Condorcet and the origin of Patriarchy

I am unsure if we know who the original translator is of Condorcet’s posthumously published, Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind (hereafter: Outlines), which was written while in hiding. But in what follows I am using it (here), rather than the more recent one by June Barraclough. (For the French, see here.)

Outlines offers a stadial history of mankind. Condorcet considers hunting and fishing the first stage. During this period the family is the only form of social organization. For Condorcet this is all pre-historical. He considers tribal society the first historical epoch. The reason for this is that there still exist tribal societies that allow us to conjecture about the past. As an aside, while Condorcet’s stance is quite common among Enlightenment thinkers shaped by Locke (for whom the savage mind is kind of childlike), it’s a bit surprising to see methodological commitmen so late in the century as evolutionary principles had started to circulate.

Be that as it may, tribal society is composed of families. Here’s how Condorcet introduces the family:

A society consisting of a family appears to be natural to man. Formed at first by the want which children have of their parents, and by the affection of the mother, as well as that of the father, though less general and less lively, time was allowed, by the long continuance of this want, for the birth and growth of a sentiment which must have excited the desire of perpetuating the union. The continuance of the want was also sufficient for the advantages of the union to be felt. A family placed upon a soil that afforded an easy subsistence, might afterwards have multiplied and become a horde. FIRST EPOCH. Men United Into Hordes. (Paragraph 63)

The whole paragraph has some similarity to Sophie Grouchy’s focus on the child’s need for care in her Letters, although in Condorcet this care is used to explain the enduringness and even selection advantages (multiplication of offspring) of families. It’s striking, however, that even before he posits an extensive division of labor, Condorcet treats men and women as having not the same intensity of feeling for their offspring. No explanation for the origin of such sex difference is given.

But interestingly enough, at this stage of human affairs there seems to be natural equality among the sexes. However, by the time of the next stage, of domestication of animals and pastorage/herding, which introduces great inequality of goods among families, women seem to be slaves of men. So this made me wonder how according to Condorcet patriarchy was instituted.

This occurs in two steps: first, Condorcet observes a sexed division of labor such that women are responsible for local gathering and nearby hunting. Originally he does not make fully clear that men are exclusively involved in the more distant hunt, but it is implied in what follows.

The second step is more striking. I think the key passage is this one:

The want of a chief, in order to act in common, and thereby defend themselves the better, and procure with greater ease a more certain and more abundant subsistence, introduced the first idea of public authority into these societies. In circumstances in which the whole horde was interested, respecting which a common resolution must be taken, all those concerned in executing the resolution were to be consulted. The weakness of the females, which exempted them from the distant chace and from war, the usual subjects of debate, excluded them alike from these consultations. As the resolutions demanded experience, none were admitted but such as were supposed to possess it. The quarrels that arose in a society disturbed its harmony, and were calculated to destroy it: it was natural to agree that the decision of them should be referred to those whose age and personal qualities inspired the greatest confidence. Such was the origin of the first political institutions. FIRST EPOCH. Men United Into Hordes. (Paragraph 69), pp. 26-27., p. 23 in the French.

It looks as if Condorcet favors an explanation of the origin of patriarchy in terms of natural physical inequality such that women are excluded from long distance hunting and war. The origin of patriarchy then is co-extensive with the origin of political life. Political life itself is explained in terms of the need for public coordination as an effect of resource competition among tribes.

At first sight, then, it seems, that the origin of patriarchy is an effect of the origin of war. But while that’s not completely misleading, Condorcet’s actual explanation is more subtle (and insidious) than that. Interestingly enough — and this foreshadows the gendered nature of democracy after the French revolution — women are excluded by men in toto in the context of public deliberation in the context of an appeal to something like the all affected principle (“all those concerned in executing the resolution were to be consulted.”)

That is, near universal patriarchy is the joint effect of war and masculinist democracy which generates or reinforces male solidarity against women. Condorcet treats the effect of this as female slavery (see, especially, the next epochs). Condorcet, thus explains the institutionalization of patriarchy, but (amongst many others (recall)) does not explain the ideological or cultural roots of such solidarity.