CONTENTS 1 Men Failing at Feminism and the Exception of Condorcet 2 Misogyny of the Philosophes, Stewards of the Status Quo 3 Condorcet’s Feminist Writing 4 Condorcet’s Personal Relationships and Why He Became a Feminist 5 Condorcet’s Legacy Among the Philosophes    and the Value of His Feminism for Today’s Man   APPENDIX A Question of Terms: Feminist Over Pro-Feminist The 18th Century Clamor for Gender Equality: Forefathers and Foremothers of Contemporary Feminism The Early Struggle for Gender Equality: A Timeline About the Author/Works Cited

"Condorcet’s Legacy among the Philosophes and the Value of his Feminism for Today’s Man," Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 2008. (PDF article via essaysinhumanism.org)

Men Failing at Feminism and the Exception of Condorcet

Women in the United States of America were unable to vote until 1920. Even today women are treated as inferior to men good for little more than beauty as evidenced by the prevailing misogynistic portrayals of women as helpless weaklings in popular modern film or the gross pay inequality in today’s business world. Moreover, eighty-three years since it was first proposed, the Equal Rights Amendment, which would simply state that “[e]quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” has only been ratified by thirty-five of the necessary thirty-eight states. Women have, however, managed to secure a great deal of liberty over the last one-hundred years including the freedom to work outside of the home, improved wages, reproductive rights, and greater opportunity in society at large. Without a doubt, feminism has been principally responsible for these gains.

When we think about feminism today most think of important women during the twenty-century such as Margaret Sanger. Some may even think back far enough to recall a woman whom some have contended is the grandmother of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft. Few if any think of the important role men have played in supporting feminism. Even fewer are familiar with the important contribution made by the earliest male feminists such as Condorcet, whose published contention that women should enjoy absolute equality with men predates Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women. We should not be surprised that such a gulf exists. Today, pop-culture has constructed a theatrical stage whereby women and men are presented as animals fundamentally alien from one another; made to feel as if they were two-different species with fundamentally different interests and desires. In some ways the stereotypes that subjugated women in the eighteenth century still exist. Television imagery such as the Burger King commercial showing gruff men fleeing formal, romantic dinners with their female counterparts in order to seek out monstrous, meaty burgers, support the notion that men and women, though modern society states a certain civility and respect should be acknowledged, are fundamentally different creatures with virtues and vices that correspond to their sex.

Conversely, when the subject of male involvement in the rise of feminism is brought up by scholars they tend to embellish the contribution made to the evolution of feminism by the philosophes. The philosophes quite often accepted misogynistic attitudes of their day and even treated gender equality with great indifference in both their personal and political lives. While many early male thinkers did in fact recognized that men and women were deserving of greater liberty, the vast majority did little to nothing to actually advocate change toward a more equitable society. Many merely mourned the sad state of affairs, pitying woman’s plight, and did nothing more. There is, however, one glowing exception: Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet.
On 17 September 1743, Condorcet was born into nobility and bequeathed an ancient family name.1 Early in his life his father died, leaving him to the care of his mother. As a child Condorcet was given a Jesuit education. In response he developed an “anti-clericalism” that “was more militant than Voltaire’s and could be expressed with cruel sarcasm.”2 After authoring several papers on mathematics, including one on integral calculus (1765), he was admitted to Paris’ Academy of Sciences in 1769. 3 There he met Jean le Rond d’Alembert and eventually entered the world of the French salon via d’Alembert’s companion, Julie de Lespinasse.4 In 1770 Condorcet met and received praise from Voltaire. Ironically, Voltaire’s approval of Condorcet began to wane when Condorcet anonymously published a fiercely anti-clerical work, Letters of a Theologian, four years later. Voltaire was particularly angered and concerned with the fact the work had been widely attributed to him. The controversial work, nevertheless,  initiated Condorcet’s life-long dedication to political life and social reform.5

Condorcet was not only a mathematical genius as well as one of the world’s first social scientists; he put his theories into practice by participating in his nation’s governance. In September 1789 he was elected to the municipality of Paris.6 That same year he began drafting the nation’s Declarations of Rights.7 By 1791, Condorcet had gone from being an aristocrat to becoming France’s “first figure of standing” to become an outright republican. He soon emerged as “one of the leaders of the left.”8

Condorcet associated with the Girondins and approved of the group’s attempts to suppress the works of Jean-Paul Marat. He even supported the Paris populous' invasion of the king’s palace in June.9 In September 1791, Condorcet was elected to the new Legislative Assembly and soon became president of the assembly, February of the following year.10 The Legislative Assembly soon gave way, however, to the National Convention. While Condorcet managed to secure a spot in the new government by being elected in five districts outside of the Jacobins’ stronghold, Paris, his association with the Girondins11 and his impulse to speak truth to power soon placed his life in jeopardy.
While Condorcet began to drift from the Girondins, he nevertheless remained more closely associated with them owing to the fact he loathed the extremism of the Jacobins. So when the Girondins’ power waned, particularly as it came under a tidal wave of accusations that its members were trying to unravel the Revolution from within, Condorcet soon came into the head-hunting sights of the Jacobins.12

Three months after Condorcet and his committee had written a careful draft of the new Constitution, presenting it as the “Girondin Constitution” to the National Convention on 15 and 16 February 1793, a separate Convention appointed committee voted to have a new draft written.13 When Condorcet reviewed the new proposed Constitution, written by the Jacobins, he made the fateful decision to speak out against it. A defining feature of Condorcet’s character, he could not sit silently while the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, lunged for power by excluding key provisions he had included in his Constitution. His pamphlet, “To the Citizens of France, regarding the New Constitution,” pointed out how his draft had been written more carefully and with greater consideration of the voting theory necessary to represent the will of the entire nation. The Jacobin draft would over represent towns and thus under represent the countryside. Condorcet went so far as to compare the Jacobins of 1793 to the royalists of 1791.

On 8 July 1793 Francois Chabot called for Condorcet’s arrest on charges of conspiracy. 14 Condorcet retreated into hiding, authoring several works including his “Advice to his daughter,” while his Girondin associates were being guillotined.15 During this time he also wrote his best-known work, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, which was posthumously published in 1795. The book describes the rise of the philosophy of indefinite perfectibility, beginning with the first nine “epochs” of human history, climaxing to the tenth, in which the unlimited progressive potential of humankind is realized.16 While he would later be imprisoned and then found dead in his cell two days after his arrest, 29 March 1794,17 Condorcet’s optimism never diminished. In Progress of the Human Mind he wrote:
How consoling for the philosopher who laments the errors, the crimes, the injustices which still pollute the earth and of which he is often the victim is this view of the human race, emancipated form its shackles, released form the empire of fate and from that of the enemies of its progress, advancing with a firm and sure step along the path of truth, virtue and happiness! It is the contemplation of this prospect that rewards him for all his efforts to assist the progress of reason and the defense of liberty.18

While several scholars have explicated Condorcet’s feminist thought, this work sets out with the unique objective of proving that Condorcet’s feminism was not the product of the philosophes’ thoughts on gender equality, but rather it was a radical deviation from even the most sympathetic thinkers among the elite group of Enlightenment thinkers, and even other important thinkers outside of France. The work specifically contrasts his potent feminist thinking with the tepid, half-hearted feminism of those he is often listed among as eighteenth-century feminists. Condorcet’s feminism was so revolutionary that one must recognize it as not the culmination of a growing swell of Enlightenment feminist thought, but rather as the defiant exception. Condorcet’s feminism was one of the earliest manifestations of a complete feminist outlook which sought to go beyond the purely intellectual, encyclopedic interests, influencing his personal life as well as political life. Furthermore, this work seeks to go beyond explaining his support for feminism as being purely motivated by Cartesian rationalism which most scholars have concluded, but also seeks to examine the influence of his empathetic sensitivity and passion; his relationship with his wife, Sophie; and the ironic influence of the utility of enfranchising women for a man who believed utility poor bulwark for the establishment of rights.

In the eighteenth century a vocal chorus of men came to the cause of women’s equality. At a time when married women were essentially the property of their husbands, these male intellectuals drew attention to the difficult plight of women in their society. One would be dishonest, however, to describe most of these thinkers as full-fledged feminists who sought to make women equal participants in a representative democracy. Taking into consideration the full view of facts, one must conclude that few if any should be deemed feminists at all.

The view that thinkers such as Englishman, Daniel Defoe, are feminists is one which needs serious reconsideration. Defoe’s 1697 work, Essay Upon Projects,19 complains of the frivolous nature of women’s education, the height of which is being “taught to read indeed, and perhaps to write their names,”20 and suggests the establishment of a voluntarily attended secular academy for women throughout England. He suggests that the education should focus on the perfection of speech, reading, especially the subject of history, and “music and dancing, which it would be cruelty to bar the sex of, because they are their darlings.” Defoe rejects the assumption made by many of his contemporaries that “exquisite beauty is rarely given with wit, more rarely with goodness of temper, and never at all with modesty,” stating that “the great distinguishing difference which is seen in the world between men and women is in their education.”21 Defoe’s half-hearted feminism, though already noticeable, is most clearly attested to when, after ridiculing the notion that God Almighty made women to “be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves,” he offers this disclaimer:  “Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least.” He goes on to suggest that if men are to take women for companions, they should “educate them to be fit for it.” Defoe’s attitude toward women foreshadows that of thinkers to come. In short, one could argue that efforts to improve female education were largely purposed to improve man’s domestic servant, woman.

In Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States 1776-1990, the books editors include American signer of the Declaration, Benjamin Rush, among “[s]everal pro-feminist men in the era before Seneca Falls” that “felt woman’s participation in public life was of paramount importance.”22 Explaining their reason for including his work, “Thoughts upon Female Education” (1787) in their collection of important pro-feminist documents, they write that the letter “makes an eloquent plea for women’s rights to education. Rush argued that educated women would be more easily governed and that their education was therefore in men’s interests.”23 The presentation of Rush as a pro-feminist, however, is a real stretch given his motivation for the betterment of women’s education. In the work Rush advocates the thorough education of woman so that she can properly educate their children, help her husband guard his property, and, should she outlive him, manage the estate left to her. While Rush argues for the complete education of women, the aim of such education has nothing to do with aiding women in the pursuit of real freedom; instead the aim of a full education is to prepare American women to be skilled mothers and helpmates. Explaining that “the equal share that every citizen has in the liberty and the possible share he may have in the government of our country make it necessary that our ladies should be qualified to a certain degree…to concur in instructing their sons in the principles of liberty and government.”24 Simply put, women need to prepare their sons for self-rule. He later disagrees with those who feel the “elevation of the female mind, by means of moral, physical, and religious truth” is “unfriendly to the domestic character of a woman.” Rush explains that “a weak and ignorant woman will always be governed with the greatest difficulty.”25 Rush has in mind to improve women only insofar as they become better servants, constantly referring to women as being acted upon by government, not participating in the process of governance.

Jeremy Bentham is another early supporter of reform in the treatment of women. Some have suggested that Bentham’s feminism has been largely unrecognized, particularly, according to one scholar, his likely influence on John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women.26 Bentham is most vocal and active in arguing in support of women’s sexual and marital rights, including the right to divorce.27 Bentham contends that women have just as much a claim to happiness as men do.28 Bentham also attacks assertions that the law of nature was partly responsible for women’s lack of involvement in the political process: “As easily can a female give a piece of card to be put in a box as a male.”29 He points out the more than able examples of female heads of state over time. Regardless of his view that men and women were generally equal, Bentham backs down from the fight to include women in the political process. Williford notes that his central excuse is that he believed the time was not right and that men lacked “the maturity to work seriously and effectively with women in their midst.”30 Bentham believed that no nation he knew of was ripe for the admission of women into the political process and he feared “their participation would jeopardize progress along other lines.”31 Earlier, he even “decided that women should not be allowed to sit in the gallery and simply observe a legislative body in action. In ‘An Essay on Political Tactics,’ he declared that women by their mere presence would add new force to the seductive powers of eloquence and ridicule. Men would resort to ‘imprudent resolutions and extreme measures’ merely to please the opposite sex, as passion replaced reason.”32 Even Williford notes that Bentham’s support of political rights for women was largely theoretical33 and lacking in terms of calling for radical adjustments in the status of women.34 Williford’s excuse: “In his day the time was not yet ripe – but he caused another generation to seek for women an end to the inequalities he so eloquently described.”35 As we will find, even before Bentham one man stood up for equality, despite the times in which he was trapped.

While Thomas Paine stands out as one of the few intellectuals in United States in the eighteenth century interested in calling attention to “the paralyzing consequences of women’s condition,” his “Occasional Letter on the Female Sex” (1775) fails to fully advocate extending the right to vote to women.36 Lynn Hunt writes: “The great proponent of ‘the rights of man,’ Thomas Paine, never even deigned to discuss the rights of women.”37 Rosemarie Zagarii goes even further complaining that while Paine “had argued for the right of all human beings to certain universal privileges,” specific rights such as “the right to own property, to vote, to participate in government” were assumed to exclude women. “Typically for his time, Paine did not even consider whether women had rights or what those rights might be.”38
…..
In 1798, America’s first novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, brings the controversial woman question into the purview of the American reading public with his daring dialogue, Alcuin. In the work, the character Mrs. Carter lectures a young man named Alcuin about the plight of women. She speaks specifically about the disadvantages the current marital system poses for women who literally become slaves to their husbands upon marriage. “By marriage she loses all right to separate property,” complains Mrs. Carter. “The will of her husband is the criterion of all her duties. All merit is comprised in unlimited obedience.” She even delves into the question of woman and politics: “What have I, as a woman, to do with politics? Even the government of our country, which is said to be the freest in the world, passes over women as if they were not. We are excluded from all political rights without the least ceremony.”39 Indeed, Brown’s work has been called “[p]erhaps the most far-reaching” vision “of women’s equality in the era before Seneca Falls.”40 Brown later indirectly renounced his rebellious and rational work. In 1803, Brown, at the age of thirty-two said that he would be able to better enjoy his success as a literary figure if certain works had not flowed from his pen.41 Whatever his initial motivation, in the end Brown was clearly not dedicated to the emancipation of women.

Though sympathetic to the plight of women, all of these men fall woefully short of Condorcet’s standard for feminism. By and large, the question of woman’s rights stimulated Feijoo, Rush, and Defoe intellectually more than it stirred their sense of injustice and outrage. Rush and Defoe were primarily interested in maximizing woman’s potential and, thereby, her ability to improve society, particularly via educating children and providing sound companionship for their husbands. Even when Feijoo reached the cliff of gender equality, acknowledging that men and women shared the same intellectual capabilities, his first instinct was to protect the social order he best knew and probably benefited from. As educated, respected men, these thinkers did in fact enjoy the privileges of a patriarchal society. While their minds may have at times realized that something was woefully wrong in the way women were treated, their allegiances were to their own, to men. Even Bentham, who readily acknowledged that women were capable of nearly all that men were, chose to place women’s rights on the back burner in favor of tackling issues he believed were more important. Condorcet, however, represents a fundamental shift away from the way in which these men thought. Condorcet did not view women as the sub-human “other” who deserved greater liberties, when the time became right, as Bentham advocated. Condorcet saw in women not only his intellectual equal but also his fellow human. Simply put, he saw only humans, not male and female beings. As a result, establishing women’s political liberty became a necessarily urgent cause, which could no longer be put off in the face of sexism’s gross injustice.