SOURCE: Williams, David. “Condorcet, Feminism, and the Egalitarian Principle.” In Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Vol. 5, pp. 151-63. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.

In this essay, Williams maintains that Condorcet was among the first philosophers to link women's rights with the Enlightenment notion of natural rights.

In the literature of feminism that forms a distinctive, if somewhat platitudinous, feature of dissident writing in eighteenth-century France, the work of the marquis de Condorcet still offers some challenging perspectives. Looking back upon the historical flow of ideas in this area, I would argue that Condorcet's attempts to create an issue of public conscience out of the melancholy position of the women of his time constitute a clear landmark in the evolution of European political-sexual attitudes.

With the Enlightenment, the sporadic and largely ineffective resistance of earlier periods to entrenched anti-egalitarian doctrines gradually became orchestrated as an apparently viable movement.¹ The question...