clipped from: ieet.org   

Marquis de Condorcet (1744-1794) was a hugely influential Enlightenment era thinker who contributed significantly to the rise of secular humanism and helped plant the seeds of transhumanism. He is said to have best represented the ideals of the Enlightenment.

To this end, Condorcet advocated for a liberal economy, free and equal public education and constitutionalism. He also advocated for the primacy of reason as way to liberate humanity from the church, authoritarianism and nature.
Condorcet speculated about utopian possibilities and wrote a piece on the perfectability of society. He gave no concrete definition of a “perfect” human existence, but he believed that the progression of the human race would inevitably continue throughout the course of its existence. His thoughts prompted Thomas Malthus to write his famous paper on unsustainable population growth.