Abstract
The chapter shows that we can best understand Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s and Olympe de Gouges’ views on women when we interpret them as part of an ongoing discussion about the equality, similarity, and differences between the sexes. The first section examines Rousseau’s early writings on women from the 1740s. Contra previous scholarship, it is argued that Rousseau never defended a view of the equality of the sexes. Section two presents a close reading of the first pages of book five of Emile. It is argued that in these passages, Rousseau is positioning his view of sexual difference against previous views on the equality, superiority, or inferiority of women. It is concluded that the main difference between the early and later writings is that Rousseau drops the view that men’s rule over women is a form of tyranny. The final section examines Gouges’ critical dialogue with Rousseau. It is argued that she radicalizes rather than rejects his views on sexual difference. Joan W. Scott has famously argued that Gouges’ attempt to combine equal rights and difference is doomed to fail, because the discourse of universal rights has in itself constructed the concept of sexual difference. The chapter argues that rather than adding women to a universal ideal of rights, Gouges is questioning the very idea of gender-neutral universality. Her approach is truly radical in its attempt to gender men.
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Notes
- 1.
Like so many others, Botting attempts to give a psychological explanation for why Rousseau changed his mind on women. She hypothesizes that one reason for the “shift away from a purely egalitarian view of the relationship between the sexes may have been Rousseau’s inability to cope with his young, unmarried sexual partner’s fertility” (Botting 2019, 466). She also suggests that Rousseau’s description of Emile’s relation to his tutor is a way of grappling “with the ghosts of his dead children” (Botting 2019, 467).
- 2.
For a detailed discussion of the different aspects of Poulain’s Cartesianism, see Reuter (2019a).
- 3.
- 4.
I am indebted to Erika Ruonakoski for pointing out the significance of Gouges revising the traditional order “man and woman” into “woman and man”.
- 5.
For a detailed study of Wollstonecraft’s republican feminism, see Halldenius (2015).
- 6.
There exists no modern edition or published English translation of Le bonheur primitif. My citations mostly follow Clarissa Palmer’s English translation available at www.olympedegouges.eu.
- 7.
For a discussion of Gouges’ belief in the beneficial effects of emulation, see Bergès (2022, 19–24).
- 8.
It is important to note that neither Rousseau nor Gouges bases their understandings of sexual difference on biological explanations. Sandrine Bergès has recently claimed that Gouges does not argue for “difference feminism” since “it is unlikely that she would have had a view of feminine virtues as tied to a biological woman’s essence” (Bergès 2022, 8). Gouges did not do the latter, but this way of putting it begs the question. Gouges relates sexual difference to the two models created by God (Gouges 1789, 5) and her ideal society—original or revolutionary—depends on harmony of these two sexes. She may very well allow for a woman making herself a man in order to say what she wants to say (Gouges 1790, 13–14; Bergès 2022, 7), though she would think this is unnecessary in a good society. Rousseau and Gouges both held that sexual difference is a moral rather than a biological given.
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Reuter, M. (2023). Complex Relations: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Olympe de Gouges on the Sexes. In: Harris, N., Bosseau, D., Pintobtang, P., Brown, O. (eds) Rousseau Today. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29243-9_6
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