Tracy, Destutt De (1754–1836)

Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy was an economist and a political theorist. Destutt de Tracy was a philosophe and one of the founders in the 1790s of the classical liberal republican group known as the Idéologues, which included Condorcet, Constant, Say, and Madame de Staël. He was active in politics under several regimes spanning the Revolution and the Restoration, and he was an influential author during his lifetime. When the Estates-General were called to meet in 1789, although a member of an aristocratic family that had been ennobled twice (hence his name), he joined the Third Estate and renounced his title. He was later elected to the Constituent Assembly and served in the army under the Marquis de Lafayette in 1792. During the Terror, he was ...