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Philosopher and economist. Born at Grenoble, the third son of a well-to-do aristocratic family, Condillac took his name from an estate purchased by his father in 1720. As a sickly child with poor eyesight he had little early education and was apparently still unable to read by the age of 12. After his father’s death in 1727 he moved to Lyon to live with his oldest brother, continuing his education at its Jesuit college. Through this brother he may have first met Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was tutor to his nephews in 1740 and became a life-long friend. His second brother, l’Abbé de Mably, took Condillac to Paris in c. 1733 to study theology at Saint Sulpice and the Sorbonne. He was ordained in 1740 and for the rest of his life ‘ever faithful to the Christian church, would always wear his cassock, always remain l’Abbé’ (Lefèvre 1966, p. 11).

For the next 15 years he lived the life of a Paris intellectual, studying the philosophy of Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz and Spinoza, ‘to whose speculative systems he formed a life-long aversion, preferring the English philosophers Locke (who particularly influenced his thinking), Berkeley, Newton and rather belatedly, Bacon’ (Knight 1968, pp. 8–9). In this period he published the works which made his philosophical reputation: the Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746), the Traité des Systèmes (1749), his most famous philosophical work Treatise on the Sensations (1754) described as the ‘most rigorous demonstration of the [18th-century] sensationalist psychology’ (Knight 1968, p. 12) and his Traité des Animaux (1755).

Apart from giving him entry to the Paris salons, where at Mlle de Lespinasse’s salon he is reputed to have first met Turgot, another life-long friend (Le Roy 1947, p. ix), his intellectual reputation gained him the position of tutor to Louis XV’s grandson, the Duke of Parma. From 1758 to 1767 he resided in Parma. Because of its prime minister’s economic development policies, inspired by a mixture of ‘mercantilism, physiocracy and the ideas of Gournay’, Condillac developed an interest in economic matters, an interest ‘indirectly confirmed by his known contacts with the Italian political economists, Beccaria and Gherardo’ (Knight 1968, pp. 231–2). In 1768 he returned to Paris, but by 1773 had retired to his estate of Flux near Beaugency, where he died in 1780. During the last decade of his life he published his Cours d’Etudes (1775), his work on economics (1776), a text on logic (1780) for use in Polish Palatinate schools, and commenced the unfinished La Langue des Calculs (1798). In 1752, he became a member of the Royal Prussian Academy; in 1768 after his return from Parma he was elected to the French Academy. His works have been frequently collected, most recently by Le Roy (1947–51).

The impetus for Condillac’s writing Le Commerce et le Gouvernement has been ascribed to a desire to assist his friend Turgot in the difficulties he faced in 1775 as finance minister over the grain riots induced by his restoration of the free trade in grain (Le Roy 1947, p. xxv; Knight 1968, p. 232). This fits with the work’s unqualified support for free trade in general and the grain trade in particular (1776, esp. pp. 344–5, which seems directly inspired by the Paris events of 1775). Writing the book may also be explained as a return favour for Turgot’s assistance in getting Condillac (1775) published (cf. Knight 1968, pp. 13, 232). Despite Condillac’s strong support for this major part of Physiocratic policy and his close adherence to other aspects of Physiocracy, his argument that manufacturing was productive brought critical replies from Baudeau and Le Trosne (1777). In this context it may be noted that his work bears little direct Physiocratic influence, the major influence being Cantillon (1755), the only work directly cited apart from Plumard de Dangeul (1754). It is, however, possible to detect some influence from the economics of Turgot, Galiani and Verri on the theory of value, price and competition (cf. Spengler 1968, p. 212).

As published, the work is divided into two parts. The first provides the elements of the science. Its starting point is the foundation of value, which Condillac finds in the usefulness of an object relative to subjective needs making relative scarcity the key variable determining value. Value is distinguished from price because price can only originate in exchange. It is determined by the competition between buyers and sellers guided by their subjective estimation of value. Gains from exchange arise from differences in value; for Condillac, value cannot exchange for equal value. Although Condillac did discuss the costs of acquiring commodities, his emphasis is on exchange, trade and price. Exchange presumes surplus production and a need for consumption. Hence trade inspires and animates production and is essential to increasing wealth. Only simple pictures of production are presented: farm labourers producing prime necessities of food and materials; artisans transforming raw materials into essentials and luxuries; traders who circulate these products at home and abroad. By this circulation trade distributes the annual product and under competitive conditions settles its true prices. Condillac is more concerned with developing the institutions associated with trade: growth of towns and villages, money, banking, credit, interest and the foreign exchanges, the defence of property by government and hence the need for taxation, and the effects of restraints on trade, including the grain trade. The second part is almost completely devoted to examining effects of specific obstacles to trade ranging from war, tariffs, taxes, excessive government borrowing to luxury spending in the capital city and exclusive trading privileges. Moderate wants combined with complete freedom constitute his recipe for the best form of economic development.

Condillac’s economic work received a mixed reception from later economists. J.B. Say (1805, p. xxxv) described it as an attempt ‘to found a system of … a subject which [the author] did not understand’. Jevons (1871, p. xviii) praised Condillac’s ‘charming philosophic work [because] in the first few chapters … we meet perhaps the earliest distinct statement of the true connections between value and utility…’. Macleod (1896 described it as a ‘remarkable work … utterly neglected but in scientific spirit … infinitely superior to Smith’. Since then, it has remained neglected even though as ‘a good if somewhat sketchy treatise on economic theory and policy [it was] much above the common run of its contemporaries’ (Schumpeter 1954, pp. 175–6).

Selected Works

  • 1746. An essay on the origin of human knowledge. Trans. Thomas Nugent. London: Nourse, 1756.

  • 1749. Traité des Systèmes, où l’on en démèle les inconvénine et les advantages. Paris/Amsterdam.

  • 1754. Treatise on the sensations. Trans. B.S. Geraldine Czar. London: Favill Press, 1930.

  • 1755. Traité des Animaux, où après avoir fain des observations critique sur le sentiment de Descartes et sur celui de M. Buffon on entreprend d’expliquer leurs principales facultés …. Amsterdam.

  • 1755. Cours d’Etude pour l’instruction du Prince de Parma, Aujourd’hui Ferdinand, Duc de Parma. Parma (and Paris).

  • 1776. Le Commerce et le gouvernement considerés relativement l’un à l’autre. In Oeuvres complètes de Condillac. Vol. 4. Paris: Brière, 1821.

  • 1780. The logic. Trans. B.S. Joseph Neef. Philadelphia, 1809.

  • 1798. Le langue des Calculs, Ouvrage Posthume et élémentaire. Paris.