Destutt de Tracy - Legacy

Legacy

Tracy advanced a rigorous use of deductive method in social theory, seeing economics in terms of actions (praxeology) and exchanges (catallactics). Tracy's influence can be seen both on the Continent, particularly on Stendhal, Augustin Thierry, Auguste Comte, and Charles Dunoyer, and in America, where the general approach of the French Liberal School of political economy competed evenly with British classical political economy well until the end of the 19th century, as evidence in the work and reputation of Arthur Latham Perry and others. In his political writings, Tracy rejected monarchism, favoring the American republican form of government. This republicanism, as well as his advocacy of reason in philosophy and laissez-faire for economic policy, lost him favor with Napoleon, who turned Tracy's coinage of "ideology" into a term of abuse; Karl Marx followed this vein of invective to refer to Tracy as a "fischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär"—a "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire."

Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, thought highly enough of Destutt de Tracy's work to ready two of his manuscripts for American publication. In his preface to the 1817 publication, Jefferson wrote, "By diffusing sound principles of Political Economy, it will protect the public industry from the parasite institutions now consuming it. . . ."

Also, Stendhal was much influenced by de Tracy's enlightenment ideals, and attended the De Tracy salon regularly, in the 1820s