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)

Condorcet’s Feminist Writing

There is much to consider as we evaluate Condorcet’s feminism. We are not only interested in the foresight of his realizing gender equality but also how it may have come about, what he did with his realization, and how his feminism played out in his personal as well as his political life, if at all. As previously mentioned, there are numerous examples of intelligent men who realized the prejudice in thinking women incapable of possessing the kind of intellect shown by men. The Spanish thinker Feijoo, one will recall, realized that men and women were fundamentally equal but, nevertheless, maintained that such truth should not be used to crumble the patriarchal walls which prevented women from self-determination, in the home or in society. Even if one can honestly prove that men like Feijoo and the Encyclopedists exalted male-domination as a mere cover under which they could safely present radical notions of gender equality, one must ask: how affective are radical ideals stripped of their vigor and practical implementation? More importantly, why was Condorcet willing to brave the maelstrom? It seems that only thinkers such as Condorcet, whose radical ideas were bolstered by comparatively radical action, whether in the home or in the political arena or both, who create significant change and, in this case, deserve the label of “feminist.”

In analyzing Condorcet’s works it becomes perfectly clear that his attitude toward women was cut of an entirely different cloth. His bold advocacy of woman’s enfranchisement and support for their introduction into the professional workforce, outside of the home, was a universe away from the sympathy-driven reform envisioned by his philosophic predecessors and the education-oriented goals of even the most progressive thinkers of his time. Furthermore, whereas other thinkers merely expounded upon the pitiful place of women in society, but nevertheless maintained traditional, male-dominated relationships with even their own children and spouses, Condorcet supported his ideas about gender equality with action in his personal dealings with women, perhaps the best proof of his being the only true male-feminist among the philosophes and the men in their circle of close associates.

Iain McLean and Fiona Hewitt write that Condorcet and Paine “shared radical convictions on the rights of men (and women, and slaves)”1 and that Paine “clearly stimulated Condorcet’s understanding of human rights.”2 While Condorcet may have met Paine before he wrote his first known feminist musings, “Note J” of his “Reception Speech at the French Academy,”3 Paine’s one and only published statement on the plight of women has little in common with Condorcet’s work. Condorcet’s speech was originally written in 1782 and the notes, including “Note J,” were added between 1782 and 1785 under the pretended identity of a Swiss commentator. 4 In the short work, Condorcet rebukes the conclusion that women are inferior to men. Paine, however, has far more to say about the terrible state of woman’s welfare than the natural rights she deserves. The essay’s commitment to the cause of gender equality pales in comparison to “Note J,” Condorcet’s first and least fierce feminist work. Given that “An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex” is Paine’s only known writing on the topic of the plight of women, one must question any insinuation that he influenced Condorcet’s feminism, particularly in light of the essay’s tepid tone, or that Paine’s feminism is of the same genus as Condorcet’s.

Paine writes “An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex” seven to ten years before Condorcet pens “Note J” to “Reception Speech at the French Academy.” Both works fail to call for woman’s political enfranchisement. Both mourn the plight of woman in society. Both acknowledge that each sex has an equal share of courage. Both also deride gallantry. The similarities end there. Condorcet’s note deconstructs the rationale for sexism that is responsible for the situation Paine merely bemoans. It turns out that Paine’s work is a rather generic complaint about woman’s state of affairs, and fails to offer any political solution to inequality. In fact, Paine’s work does not so much attack the basis for woman’s subjugation, the view that she is essentially inferior to man, other than to write that reason has made woman man’s equal. Paine does not tell us how nor why woman is man’s equal; and he says nothing to confront the assumption of her intellectual inferiority. Instead, his letter principally focuses on woman’s equal right to virtue and, thereby, her right to enjoy public acknowledgement for her contribution to society.5

Paine begins by lamenting that nature, “in forming beings so susceptible and tender,” seems to have been more interested in giving women “charms” than “happiness.”6 In fact, Paine bolsters the very notion that women are feeble creatures incapable of self sufficiency. He writes that women are continually “subjected to ills which are peculiarly their own.” Again he blames nature for their disadvantaged position: “Over three-quarters of the globe nature [my emphasis] has placed them between contempt and misery.”7 In line with the most traditional thinking of his time, Paine sees woman as something fundamentally different from man. Just as the Church had earlier defined her, Paine sees woman, at bottom, as procreator:

Cruel distempers attack their beauty – and the hour which confirms their release from those is perhaps the most melancholy of their lives. It robs them of the most essential characteristic of their sex. They can then only hope for protection from the humiliating claims of pity, or the feeble voice of gratitude.8

Paine complains that society has not acted as woman’s benevolent savior, saving her from her naturally unequal position in life. Like Condorcet, Paine blames bad laws and writes that “law and custom press us with constraint.” 9 Paine is alone, however, in blaming nature for assailing women “with sorrow.”10 By contrast, Condorcet downplays natural differences between the sexes and reproaches society for robbing woman of an equality which “reason and justice, if not nature” had established between woman and man.11 Society, not nature, has been the bane of woman. Condorcet contends that men and women are essentially faced with equal difficulties and given equal advantages. “Has nature set some differences between men and women,” asks Condorcet? “Doubtless woman are weaker, this is demonstrated by the act that all primitive peoples they have been oppressed.” Condorcet, however, dismisses the legitimacy of a superiority enforced merely by muscles, “upon which it is very doubtful that force of mind and spirit depends.” 12 To Condorcet, society is a kind of clay that can be molded to conform to principles of justice which, in this case, deny the right of power. In later works, Condorcet goes so far as to note that women are no less incapacitated than men who suffer gout and are prone to sickness. In Note J Condorcet sets out to show that the differences in women are the result of the roles society has prescribed and limited them to.

Similar to Wollstonecraft and numerous other writers arguing for the improvement of woman’s position, Paine also sees woman’s duties as fundamentally different from man’s duties. What are women at bottom? “We are wives, and mothers,” writes Paine, speaking through the personality of a hypothetical woman, defending her sex. As such, woman is responsible for softening man’s hardness, cultivating his humanity and looking out for his wellbeing.13 Even as he defends their harsh treatment, Paine neglects to discover the source of the injustice; moreover, he fertilizes it when he contends that woman’s purpose is essentially that of a helpmate, consumed with the betterment of man. He writes that her duties “are the fountains of your felicity, and the sweetness of life.”14 Conversely, Condorcet uniquely downplays the natural differences between men and women, arguing that reason and justice has established a fundamental equality between the sexes.15 Taking a step away from mere observation and toward political action, Condorcet contends that this equality should be reestablished.16 One of the more important differences between Paine’s work and Condorcet’s work is that Condorcet refuses to base woman’s equality on its utility, a characteristic of all of his feminist works. Paine’s hypothetical woman appeals to men to give them what Condorcet’s analysis deems she is due as a natural right, not a favor offered by her superiors.

Beyond such broad strokes, Condorcet digs to the heart of the debate on women. True to his mathematical mind, Condorcet contends that the reason so few women have demonstrated great genius or made great discoveries is that few have had the opportunity to devote themselves to study; and of the small number of women who have, only a fraction have been in “a position to display it.”17 Furthermore, he blames society’s prescription of an education that is antithetical to the goal of cultivating genius. At bottom, men and women possess the same emotional and intellectual propensity. Condorcet actually begins his note by deconstructing the view that the minds of men and women function in a fundamentally different manner. He points to socialization as the reason women appear to utilize the faculties of emotion and passion more so than men. If nature seems to have instilled in women more sensitivity to the wellbeing of their children, it is because they are a more integral part of the children’s lives, as determined by societal norms of his time. If women display an unmatched ardency of love for their husbands and lovers, it is because “they lose more in losing their tenderness.” Finally, Condorcet writes that one should not be surprised that woman is driven more by her affections since she does not have the intellectual and career occupations which occupy men’s minds for three-fourths of the day.18 Meanwhile, Paine’s brand of defense of woman is one in which accepts that she is only suited for mothering children and pleasing husbands, there is no contention that she is capable of more. Instead, Paine reminds his readers that woman deserves to be treated well, for she is a tool for the edification of man and the maintenance of the familial bond: “‘Tis we who form the union and the cordiality of families,” writes Paine’s hypothetical defender of women. Without a word on natural rights she goes on to grovel, figuratively, at the feet of man:

Be not our tyrants in all. Permit our names to be sometimes pronounced beyond the narrow circle in which we live. Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its emblem on the tomb where our ashes repose; and deny us not that public esteem which, after the esteem of one’s self, is the sweetest reward of well doing. 19

Even in his earliest and least advanced work, Condorcet’s feminism proved to be significantly more principled and committed than Paine’s feminism. Paine saw in woman a being disadvantaged by nature; Condorcet saw in woman a being disadvantaged by society.20 While both acknowledge woman’s perceived physical inferiority, only Paine believed such has predisposed her to the subjugation of man. Condorcet saw woman’s physical inferiority as relatively inconsequential and negated by her intellectual prowess. For him, woman was oppressed because she has been isolated in ignorance, robbed of an enlightening education and subjected to bad laws. In short, by 1785 at the latest, Condorcet was already stating that woman could do anything man could do, intellectually, and, therefore, deserved exactly the same rights allotted to man. Paine’s message, on the other hand, was nearer to Diderot’s “On Women” in its treatment of woman’s plight as a kind of natural ailment that society had not so much created as much as it has failed to alleviate: “Society,” writes Paine, “instead of alleviating their condition, is to them the source of new miseries.”21

For Condorcet, treating women as unequal to men was an affront to the inborn equality among the sexes. This is perhaps one of the single most defining features of Condorcet’s feminism. Nearly all of the feminist-minded philosophers of the eighteenth century seem motivated by not only their belief that society and education could corrupt women, instilling them with the vices women were so often chastised for, but also a sense of compassion for the disadvantaged and a desire to help women. Diderot, Holbach, and perhaps even Paine saw woman as needing to be rescued from her natural inferiority. Condorcet’s feminism, however, was less a passion to help the pitiful woman than it was a passionate disgust with the presumed inequality of woman, and her subsequent unjust degradation.