a book on the history of sociological thought. No one has yet delved very deeply into the subject, with the exceptions perhaps of Raymond Ruyer1 and Jean Paumen.2 Yet when we examine these two studies closely, we fnd that they have more to do with Cournot’s philosophy of history, rather than with his sociological thinking. Moreover, it is not their intent to place his approach explicitly within the emerging feld of sociology.
Of course, Cournot was not interested in producing a sociological work in the strict sense, nor even in shedding light on the sociological discipline. Nevertheless, he contributed to its emergence. Thus, several Cournot specialists have demonstrated that, with the help of probability calculations, he was attempting to apply mathematical language to social reality.3
With Cournot, as René Roy tells us, “social issues lend themselves quite readily to applications of probabilities theory, as witnessed by its use in demographics, in the theory of insurance, and more generally in this set of questions that are lumped under the heading of social arithmetic.”4 Thierry Martin arrives at the same conclusion: “Cournot argues that statistics can in principle be applied to economic and social phenomena, the more so because the concurrence of causes is less strong there than in the feld of natural phenomena, which in turn allows regularities to stand out more clearly.”5 If the calculation of probabilities plays a central role in Cournot’s philosophy, it is even more decisive in his sociological thinking. E-Paul Bottinelli insists, moreover, that it was the study of probability that would lead the geometrician (Cournot) to sociology.6
1R. Ruyer, L’humanité de l’avenir d’après Cournot, Félix Alcan, 1930.
2J. Paumen, “Les deux sociologies de Cournot”, Revue de l’Institut de sociologie, 2–3, 1950, pp. 5–43.
3H. Guitton, “Comment Cournot a mis la mathématique au service de l’économie”, in J. Brun and A. Robinet, A. Cournot, Études pour le centenaire de sa mort, Paris, Economica, 1978, pp. 7–11.
4R. Roy, “L’œuvre économique d’Augustin Cournot”, Econometrica, 7, 1939, p. 135.
5T. Martin, Probabilités et critique philosophique selon Cournot, Paris, Vrin, 1996, p. 251.
6E. P. Bottinelli, “Introduction”, A.-A. Cournot, Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, p. XXXIX.
The fact remains, however, that the links between Cournot and the discipline of sociology are not straightforward: in fact, they are extremely complicated and convoluted. To begin with, the important role that he assigns to the calculation of probabilities may in part explain why several sociologists of the positivist persuasion have distanced themselves from him. In any case, when it comes to the calculation of probabilities, we know that Auguste Comte, in a rare show of outright hostility, did much to discredit it.
Nevertheless, during the period running from roughly the beginning of the 1850s to the end of the 1870s, Cournot was one of those, along with Taine and Renan, who contributed the most, if indirectly, to the development of sociology in France. In fact, his gift to the sociological discipline is much more important than that of some obscure followers of Auguste Comte, contemporaries who, with the possible exception of Littré, left behind little in the way of an intellectual legacy.7
For the uninitiated reader, Cournot’s work may seem disjointed. For him, nothing was set in stone, nothing was bound up in the narrow frameworks of specialization: everything was part of something else. From one work to the next the same ideas are taken up repeatedly, illustrated with the same examples. He was certainly not immune from redundancy. A tediously long dissertation here, a few short sentences there, will contain important theoretical refections.
Cournot was not eclectic, however, and there is absolutely no lack of unity in his work. Yet it is undeniable that his writings show no particular affnity with the philosophical tradition of his time. As has often been said, Cournot “was not of any school nor was he the source of any school.”8 At the dictate of his intuitions and his steadily broadening intellectual interests, he consulted widely and freely any writer or any current of thought that might help enlighten his own philosophy.
François Mentré maintains, though, that Cournot was infuenced essentially by French authors and French currents of thought. “He owed very little to the English or the Germans: he rejected philosophies that Germany no longer had any use for, just as they were becoming acceptable in France, and it took him no effort to rise above AngloSaxon empiricism. His thinking was rooted in our national past, in the 8F. Vatin, “Une lecture hétérodoxe de Cournot”, Économies et sociétés, 2, 1996, p. 44.
7See M. Yamashita, “La sociologie française entre Auguste Comte et Émile durkheim; Émile Littré et ses collaborateurs”, L’Année sociologique, 45, 1995, pp. 83–115.
mathematical tradition that runs from Pascal to Laplace, in the philosophical tradition of the likes of descartes, of Bossuet, of the Montpellier vitalists and the ideologues. We might trace it back even further to the scholastics and Saint Augustine.”9 Coming from a true Cournot specialist, this is perhaps a surprising assertion, especially as this mathematician-philosopher was a sincere and well-known admirer of Leibniz, and his thinking was greatly infuenced by Kant.10
But in the end, whatever his philosophical leanings and the infuences that worked on him, we must recognize that Cournot devoted himself steadily to developing and refning one essential idea: that the forms of knowledge are intimately linked to the progress of reason. In his philosophical works, he is thus able to take an interest in the developments of the sciences, which he sees as part of the evolution of the process of rationalizing human societies.
It is hardly surprising, then, from this perspective, that the community of sociologists at the turn of the twentieth century played a crucial role in rediscovering the works of Cournot. Gabriel Tarde, who was one of his most avid readers, did much to make them better known, frst by publishing several articles on his subject, by teaching it in a course at the Collège de France, and then in 1905 by putting together an important volume of the Revue de métaphysique et la morale which was entirely devoted to Cournot.
While Émile durkheim, for his part, had little to say about Cournot, we may assume that, like nearly all those who pursued their learning in the 1880s, he was familiar with Cournot’s writings. Yet he almost never quotes them. The fact that Tarde was seen as Cournot’s principal heir must surely have evoked suspicion and mistrust in the mind of the author of Suicide. This may indeed explain his refusal, in an article on developments in French sociology in the nineteenth century, to include Cournot among the true precursors of sociological thought.
As for Max Weber, there is nothing to indicate that he paid much heed to the works of Cournot. Yet there are some affnities between these two authors. Julien Freund, an eminent expert on this German
9F. Mentré, Pour qu’on lise Cournot, Paris, Beauchesne, 1927, pp. 25–26.
10“In order fully to appreciate the philosophy of M. Cournot, we must never forget that, of all the philosophers, it was Kant who made the deepest impression on him” (T.-V. Charpentier, “Philosophes contemporains. M. Cournot”, Revue philosophique, 11, 1881, pp. 493–518).
sociologist, underlined this point: “It is perhaps worth mentioning that, long before Max Weber, Cournot tried to understand the phenomenon of growing rationalization in our societies, and he even addressed, in a cursory manner, some of the themes that would make Weber’s fame, as for example when he writes in Matérialisme, vitalisme, rationalisme (1875) that towards the end of the sixteenth century Holland was a hotbed not only of Calvinism and of trade but also of the development of rational knowledge. We also fnd [in Cournot’s writings] the concept of the ideal type.”11
If Cournot can be considered a sociologist, it is because he saw, even before sociology became institutionalized, that the social element mediates subjective action, and because he sought out social meaning through a network of actions, even if he did not himself recognize the full scope and the possible extensions of his own analyses. Yet in the end that is not of much concern to us. And as Gabriel Tarde insisted, even if Cournot never used the word sociology, “he was a sociologist nonetheless, and much more deeply so that many of those who use and abuse this word.”12 Along the same lines, in 1905 Alphonse darlu felt entitled to write that “even before the word came into common usage, he (Cournot) had adopted the sociological viewpoint: in sociology he saw a distinct and original science, and he devoted to it the qualities of his marvelously ingenious and shrewd mind.”13 Such a remark was echoed in the 1920s and 1930s, frst by François Mentré, when he noted that “Cournot’s ideas are consistent with all the manifestations of social life and all the intellectual disciplines,”14 and then by Régis Jolivet, when he commented that Cournot was careful “to conform to the demands of a study of societies and their evolution.”15
Today Cournot scholars, as well as some historians of the social sciences, are saying the same thing. François Vatin reminds us in a recent work that “even if he is known to mathematicians, economists and
11J. Freund, D’Auguste Comte à Max Weber, Paris, Economica, 1992, p. 61.
12G. Tarde, Philosophie de l’histoire et science sociale: la philosophie de Cournot (presented by T. Martin), Paris, Le Seuil, 2002, p. 27.
13A. darlu, “Quelques vues de Cournot sur la politique”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 13, 1905, p. 414.
14F. Mentré, Pour qu’on lise Cournot, Paris, Beauchesne, 1927, p. 19.
15R. Jolivet, “Trois critiques de l’humanité : Proudhon, Cournot, Nietzsche”, Revue thomiste, 41, 1936, p. 179.
philosophers, Cournot is strangely overlooked by sociologists. Yet he could quite rightly be included in the pantheon of the precursors of this discipline, along with Comte, Quételet or Spencer.”16 Friedrich Jonas takes an identical view: “Tocqueville, Cournot and Nietzsche. were neither theoreticians, as were Marx, Comte or Spencer, nor empiricists, like Quételet, Le Play and their successors. They were not important either as creators of models or as initiators of a method, and yet they cannot be dismissed from the history of sociology because they had the strength of judgment needed to address new problems and new questions. All three stood at the level of speculation, in the sense that instead of focusing on principles and problems of the past to draw conclusions about the future, they predicted the transformation of all values and the advent of totally new social relationships. But they were also realists in large measure, because they recognized that the past and the experiences of the present are not necessarily a valid scale of measurement for the future.”17
Bernard Valade18 and Julien Freund19 have also highlighted Cournot’s place in the history of sociological thought. Moreover, in an important book that he devoted to the sociology of Pareto, Valade remarks that, when it comes to major authors such as “the sociologist of Céligny”, Condorcet or Cournot, we always run the risk of “missing something.”20
This is fair comment. In the case of Cournot, at least, it is certainly true: the syntheses devoted to him at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as those of François Mentré, Jean de La Harpe or E.-Paul Bottinelli, were all inspired by a somewhat exaggerated ambition to summarize his entire work. Generally speaking, they were not very successful in situating that work in its historical context, nor in analyzing the great scientifc and philosophical issues of the nineteenth century.
Throughout this book we shall leave the last word to Cournot, quoting him (often at length) so as to allow the reader to take stock of the
16F. Vatin, Économie politique et économie naturelle chez Antoine-Augustin Cournot, Paris, PUF, 1998, p. 291.
17F. Jonas, Histoire de la sociologie. Des Lumières à la théorie du social, Paris, Larousse, 1991, p. 201.
18B. Valade, Introduction aux sciences sociales, Paris, PUF, 1996, pp. 431–434.
19J. Freund, D’Auguste Comte à Max Weber, Paris, Economica, 1992, pp. 61–65.
20B. Valade, Pareto, la naissance d’une autre sociologie, Paris, PUF, 1990, p. 7.
strength of his methodological and epistemological ideas, as well as to appreciate at frst hand his views, sometimes ingenious and penetrating, sometimes debatable and outdated, on the development of the human sciences.
The book opens by reviewing the problems inherent in the sociology of knowledge. It seeks, frst, to place Cournot in his historical and intellectual context, showing that his work was sensitive to the events of his time, and that the development of his analysis could be infuenced by happenstance.
Thus, it explains how his thinking was in constant confict with received ideas. In fact, contrary to many of his contemporaries, Cournot did not believe that philosophy was outmoded or destined to disappear, and he then set himself the primary goal of restoring it, of giving it an epistemological program based on the materials available to him from the positive sciences of his time. When it came to the social question, he once again remained true to his scientifc convictions in rejecting the notion that socialism was bound to triumph and to impose itself as the regime of the future. For Cournot, society knows what it wants, and all we have to do is to study its movement, to track its natural development, without necessarily trying to change its course or to propose remedies to specifc social problems.
These preliminary remarks allow us entry into the living core of Cournot’s philosophical thinking. The analysis will focus on the broad lines of his philosophy of history, which is essentially built around the problem of chance events. Although Cournot was a profound philosopher and an able theoretician of knowledge, he was also a frst-rate scientist—hence the originality of his philosophical thinking, in which he took a stand against pure abstraction. And despite its metaphysical garb and its points of convergence with the philosophy of history in its traditional sense, the primary feature of that thinking is that it takes empirical reality into account.
Theoretically speaking, Cournot’s position may appear in some respects as a true compromise between the events-based history of the historians and the metaphysical speculation of the philosophers of his time. Always careful not to fall into the traps of pure abstraction or of pointless speculation, Cournot qualifed his own philosophy of history with a new name inspired by the natural sciences: historical etiology (étiologie historique). The overall objective of this discipline, as we shall see, is
to demonstrate the reciprocity of facts and ideas, to discuss the relationship of chance and of necessity.
At the epistemological level, Cournot raises some crucial problems that indelibly marked the intellectual life of the second half of the nineteenth century. In particular, he sets out to examine the role that philosophy will play with the rise of the positive sciences. does the emergence of these sciences mean that philosophy is dead or must be redefned? What distinguishes science from philosophy? What is probabilistic reasoning? And lastly, can history be approached on the basis of principles that the physical-mathematical and natural sciences have so rigorously developed? By classifying the sciences, we can answer these questions and pin down ideas. In any case, Cournot’s classifcation, which was consistent with the ethos of his time, suggests the urgency of juxtaposing the emerging social sciences vis-à-vis the exact sciences, which had enjoyed a long tradition. Very early on, the question of knowledge thus becomes a key intellectual issue with Cournot, one that he addresses from both the philosophical and the sociological angles. Over the course of a decade, from the Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances et sur les caractères de la critique philosophique of 1851 up to the Traité de l’enchaînement des idées et des événements dans les temps modernes of 1861, we can detect in his thinking an increasing emphasis on the social milieu and its infuence on the production of knowledge.
Cournot’s grand plan, we may say, was to understand how philosophy and ideas, through the medium of scientifc knowledge, can channel the progress of reason. In a scheme reminiscent of that of Auguste Comte, but which quickly departs from the latter, Cournot carves up human evolution into three broad phases of development: an initial phase, which he calls prehistoric, the chief characteristic of which is that it is fat and event-less; a second phase, the historical phase, which by contrast is a tissue of events and happenstance, and in which the great man, the genius, plays a predominant role; and a fnal phase, the post-historic, which in a sense projects us into the future: societies will achieve such a degree of rationality that history will in effect have disappeared, opening the way to a reign dominated by government. With great clarity, and mindful of the many social upheavals of the frst half of the nineteenth century, Cournot seeks to understand, and not to imagine, what the societies of the future will look like.
It must be noted at the outset that this book does not present Cournot as a prophet or a visionary. He frequently appears as more of a
theoretician of social change or as a forerunner of comparative analysis. Considerations relating to the French Revolution, to religion or to education, to take just these examples, confrm this point in various ways.
In fact, it is the social milieu, to use his own words, that Cournot sets out to analyze, inductively, in its principal manifestations. Like the classical sociologists, he seeks to defne and delimit the object of a positive social science. Again like them, he is led to discuss the place that a science of the individual—i.e. psychology—should play in constituting it. Cournot thereby arrives at a clear position. And like his contemporaries Comte or Taine, for example, he sees in this discipline (or at least its then-current version, which Victor Cousin and his followers represented better than anyone) an inchoate kind of metaphysics, closely bound up with introspection, and with no empirical foundation. This rejection of psychology is signifcant, indeed decisive, for it heralds at the same time an openness vis-à-vis sociology and the social sciences. Starting from resolutely vitalist principles, Cournot came to subscribe, as of the mid-point of his career, to a kind of sociological determinism of which durkheim and his disciples would no doubt have approved.
This book is capped off by an analysis of the dialogue between Cournot and the French sociological thinking of his time. It seeks to reveal the similarities as well as the points of disagreement between Cournot and Auguste Comte. Naturally enough, many historians of the social sciences and philosophy have undertaken to draw a comparison between these thinkers, who were contemporaries and who addressed certain issues in common. The problem addressed here has been widely explored, but it has never been posed directly for the purpose of tracing Cournot’s intellectual development with regard to the emergence of sociological thought. For French sociology at the end of the nineteenth century did indeed take an interest—whether very close, as with Gabriel Tarde and Célestin Bouglé, or far more remote, as with durkheim—in the ideas of Cournot.
A fnal remark is in order here concerning this book. In no way and in no case does it pretend to be exhaustive: it seeks merely to illustrate Antoine-Augustin Cournot’s place in the history of the sociological discipline, while gleaning from his thoughts a coherent world view. It is aimed then, not primarily at historians of philosophy, but essentially at sociologists who wish to explore another sociology.
CHAPTER 1
Context and General Ideas of the Book
BaCkground
The sociological thinking of Cournot, like all his work moreover, is rooted for the most part in his own personal experience, even if it cannot be reduced to that.1 Thus, without a minimum understanding of the events of his life, without taking into serious account the many intellectual encounters he had, his work may seem abstract without any real continuity. We must recall here Bottinelli’s remark to the effect that Cournot’s psychology “helps us to understand his sociological doctrines.”2 We are relatively familiar with the main stages of his life. His Souvenirs certainly provide useful information, but they come to an end in 1859, a crucial moment in his intellectual development, when his sociological views were becoming more clearly articulated. We shall not go into detail here on the course of his personal life, nor shall we dwell on particular anecdotes: Instead, we shall simply cite those aspects that frame or perhaps suggest the genesis of his thinking and his ideas.
Antoine Augustin Cournot was born on August 28, 1801, at Gray in the Franche-Comté. It was in this little town, home at that time to some
1 J. Saint-Sernin, “Portrait de Cournot”, in T. Martin (ed.), Actualité de Cournot, Paris, Vrin, 2005, pp. 17–29.
2 E.-P. Bottinelli, “Introduction”, in A.-A. Cournot (ed.), Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, p. XVIII.
© The Author(s) 2019
R. Leroux, Antoine-Augustin Cournot as a Sociologist, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04687-3_1
5000 inhabitants, that he began the studies that would take him later to Besançon, “a city more theologically oriented than many others.”3
Early on, as his Souvenirs suggest, Cournot was captivated by philosophy. He writes that at the age “where other children had the natural wisdom to occupy themselves in playing with hoops and jacks, I was already possessed of the demon of philosophical curiosity, taking great pleasure in observations, revelations, avidly gathering the stories that were addressed to me, or that I overheard, and engraving them in my memory in order to comment on them in my own way. And although what followed responded only weakly to that quality—or that affiction— of the precocious child, the disappointment was not so great but that I was able to make my own way in the world, leaving behind the modest bourgeoisie of a small town buried in a remote province (at a time when there were still remote provinces) to come to Paris to meet with famous scholars and writers, to consort in a familiar way with men who had commanded armies and who had held ministerial portfolios, and then later to fll high posts in the Administration of Public Education. Thus, in my maturity, I found the means to pursue the observations and refections of the reasoning child. Yet with all that, my role remained too small for me to have the pretension of leaving behind memoirs, and still less of writing confessions and of telling the public about woes that were mine alone.”4 Cournot’s childhood and youth were essentially spent in reading and thinking. His youthful readings, both in their level of diffculty and in their extreme diversity, are not only impressive but they had an indelible infuence on his thinking.5 “Among the books that I read as a child or adolescent, and that had a decisive infuence on all my subsequent ideas and studies, I shall cite, in the order read, the Mondes of Fontenelle, his Éloges des Académiciens, the Exposition du système du monde of Laplace, the Logique of Port Royal, and the two little volumes in which desmazeaux collected the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, along with other minor philosophical works. Fontenelle and Laplace instilled in me a burning desire to have a scientifc instrument with which I could fully grasp these imposing truths, and the profound
3 A.-A. Cournot, Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, p. 64.
4 Ibid., pp. 3–4.
5 J. Saint-Sernin, “Portrait de Cournot”, in T. Martin (ed.), Actualité de Cournot, Paris, Vrin, 2005, p. 19.
insights of the great German philosopher flled me with admiration.”6 As for Leibniz, Cournot would later say of the German philosopher that he was “the greatest genius by whom the sciences and philosophy are honored.”7
In 1821, Cournot was accepted into the École Normale. However, the following year the school was closed for political reasons and he was obliged to continue his studies elsewhere. He thus found himself once again in Paris, where he pursued his university training at the Sorbonne. He then became a disciple of eminent mathematicians of the time, such as Lagrange and Poisson, and was introduced to the work of Laplace. Having earned degrees in mathematical sciences (1823) and in law (1827), Cournot fnally obtained his doctorate in mathematics in 1829 on the basis of a principal thesis, Mémoire sur le mouvement d’un corps rigide soutenu par un plan fxe and a supplementary thesis, La fgure des corps célestes (on celestial bodies). In 1823, he was hired as a private tutor by le Maréchal Gouvion-Saint-Cyr and helped him to draft his Mémoires, which were published in 1830. In 1834–1835, he launched his academic career, teaching the theory of infnitesimal functions at the newly established faculty of sciences at Lyon. He went on to serve as director of the Academy of Grenoble (1835–1838), Inspector General of Public Education (1836–1848), a member of the Commission on Advanced Studies (1848–1849), and director of the Academy of dijon, where he remained until his retirement in 1862. during the course of these years, Cournot was also beginning to build a rich and varied body of work. His frst writings dealt primarily with the area of economic science and mathematics, although from the beginning of his intellectual career he was also concerned with philosophical questions.8 In 1838, he published his Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses, a work that enjoyed only meager
6 A.-A. Cournot, Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, p. 35.
7 A.-A. Cournot, An Essay on the Foundation of Our Knowledge, New York, The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1956 [1851], p. 35.
8 We may note, merely as an anecdote, Cournot’s mention in the presentation of the Essay of 1851 that the writing of that book had occupied him “for 10 years”, and that he had conceived the frst outline “some twenty years” earlier (Essay, p. 3). The Essay, according to Tarde, contains the seeds, “in one great package”, of all his other works. (G. Tarde, Philosophie de l’histoire et science sociale: la philosophie de Cournot (edited and presented by T. Martin), Paris, Le Seuil, 2002, p. 67.)
success. Then, in 1841 and 1843, he returned with two other mathematical works: Traité élémentaire de la théorie des fonctions et du calcul infnitésimal and Exposition de la théorie des chances et des probabilités As of mid-century, he devoted himself almost exclusively to philosophy, while still maintaining his interest in mathematics. In 1851, he inaugurated his philosophical writings by publishing an essay on the foundations of knowledge and the nature of philosophical criticism (Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances et sur les caractères de la critique philosophique), a seminal work that was followed in 1861 by a treatise on the sequence of fundamental ideas in the sciences and in history (Traité de l’enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire), in 1872 by a work on the progress of ideas and events in modern times (Considérations sur la marche des idées et des événements dans les temps modernes) and fnally, in 1875, by Matérialisme, vitalisme, rationalisme. Cournot died on March 30, 1877, in Paris, having just completed his revision of the proofs for his last book, the Revue sommaire des doctrines économiques.
The decade running from 1841 to 1851 was for Cournot a period of great intellectual ferment. during this decade alone, he published fve works, including his frst great book of philosophy which, we may say, marks the beginning of a new direction in his thinking. But the shift from mathematics to philosophy can be explained in large part by reasons of a personal nature. It was during this time that Cournot gradually lost his eyesight. “Very early on I had a passion for reading,” he recounts in his Souvenirs, “as if I had an instinctive premonition that I would be condemned one day soon to be almost unable to read at all.”9
As of the mid-1840s, Cournot was no longer able to pursue mathematics. He confesses this to Walras in a letter dating from 1873: “I must tell you that for the last 30 years I have been obliged to rely on a reader for my daily browsing. Needless to say, I have not been able to fnd a boy capable of reading mathematics to me, nor can I read mathematics with my ears, and that has forced me to renounce mathematics for 30 years now.”10
9 A.-A. Cournot, Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, p. 34.
10 W. Jaffé, Correspondence of Léon Walras and Related Papers, vol. 1, 1857–1883, Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing, 1965, p. 331. See “Correspondance CournotWalras”, in A. A. Cournot, “Écrits de jeunesse et pièces diverses”, Œuvres complètes, XI, vol. 2 (edited by B. Bru and T. Martin), Paris, Vrin, 2010, pp. 1067–1083.
Although Cournot had to abandon mathematics prematurely, the fact remains that his philosophical writings and his works on the history of science reveal clearly the solid grounding in mathematics that he had acquired in his youth. There is no doubt, indeed, that the idea of developing a philosophy of probability and chance events would never have come to him if he had not frst studied mathematics. In the Traité, Cournot justifes the importance that he had until then accorded mathematics: “we have found the secret to the preeminence of the role of mathematical sciences. Mathematics is the science par excellence, the most perfect example of scientifc form and construction […]. Pure mathematics is an absolutely and eminently rational science, because the principles from which it proceeds are truths of intuition, axioms of reason, which the mind feels no need to account for, as they are clear in themselves and they impose themselves of necessity.”11
From this perspective, mathematics is the foundation of philosophical thinking. “The use of mathematical signs comes naturally whenever we set out to discuss the relationships between magnitudes, and even when they are not strictly necessary, if they can facilitate exposition, make it more concise, place it on the road to more extensive developments, and avoid the pitfalls of vague argumentation, it would be very un-philosophical to dismiss them.”12
And so, at a time marked by instability and disorder, Cournot, like many philosophers, was led almost by the force of circumstances to interest himself in history, not to make of it a “more or less cloudy metaphysics,” to use Henri Sée’s13 expression, but to submit philosophical thinking to historical subject matter. In fact, as Georges Sorel has stressed, Cournot used historical thinking to “regenerate philosophy.”14 It is apparent that, from the Essai to the Considérations, his historical
11 A.-A. Cournot, Traité de l’enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. III (edited by N. Bruyère), 1982 [1861], p. 11.
12 A.-A. Cournot, Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. VIII (edited by G. Jorland), 1984 [1838], p. 4. See P. Servien, Hasard et probabilités, Paris, PUF, 1949, pp. 6–7. In a recent article, Marc Barbut offers a useful historical synthesis of the calculation of probabilities (cf. M. Barbut, “Les mathématiques et les sciences humaines. Esquisse d’un bilan”, in L’acteur et ses raisons. Mélanges en l’honneur de Raymond Boudon, Paris, PUF, 2000, pp. 205–224).
13 H. Sée, Science et philosophie de l’histoire, Paris, Félix Alcan, 1933, p. 88.
14 G. Sorel, “À la mémoire de Cournot”, L’indépendance, 2, 16, 1911, p. 114.
curiosity became steadily keener. His concept of history is original: We can place it at the juncture of what would later be called histoire historisante, or the history of events, and the philosophy of history of his day.15 This theoretical stance becomes clearer through a ceaseless search for compromise between events and ideas, between chance and necessity. In the end, Cournot considers that phenomena of all sorts are intelligible only when they are approached from their genesis: Thus, we must go beyond narration and events to develop a general synthesis of intellectual developments that embraces the sciences, knowledge, ideas, humanity, and the universe itself.
We cannot emphasize too strongly that Cournot, like other classical sociologists, was witness to myriad social changes. At the very opening of his Souvenirs, he mentions the speed with which sociopolitical changes have followed on each other’s heels since the end of the eighteenth century: “I do not believe there has ever been a time when society underwent such profound and rapid changes as those I have seen in the course of a life that has not yet reached the threshold of old age. The generation that preceded me, to which the persons who raised me belonged, were witness to the Ancien Régime, the movement of 1789, the excesses of 1793, and in their declining years they observed the glamour of the First Empire, more with astonishment and fear than with admiration. Yet in the midst of these political and religious upheavals, which had virtually annihilated the nobility and the clergy, there had been little change in the ideas, the habits and the conditions of the various layers of the Third Estate, which as Sieyès put it, had come to constitute a complete nation, without thereby becoming much happier. The bourgeoisie, the laborers and the peasants lived side-by-side and on nearly the same footing: agriculture, industry, trade were practiced according to the bad old ways, restrained rather than encouraged in the wake of revolutions and wars. Wealth and wages, the values of goods and of foodstuffs had shown only minor variations, when compared to the lasting changes that we have seen and which denote entirely new conditions in the distribution of property, in the relations between classes, in everything that has to do with economic organization, and in the very constitution of society.”16
15 See A. Boyer, “L’histoire comme phase de transition et parenthèse historique sur la philosophie de l’histoire de Cournot”, in T. Martin (ed.), Actualité de Cournot, Paris, Vrin, pp. 109–123.
16 A.-A. Cournot, Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, pp. 1–2.
We may note that on the very page where he betrays some concern vis-à-vis the spectacle of history, Cournot, who “is not a lyricist”17 and who has rightly been called “as unromantic as possible”,18 plunges us into a universe that recalls that of Michelet or Thierry. We can detect in particular a keen interest in understanding the breakdown of the old social bonds and communal structures.
In this context, the place of religion becomes an important matter for debate. A strong anti-Catholic sentiment was emerging. In a general way, the rapid progress of the positive sciences was rendering the future of religion more problematic, even uncertain.
Yet the implacable rise of the positive sciences did not shake Cournot’s religious beliefs. We may note moreover that in his writings his spiritual convictions come through only in veiled fashion. He tries at all times to remain impartial, objective, and to abstain from judgment when he examines the development of civilizations.19
Cournot subscribed above all to scientifc realism when it came to explaining the world. Thus, as Gaston Milhaud notes, he rejects the dogma of creation: “He accepts, under beneft of the vitalist principle, an evolutionism goes so far as to admit the descent of man from apes; he has sympathy, at least, for a concept of divinity that might even suppress personality.”20 And in this order of ideas, as Julien Freund tells us, Cournot can certainly not be considered as an apologist, for he recognized “the inevitable religious indifference that increasingly characterizes the modern world. The rationalization under way can only stand in opposition to the miraculous element that is the basis of any faith.”21
Nevertheless, Cournot was willing to accept that beliefs can survive in a world dominated by science. In the Considérations, he explains himself at length on this point: “We are not among those who consider it demonstrated that human societies cannot be governed without the help of religious beliefs; perhaps experience will prove the contrary: but we
17 M. debesse, “Cournot, philosophe de l’éducation”, Paedagogica historica, 17, 2, 1977, p. 323.
18 F. Mentré, Cournot et la renaissance du probabilisme, Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1908, p. 2.
19 See A.-A. devaux, “Nature, fonction et avenir de la croyance religieuse dans l’œuvre de Cournot”, in A. Cournot, Études pour le centenaire de sa mort (1877–1977), J. Brun and A. Robinet (dir.), Paris, Economica, 1978, pp. 202–211.
20 G. Milhaud, Études sur Cournot, Paris, Vrin, 1927, p. 110.
21 J. Freund, D’Auguste Comte à Max Weber, Paris, Economica, 1992, p. 63.
hold that experience to be the most dangerous of all. Moreover we are talking about religion for its own sake, for the idea it gives men of their individual destiny and their personal value, and not only for the services it may render society, or the ills it can save it from as an instrument of social policy. It is the duty, then, of those who really hold religious interests dear to combat everything that could give a false direction to Catholic zeal, through compromising alliances or through renewed attacks by those who seek to change the legal conditions governing the establishment of religion in our society. The only system that has any chance of replacing the current order is a system that would have the sure outcome of removing from religious infuence the most numerous classes of society, those on whom its future destiny depends. It is correct to say that France is still a Catholic country, given the persistent ties between the country’s habits and the forms of Catholicism, but we cannot, except at great danger to the public peace, separate the living from the dead; and this is what justifes […] the Concordat regime of 1801. If we say that France is still a Catholic nation, capable of inciting itself to impose sacrifces of blood and money for its religion, for its priests, we fall into a grave error that can become a fatal one, if it rules the conduct of men charged with the government of Catholic interests.”22 Clearly, the religious question is, for Cournot, a source of nostalgia, even of torment, yet he does not for that reason try to conceal it or to bury it.
a Convoluted IntelleCtual legaCy
Cournot was little read during his lifetime. For the most part, he went unnoticed, it has been said, by a “public accustomed to facile rhetoric and bold eclecticism.”23 Indeed, as his writings make clear, Cournot was perfectly aware that his originality, his profound intellectual integrity, and his refusal to follow philosophical fashions were bound to limit his
22 A.-A. Cournot, Considérations sur la marche des idées et des événements dans les Temps Modernes, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. IV (edited by A. Robinet), 1973 [1872], p. 512. In fact, for Cournot, as Henri Berr put it, “the philosophy of the probable leaves room for belief” (H. Berr, L’Avenir de la philosophie, Paris, Hachette, 1899, p. 277).
23 L. Prenant, “Cournot”, in La tradition philosophique et la pensée française, Paris, Alcan, 1922, p. 127. See M. H. Moore, “The Place of A. A. Cournot in the History of Philosophy”, The Philosophical Review, XLIII, 1934, pp. 380–401; H. Sée, Science et philosophie de l’histoire, Paris, Alcan, 1933, p. 87.
popular appeal.24 “It is also true,” he writes in the preface to the Essay, “that in going against the practices of one’s own time and in ignoring the fashion prevailing in the schools and in books, one runs the risk of being very poorly received.”25
In France, Cournot’s works on economics and mathematics evoked no echo for several decades.26 His very frst book, Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses, published in 1838, was a disappointing failure that he found hard to accept. He has frequently been criticized for a style that is heavy, sometimes obscure, overloaded with mathematical formulas, and perhaps not very accessible. Cournot took note of the criticisms leveled at him and, a quarter century later, in 1863, he published the same work again, this time stripping away the mathematical formulas. He changed the title, reducing it to Principes de la théorie des richesses. Yet the preface reveals the impact of the 1838 failure: “Since I have spent 25 years in appealing the frst sentence, it goes without saying that I will not now resort to another route, come what may. If I lose my case a second time round, I will merely be left with the consolation that is always available to disgraced writers: that of thinking that the judgment convicting them will one day be reversed in the interest of the law, that is to say of the truth.”27 It was not without good reason, then, that in the Exposition he was determined to pare the use of mathematics to a minimum. “I set myself two goals in this work: frst,
24 “He was crossed up by his pedantic style, his tiresome repetitions, his unconscionably long titles, and even his multidisciplinary approach” (J. Lefranc, “Le mécanique et le vital selon Cournot”, Revue de l’enseignement philosophique, 39, 1, September–October 1998, p. 15).
25 A.-A. Cournot, An Essay on the Foundation of Our Knowledge, New York, The Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1956 [1851], p. 3. On the reception of Cournot’s ideas on economics, see Nathalie Sigot, “La réception de l’œuvre économique de Cournot”, in T. Martin (ed.), Actualité de Cournot, Paris, Vrin, 2005, pp. 125–149.
26 In the USA and in Great Britain, Cournot would become known primarily as an economist, while in France it was his philosophical works that attracted attention (see A. J. Nichol, “Tragedies in the Life of Cournot”, Econometrica, 3, 1938, p. 193). The fact remains that this recognition was late in coming, especially in the English-speaking world (see R. d. Theocharis, “A Note on the Lag in the Recognition of Cournot’s Contribution to Economic Analysis”, Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d’économie, 23, 1990, pp. 923–933; R. W. dimand, “Cournot, Bertrand, and Cherriman”, History of Political Economy, 27, 3, 1995, pp. 563–578).
27 A.-A. Cournot, Principes de la théorie des richesses, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. IX (edited by G. Jorland), 1981 [1863], p. 4.
to give people who have not mastered the fne points of mathematics access to the rules of probability calculation, without which one cannot fully understand either the details of the measurements obtained in the sciences of observation, nor the value of the numbers furnished by statistics, nor the conditions of success for many business enterprises; secondly, I wanted to rectify some errors, to remove some ambiguities, and to dissipate some obscurities to which, it seemed to me, the most clever geometricians were not immune in their writings on this delicate subject. […] Thus I have tried to ensure that a reading of this Exposition would demand only an elementary knowledge of algebraic notions, in order to avoid the need for lengthy explanations at the expense of conciseness and clarity.”28
Yet with or without sophisticated formulas, the mathematical works of Cournot were not greeted with great enthusiasm.
At the end of his life, and more particularly in his last book, the Revue sommaire des doctrines économiques (which was published posthumously), Cournot was again unable to conceal his deep disappointment. It is interesting to note how passionately he felt the need to justify the importance of his frst book. “I ask the reader’s pardon,” he writes, “but singular circumstances mean that I can hardly undertake the present publication without entering into some personal details. I must go back to 1838, when I published the slim volume or rather the memoir entitled Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses. despite the ill fate of some precursors that had obviously taken a wrong turn, I felt that there should be an advantage in using mathematical signs to express ideas and relationships that are effectively proper to the feld of mathematics; and once again I counted on a fair number of readers, in a century where people studied mathematics mainly to become engineers, and where people wanted to become engineers in order to be accepted in good standing in the big companies that produce wealth. Yet the public seems to have judged things differently, at least in France, for the book was translated in Germany, as nearly everything was at that time.”29
28 A.-A. Cournot, Exposition de la théorie des chances et des probabilités, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. I (edited by B. Bru), 1984 [1843], p. 3.
29 A.-A. Cournot, Revue sommaire des doctrines économiques, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. X (edited by G. Jorland), 1982 [1877], p. 3.
For various reasons, Cournot was reproached for relying much too heavily on the works of Ricardo and for overlooking recent works on political economy. “Since I have now, by good fortune, moved on to the status of ancestor, I may without too much presumption hope that I will no longer be denied some competence in these matters in which we must always leave room, however small, for pure theory, for the abstract speculation with which other studies have made me familiar.”30
As for the philosophically oriented public, it showed little more interest in the works of Cournot, with a few notable exceptions. Étienne Vacherot must be given pride of place among the rare admirers of Cournot. Upon reading the Essai, he declared enthusiastically that “one feels in reading this book that it is not a work of improvisation, but that it is the fruit of long and laborious meditations. It is a rich repository of observations made at leisure, and with all the freedom of a mind that had no other concern but the truth. The highest praise we can give this work, excellent in all regards, is to recognize that it earns its title.”31
Yet with the exception of the laudatory comments that Hippolyte Taine added to those of Étienne Vacherot, we fnd very little.32 Nevertheless, the praise bestowed by these two authors was a source of joy to Cournot, as can be seen in his preface to the Considérations: “One must expect to fnd here the same ideas, approached from a new viewpoint, justifed by new insights, sometimes expressed in the same terms, when one thought it impossible to fnd clearer and more precise ideas. By the same token, the author cannot expect greater popularity than his frst essays enjoyed. In the Revue des Deux-Mondes and in the Journal des Débats, two famous philosophers, Messieurs Vacherot and Taine, said that we were not widely enough read. This is what any author thinks of his
30 Ibid., p. 5.
31 É. Vacherot, Essais de philosophie critique, Paris, F. Chamerot, 1864, pp. 28–29.
32 We could, however, add the name of Proudhon to the ranks of Cournot scholars. In a letter he addresses to Cournot after reading the Essay, he writes: “In teaching me all sorts of things in detail, very interesting, very well observed, and very well expressed, you have taught me almost nothing about the whole. This means that, using other expressions, in another style, with the help of other headings, I fnd myself just about in full agreement with you. Not that I would dream, believe me, of comparing myself to you against any yardstick. You have over me, by the scope of your knowledge, by your practice of the sciences, by your immense learning, by the advantages of your teaching position, and so on, a superiority that it costs me absolutely nothing to recognize” (P.-J. Proudhon, Correspondance, Paris, A. Lacroix, t. 7, 1875, pp. 367–368).
works, and does not always hear. We are all the more fattered by this judgment because we adopt only with reservations the opinions of distinguished men who did not shrink from engaging their responsibility on this point. Let us graciously agree, then, to accept the misfortune of having been little read, along with the happiness of earning some elite votes.”33
The beginning of the twentieth century, however, witnessed a rediscovery of Cournot’s work. With hindsight, authors attempted to evaluate his place and his importance in the history of French philosophy of the previous century. Some, like Jean de La Harpe, saw in Cournot “the decisive revelation of a philosophy that […] appears as the greatest philosophical event of the past century”34; Others, like Henry Moore, maintained that “it is doubtful that in the history of French science of the 19th century there has ever been another scholar whose work equals his, in its scope, its depth and its lasting impact.”35
Henri Bergson, for his part, was impressed very early on by his reading of Cournot, more particularly the Essai. He confessed in one interview: “I have discovered the Essai of Cournot, which I found greatly to my liking. It confrmed me in the idea that philosophy was a serious occupation and not simply an oratorical amusement; his constant effort
33 A.-A. Cournot, Considérations sur la marche des idées et des événements dans les Temps modernes, Paris, Vrin, Œuvres complètes, t. IV (edited by A. Robinet), 1973 [1872], p. 6. Elsewhere, Cournot writes of his own books: “Being in Grenoble, I had published my little work on the mathematical principles of wealth theory. Back in Paris, I published, between 1840 and 1851, my various scientifc and philosophical works. I did all this with no pretense at modesty. I am now proud to say that these various works, which were greeted with acclaim but which are for the most part little sold, especially in France, all contain insights that are new, capable of shedding more light than before on the general system of our ideas. It will be for posterity to judge whether it should ratify this indulgent claim that the author allows himself, or instead consign his daydreaming to oblivion” (A.-A. Cournot, Souvenirs, Paris, Hachette, 1913, pp. 162–163).
34 J. de La Harpe, De l’ordre et du hasard: le réalisme d’Antoine-Augustin Cournot, Neuchâtel, Mémoires de l’Université de Neuchâtel, 1939, p. 161.
35 H. L. Moore, “Antoine-Augustin Cournot”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 13, 1905, pp. 521–522. Moore was deeply infuenced by Cournot. See P. Mirowski, The Effortless Economy of Science, durham and London, duke University Press, 2004, pp. 359–360.
to back up the generality of reasoning with the solidity of facts gave me much food for thought.”36
Such instances of praise, however, may seem isolated in light of the fact that Cournot’s work was little recognized for a long time. In the end, as Henri Berr suggests, this relative disregard can perhaps be explained by the very structure of Cournot’s writings: “His general refections on human evolution have something of the schematic about them. The particular study that he attempted, of the progress of ideas in modern times, is too cerebral and too broad-brush – this is less the fault of the man than of his times: he could not by himself fll in the gaps of historical analysis.”37
The real problem is perhaps that Cournot, who has rightly been described as a “universal specialist,”38 was at once a mathematician and a philosopher, at once a historian of civilizations and a sociologist, at once a historian of the sciences and an economist. It is very diffcult, then, to situate his intellectual career within the specialized academic compartmentalization that was beginning to take shape in the second half of the nineteenth century.39
36 H. Bergon, Essais et témoignages, collected by A. Béguin and P. Thévenaz, Neuchâtel, Éditions de La Baconnière, 1943, p. 358. See A. Reymond, “Notes sur Cournot et Bergson”, Revue philosophique, t. 148, 1958, pp. 371–372.
37 H. Berr, La synthèse en histoire, Paris, Albin Michel, 1953, p. 206.
38 Cf. M. debesse, “Cournot, philosophe de l’éducation”, Paedagogica historica, 17, 2, 1977, p. 317.
39 On this point, Tarde offers one explanation: “If Cournot’s works have not struck a chord with the philosophical public, it is for a reason that will perhaps surprise our contemporaries, albeit wrongly: it is because, to tell the truth, the philosophical public of his time did not exist. We may say that it has existed only since the foundation of the Revue Philosophique by M. Ribot in 1875 or 1876. The previous era, when Cournot was producing, was characterized by the stifing of the philosophical mind under the yoke of Cousinian eclecticism and of classical economics. All the trappings of fame were then monopolized by the reigning schools, and any original mind had to expect the conspiracy of silence” (G. Tarde, Philosophie de l’histoire et science sociale: la philosophie de Cournot, Cours au Collège de France de 1902–1903 (edited by T. Martin), Paris, Seuil, 2002, p. 41).
the CrIsIs of frenCh PhIlosoPhy In the seCond half of the nIneteenth Century
The history of philosophical ideas in France during the nineteenth century constitutes an entire period, suffcient to itself, “with a beginning, a middle and an end.”40 The frst half of the century was dominated essentially by Saint-Simon, Joseph de Maistre, Royer-Collard, Maine de Biran, Ampère, and Victor Cousin, who was surely its most representative fgure. It ended rather abruptly at mid-century, under the infuence of a shifting intellectual context as well as the shock of the 1848 events.41 On top of this came, in 1859, the publication of darwin’s Origin of Species, which forced philosophy and the sciences to redefne themselves.42 A new era had opened, dominated by positive science.
In this setting, mistrust of philosophy gathered strength. Georges Gusdorf emphasized this point: “If we consider the epistemological perspective of the 19th century as a whole, we are struck by the immense development and specialization of the scientifc disciplines. But this problem was accompanied, for scholars, by a growing dissatisfaction with philosophy, which was regarded as a dangerous purveyor of illusion. Whereas descartes, Leibniz and Kant saw no unbridgeable gap between the assertions of physicians or mathematicians and those of metaphysics, such coexistence now seemed impossible: antipathy turned to contradiction and to root-and-branch condemnation.”43 By frequently reminding us in his works that, without the necessary philosophical underpinnings, the scientifc approach was sterile and in vain, Cournot thus occupied a singular intellectual position.
The history of French philosophy in the second half of the century has been the subject of very little attention, other than to treat it with a certain condescension. It has at times been reproached as scholastic or eclectic, or for being but a pale copy of neo-Kantian philosophy.44
40 C. Adam, La philosophie en France, Paris, Félix Alcan, 1894, p. 5.
41 On the infuence that the social setting had on philosophy in the nineteenth century, see the dated but still useful work of G. Richard, La question sociale et le mouvement philosophique au XIXe siècle, Paris, Colin, 1914.
42 See H. L. Moore, “The Place of A. A. Cournot in the History of Philosophy”, Philosophical Review, 43, 1943, p. 382.
43 G. Gusdorf, Introduction aux sciences humaines, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1960, p. 343.
44 See J. Lefranc, La philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, Paris, PUF, 1998.
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