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SOPHIE DE GROUCHY’S LETTERS ON SYMPATHY
OXFORD NEW HISTORIES OF PHILOSOPHY
Series Editors
Christia Mercer, Melvin Rogers, and Eileen O’Neill (1953–2017)
* Advisory Board
Lawrie Balfour, Jacqueline Broad, Marguerite Deslauriers, Karen
Detlefsen, Bachir Diagne, Don Garrett, Robert Gooding-Williams, Andrew Janiak, Marcy Lascano, Lisa Shapiro, Tommie Shelby
*
Oxford New Histories of Philosophy provides essential resources for those aiming to diversify the content of their philosophy courses, revisit traditional narratives about the history of philosophy, or better understand the richness of philosophy’s past. Examining previously neglected or understudied philosophical figures, movements, and traditions, the series includes both innovative new scholarship and new primary sources.
* Published in the series
Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century: Essential Readings
Edited by Carlos Alberto Sánchez and Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr.
Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy: A Critical Engagement with Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Translated by Sandrine Bergès. Edited by Sandrine Bergès and Eric Schliesser
Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence
Edited by Jacqueline Broad
SOPHIE DE GROUCHY’S
LETTERS ON SYMPATHY
A Critical Engagement with Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Translated by Sandrine Bergès
WITH AN INTRODUCTION, GLOSSARY, AND COMMENTARY BY SANDRINE BERGÈS AND ERIC SCHLIESSER
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Condorcet, Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de, 1764–1822, author. | Bergès, Sandrine, editor, translator. | Schliesser, Eric, 1971–editor, translator. | Container of (expression): Condorcet, Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de, 1764–1822. Lettres sur la sympathie. English (Bergès and Schliesser) | Container of (expression): Condorcet, Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de, 1764–1822. Lettres sur la sympathie. French (Bergès and Schliesser)
Title: Sophie de Grouchy’s letters on sympathy / edited [and translated] by Sandrine Bergès and Eric Schliesser.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018038479 (print) | LCCN 2018040294 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190637125 (online content) | ISBN 9780190637101 (updf) | ISBN 9780190637118 (epub) | ISBN 9780190637095 (pbk. :alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190637088 (cloth :alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Condorcet, Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de, 1764–1822—Correspondence. | Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de, 1743–1794. | Statesmen’s spouses—France—Correspondence. | Revolutionaries—France—Correspondence. | Intellectuals—France—Correspondence. | France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799—Sources. | France—Intellectual life—18th century—Sources. Classification: LCC DC146. C7 (ebook) | LCC DC146. C7 A4 2020 (print) | DDC 944.04092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038479
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Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
This book is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to the memory of:
Eileen
O’Neill (1953–2017)
SERIES EDITORS’ FOREWORD
Oxford New Histories of Philosophy (ONHP) speaks to a new climate in philosophy.
There is a growing awareness that philosophy’s past is richer and more diverse than previously understood. It has become clear that canonical figures are best studied in a broad context. More exciting still is the recognition that our philosophical heritage contains longforgotten innovative ideas, movements, and thinkers. Sometimes these thinkers warrant serious study in their own right; sometimes their importance resides in the conversations they helped reframe or problems they devised; often their philosophical proposals force us to rethink long-held assumptions about a period or genre; and frequently they cast well-known philosophical discussions in a fresh light.
There is also a mounting sense among philosophers that our discipline benefits from a diversity of perspectives and a commitment to inclusiveness. In a time when questions about justice, inequality, dignity, education, discrimination, and climate (to name a few) are especially vivid, it is appropriate to mine historical texts for insights that can shift conversations and reframe solutions. Given that
philosophy’s very long history contains astute discussions of a vast array of topics, the time is right to cast a broad historical net.
Lastly, there is increasing interest among philosophy instructors in speaking to the diversity and concerns of their students. Although historical discussions and texts can serve as a powerful means of doing so, finding the necessary time and tools to excavate long-buried historical materials is challenging.
Oxford New Histories of Philosophy is designed to address all these needs. It will contain new editions and translations of significant historical texts. These primary materials will make available, often for the first time, ideas and works by women, people of color, and movements in philosophy’s past that were groundbreaking in their day, but left out of traditional accounts. Informative introductions will help instructors and students navigate the new material. Alongside its primary texts, ONHP will also publish monographs and collections of essays that offer philosophically subtle analyses of understudied topics, movements, and figures. In combining primary materials and astute philosophical analyses, ONHP will make it easier for philosophers, historians, and instructors to include in their courses and research exciting new materials drawn from philosophy’s past.
ONHP’s range will be wide, both historically and culturally. The series plans to include, for example, the writings of African American philosophers, twentieth-century Mexican philosophers, early modern and late medieval women, Islamic and Jewish authors, and nonwestern thinkers. It will excavate and analyze problems and ideas that were prominent in their day but forgotten by later historians. And it will serve as a significant aid to philosophers in teaching and researching this material.
As we expand the range of philosophical voices, it is important to acknowledge one voice responsible for this series. Eileen O’Neill was a series editor until her death, December 1, 2017. She was instrumental in motivating and conceptualizing ONHP. Her brilliant
Foreword
scholarship, advocacy, and generosity made all the difference to the efforts that this series is meant to represent. She will be deeply missed, as a scholar and a friend.
We are proud to contribute to philosophy’s present and to a richer understanding of its past.
Christia Mercer and Melvin Rogers Series Editors
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sandrine Bergès and Eric Schliesser came to Sophie de Grouchy independently—each of us has her and his own story. Bergès was giving a talk on Wollstonecraft in Montreal, and talking about her plan for writing about French women of the same period. Josiane BouladAyoub brought out a copy of the Letters, edited by Jean-Paul Lagrave. After a suitable procrastinating delay, Bergès read the book and started contacting other scholars who might know a bit more about this fascinating philosopher: Deirdre Dawson, who generously sent her a copy of several of her articles on Grouchy, and of the edition of the Letters she co-edited with Marc-André Bernier; Madeleine Arnold Tétard, the author of a biography of Grouchy, who shared her knowledge of her life and times, and more preciously, perhaps, of the location of relevant historical papers; and last but not least, Eric Schliesser, who was already making Grouchy’s name known through his blog posts.
In the summer of 2006, the late Eileen O’Neill invited Schliesser to contribute a paper to an edited volume on Grouchy and evaluate her distinct “philosophical contribution.” Then a junior scholar, Schliesser happily accepted the invitation and was directed to Karin Brown and James E. McClellan, who generously shared their then draft edition and
translation of Grouchy’s Letters. Evelyn Forget’s publications provided a solid foundation for his research. Jennifer Saul provided Schliesser with the first public occasion to lecture on Grouchy in Sheffield’s Annual Women in the History of Philosophy Lecture in 2011.
Both Bergès and Schliesser went on to write about Grouchy— Schliesser first, though a delay in publishing (the forthcoming volume is now co-edited by Marcy Lascano) meant that Bergès’s article came out first. They met online, through a mutual friend, and started to work together before eventually meeting in person at a conference.
Over the last decade, we’ve been hearing and reading more about Grouchy from others who wish the recover, to adapt O’Neill’s phrase, the disappeared ink in the history of philosophy. Before that, her work was very little known, despite its great potential as a teaching and research text. We hope that by publishing this volume we will help make it even more widely discussed, and that Grouchy will reach the place she merits in the philosophical canon.
In addition to those who introduced us to Grouchy, we are especially grateful to Andrew Janiak and Marcy Lascano, who invited us both to an important, galvanizing conference that continues to shape our scholarship, as well as Spiros Tegos, who has been a spirited interlocutor on all things Grouchy. We also thank Lisa Shapiro, Karen Detlefsen, and Marguerite Deslauriers, who have created and guided the network(s) we are both part of, as well as the editor of the current series, Christia Mercer, who is the best intellectual advocate and friendly critic one can imagine, and everyone at OUP, especially our wonderful editor, Lucy Randall. We would also like to thank Lucy Balazs for her careful reading of the final draft of the text, and Anna de Bruyckere for preparing the index. We gratefully acknowledge a grant by Zon MW, The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, which helped pay for some of the expenses associated with this project.
Finally, we thank our partners, Bill and Sarit, and children, Charlotte, Max, and Avi.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sandrine Bergès is associate professor in philosophy at Bilkent University in Ankara. Her books include: The Routledge Companion to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2013) and A Feminist Perspective on Virtue Ethics (2014). She also co-edited The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft (2016) (with Alan Coffee).
Eric Schliesser is professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam and visiting Scholar at Chapman University. He has published a monograph, Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker (2017), and edited a volume, Sympathy: A History of a Concept (2015), both with Oxford University Press. He blogs almost daily at Digressionsnimpressions (https://digressionsnimpressions. typepad.com).
NOTE ON THE TEXT AND TRANSLATION
Our approach to the translation and the introduction was to take into account the relevant context in sufficient detail so as to avoid making inaccurate statements, but also to enable the reader to read the text as part of the philosophical dialogue of the late Enlightenment period. In particular, in both the translation and the introduction, we took care to cross-reference the text with other texts that Sophie de Grouchy read and sought to engage with, and which influenced both her style and her arguments. These include (in French) Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condorcet, and (in English) Smith, Paine, Young, and even Wollstonecraft (whose early writings she seems to have been given by her friend Dumont, at the time she was writing the Letters on Sympathy). Schliesser’s knowledge of Smith was particularly helpful in teasing out the ways in which Sophie de Grouchy is trying to engage with Smith’s views, not only in The Theory of Moral Sentiments but also in other works that we know she had read. More generally, we tried to identify the ways in which Grouchy engages not just with Smith but also with other actors in Enlightenment practical thought and how she sought possible references to Turgot, Necker, Beccaria, Montesquieu, Condorcet, and others. We also decided
to take into account other writings by Sophie de Grouchy which were recently attributed by Bergès, which cast light on some of the arguments of the Letters. The biographical section benefited from Sandrine Bergès’s recent archival work in the library of the Institut, in Paris, which hosts the papers of Condorcet and of his descendants.
There is, unfortunately, no manuscript available from Sophie de Grouchy, and only one edition in her lifetime. This meant that we had no editing decisions to make in preparing the translation. The first edition (1798), which we have used, is freely available on the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and there are several more or less scholarly editions available.
Translating texts from another period is always difficult, in that a happy medium must be struck between conveying the tone of the period and rendering it more readable for contemporary readers. Some arcane words had to be translated by more recent ones, and where there was no suitable translation, I added a note explaining what the word meant in its context. Here I highlight a few of the decisions I made while translating.
Grouchy, like many of her contemporaries, favored long sentences—at times covering several paragraphs before reaching a full stop. I have inserted punctuation and paragraph breaks where there were none, for the sake of readability.
As Grouchy translated Smith, and surely had his text in mind when she wrote the Letters, I have used, whenever possible, his terminology to translate hers. Where the number of words and expressions covering a particular concept in French and in English differed, I had to make a decision.
One particular problem we faced was that of producing a text that did not constantly use masculine terms. There are many references to “les hommes” in the original, but that text was written at a time when it was still plausible to believe that the masculine could be used at times to refer to the human race as a whole. Sometimes it made sense
to translate this as simply “people.” Other times, I took advantage of the fact that French assigns gender to concepts and inanimate objects more or less randomly and kept the feminine pronoun in English. So “une personne” became “she,” even though it is really meant to be gender neutral.
Sandrine Bergès