The Rights of Man, and of Woman

Self-evidence 

• Perhaps it is self-evident that all men have a certain nature, therefore are equally keen to stay alive, desirous of liberty and happiness 
• Perhaps it is self-evident that beings who are equal in these respects have a right not to be prevented from realising these goals by other beings with the same nature
• Human beings have certain rights which is evident from how it feels to see them being treated as if they do not have them

Inalienability 

• RIghts that cannot be transferred to another person 
• The government's sole function is to protect the rights in question, not to enable us 
• As soon as the government does more than merely protect rights, it becomes tyranny, and can be resisted. This is a rationale for a maximally minimal government 

Claim about rights

• The point of the Declaration is to announce to the world the fact that America is no longer part of the British empire, and is now an independent nation-state, not to assert new rights against the government 
• There is no mention of the rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence in the Constitution ratified in 1788; only which the States have in virtue of their 'independent sovereignty'

The Bill of Rights 

• • 1st Amendment: right to freedom of religion, to freedom of speech, to freedom of assembly
  • 2nd Amendment: right to bear arms
  • 3rd Amendment: right not to have soldiers quartered in a citizen’s private house
  • 9th Amendment:  “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
• These are not natural rights of human beings, rather they are the rights of American citizens. That meant white men who owned property. Therefore women, Native Americans or freed slaves did not have these rights 

The revolution was politically radical but socially conservative; it did not challenge the existing distribution of power. White men who did not own land were not compatible with the fact all humans are created equal. 

A Declaration of liberal and constitutional principles?

• 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights; social distinctions may be based only upon general usefulness.
• 2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and inalienable rights of man; these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
• 4. Liberty consists of the power to do whatever is not injurious to others …
• 5. The law has the right to forbid only actions that are injurious to society.
• 7. No man may be accused, arrested, or detained except in the cases determined by law …
• 10. No one is to be troubled because of his opinions, even in religion, provided the display of such opinions does not disturb the public order established by law.

A Declaration of the absolute sovereignty of the people?

• 1. The source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation; no group, no individual, may exercise authority not emanating expressly therefrom.
• 6. Law is the expression of the general will; all citizens have the right to concur personally, or through their representatives, in its formation …

• The Declaration was a rejection of the importance of history, custom, tradition for the politics of a new France: it was the making of a new start
• It asserted that politics should be grounded on entirely abstract principles of reason, such as might apply in any country whatsoever
• It grounded politics in will: the general will of ‘the nation’

Burke 

• Supported the American Revolution 
• Condemned the French Revolution because of its appeal to abstract and 'metaphysical' principles 
• Appeals to history and tradition because of the nature of man is of the greatest possible complexity, so no disposition or direction of power can be suitable to man's nature 
• The social contract is between states but it is only a clause in the great primaeval contract of internal society 

Paine

• Argues that Burke’s appeal to history and tradition is and can only be a defence of the hereditary principle and a vindication of oppression

Paine

• Interprets the Declaration as a statement of, and grounding of liberty in, the natural rights of man 
• These rights are inalienable and all civil rights are derived from them 
• He interprets the Declaration as a statement of liberal constitutionalism, rather than as a statement of a Rousseauian absolute sovereignty of the people

Condorcet 

• Asks whether inequality, in general, is ‘part of civilization itself, or … due to the present imperfection of the social art?’ 
• The inequality of women has its origin solely in the abuse of strength 
• The exclusion of women to the rights of citizenship is an act tyranny because the natural rights of men and women are the same, and it cannot be proved otherwise. Women have the same qualities as men, so they should have the same rights 
• Religion, colour or sex does not change your natural rights 

De Gouges 

• Asks for the justification of the inequality of women 
  • Bizarre that superior strength should not result in women being citizens 
  • In the natural world this inequality does not exist 
• Most of the articles in the 'Rights of Woman and of Female Citizens' declare equal civil and political rights for women and men, and, taken together, amount to a rejection of the Constitution’s distinction between active and passive citizenship
• Some articles though, focus on crucial differences between men and women 

De Gouges 

• Raises the question of whether de Gouges’s point is that there are no relevant differences between men and women, or that those differences are not sufficient to justify inequality
• The social and economic dynamics of life in pre-Revolution France corrupted women
  • A woman had nothing to rely on for influence over men – and for the acquisition of wealth -- other than beauty and ‘amiability’
  • The solution is an equal division of wealth and of 'public administration' between men and women 
• Marriage is the tomb of trust and love where wealth is to be shared and divided between all children. All children have the right to the name of their fathers and mothers 
• Equality in business in public life is to be achieved through women joining all the activities of men 

Wollstonecraft 

• Concern is with the morals and virtue of society as a whole 
• Focuses on the moral corruption caused by British law and especially by the inequality of property that British law is designed to protect; complains particularly about the hereditary principle
• Respect for rank and property has rendered middle-class man insensitive to the silent majority 

Wollstonecraft 

• Middle class emulation of the morals and manners of the great produces only vice and misery 
• Virtue can only flourish amongst equals 
• Welcomes in the Revolution the attempt to make morality rational and politics moral 
• If women are to be excluded in the constitution, women will start to act like a tyrant and undermine morality 
• Complains about the extent to which women are forced to live by their personal charms as the result is a clash between natural and artificial duties 
• Women are forced to make themselves pleasing to men first, and being a good mother comes second 
• Women are utterly dependent on being admired for their beauty and propriety by men, and as a result are kept in a perpetual ‘******* of ignorance’
• Rejects the Constitution’s distinction between active and passive citizenship: in managing a family, educating her children, and assisting her neighbours, a woman is as much an active citizen as a man ‘in any of the departments of civil life’ 
• Women should be able to aspire to lives in the public sphere as well as the private: they might be physicians and midwives as well as nurses; they might enter business
• If women were granted the right to do these things and were not forced above all to be attractive and ‘proper,’ men ‘would find us better citizens’ 

Amar

• The private sphere for which women are destined by their nature are related by the order of society 
• This social order results from natural differences between man and woman 
• Nature has imposed the limits on the occupation of the sexes 

Chaumette 

• Women should not be permitted to give up their sex 
• It is not decent for women to abandon their household as men would not other same thing 

Rousseau 

• Women do wrong to complain of the inequality of man-made laws