One of Olympe de Gouges’s most important views was that political and social institutions should recognize the equality of all human beings. Whether advocating for the liberation of women from patriarchy or the liberation of colonized populations from slavery, she argued primarily from the premise that humans, though naturally varied in characteristics like sex and skin color, are naturally equal in moral status. There are no inherent differences between the sexes or races that make one superior to another; women and people of color are fundamentally entitled to the same rights and freedoms as their oppressors. With this premise, de Gouges counters the notion that inequality is grounded in nature, which was often used to justify oppression–for instance, when men argued that women should be excluded from political life because they were naturally endowed with “weaknesses” and “emotional susceptibilities” that made them “fit only for reproduction and domesticity” rather than active citizenship (Scott 1996, p. ix). Turning this argument from nature on its head, de Gouges reveals hierarchy as a greed-driven social construct that we are morally obligated to abandon for the sake of human flourishing. As summarized by her biographer, Olivier Blanc, she “hoped for a ‘regeneration of social mores’ that, resting on the natural order…would give women and people of color the place that belonged to them in society” (Blanc 2003, p. 104).
Nature reserve “Am Enteborn”, Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (2014).
Dietmar Rabich (1962–).
In Le Bonheur Primitif de l’Homme, ou Les Rêveries Patriotiques, de Gouges lays out her vision of the natural order and accounts for its dissolution in modern society. She begins by rejecting, with Rousseau, the Hobbesian state of nature, according to which humans are fundamentally disposed to violate the interests of others in the selfish pursuit of their own gain. If, she argues, “God himself moulded man and woman, those two models must have been perfect,” and “if we are descended directly from those two mortals, then men did not live as brutes” (de Gouges 1789, p. 2). She then depicts the earliest men and women–those most intimately connected with Nature–as instead living in communities founded on the principles of “equality and humanity,” working together “in perfect natural harmony” for the common good (de Gouges 1789, p. 3-4). They united in marriages based on mutual love and friendship, and “they had neither slaves nor valets” (de Gouges 1789, p. 4). Eventually, the corruptive force of ambition led humans to depart from this egalitarian state of nature and the “primitive happiness” it afforded, constructing relations of “superiority” and “servitude” in its place (de Gouges 1789, p. 11).
Through this creation myth, de Gouges denies that there is any natural hierarchy among human beings. She acknowledges that there are differences, which may justify some differential treatment–for instance, allowing breastfeeding women to be “exempted from public works” while men can only be excused by “infirmity or sickness” (de Gouges 1789, p. 4). However, it never justifies the kind of differential treatment that constitutes an imbalance of power. Domination and inequality are antithetical to the principles of nature, which indicate how “men are meant to be” (de Gouges 1789, p. 12). For us to flourish as a species, de Gouges argues, we must attempt to bring our societal reality back into alignment with these principles, embracing equality where we now embrace its opposite.
Olympe de Gouges’s vision of natural human equality is central to her critique of the exclusion of women from the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen. This French revolutionary document recognizes and protects “the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man” but, making no mention of women, denies their entitlement to the same protection (“Déclaration,” 1789). Perceiving this as a grave moral mistake, de Gouges offers the Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne as a correction, rewriting all 17 articles to include women. Most importantly, she revises the first, stating that “woman is born free and remains the equal of man in rights” (de Gouges 1791, p. 3). She defends this claim most explicitly in Les Droits de la Femme, a preface to the Déclaration that rhetorically demands who has given men “the sovereign empire to oppress my sex” (de Gouges 1791, p. 2). Her answer is that men have illicitly claimed it for themselves, in contradiction to nature. To see why, she implores her audience to “consult the elements, study plants, finally, cast an eye over all the variations of all living organism…search, excavate, and discover, if you can, sexual characteristics in the workings of nature” and asserts that “everywhere you will find them intermingled, everywhere cooperating harmoniously within this immortal masterpiece” (de Gouges 1791, p. 2). Empirical observation, she contends, is sufficient to reveal that there is nothing natural about male domination of women, no inherent difference that condemns women to inferiority. It is not with Nature’s authority but “with the crassest ignorance” that man “wants to command, like a despot, a sex that is blessed with every intellectual faculty” (de Gouges 1791, p. 2). In pointing to the equal intellectual endowments of men and women, de Gouges specifically counters the idea that women are not mentally fit for active citizenship, advanced by the Abbé de Sieyès and others in an attempt to justify their political exclusion.
Similarly, in her Réflexions sur les Hommes Nègres, de Gouges shows “that pro-slavery arguments suffer from a fundamental flaw: namely, that there are no natural differences between human beings based on their skin color” (Bergès 2022, p. 49). To demonstrate the absurdity of attaching moral significance to mere differences of color, she offers an analogy: “Why does the pallid Blonde not want to cede to the Brunette who resembles a Mulatto?” (de Gouges 1788, p. 1). If the contrast between two hair colors does not ground a hierarchical relation between the human beings who instantiate them, then it is not at all obvious why a comparable contrast should in the case of skin. De Gouges contends that in the context of nature as a whole, where color variations exist between “all the animals…as well as the plants and minerals,” the fact that “the colour of mankind is nuanced” is best understood purely in aesthetic terms: we were created in different colors simply because nature’s beauty consists in variety, and man is Nature’s “most beautiful work of art” (de Gouges 1788, p. 1). There is no moral relevance to the distinction. It is not the case, then, that the domination of Black people by European colonists is grounded in anything natural. We owe slavery to nothing other than the “unjust and powerful interest of the Whites,” which led them to “[change] nature” by subjugating fellow human beings (de Gouges 1788, p. 1). De Gouges thus exposes the premise that Black people are naturally inferior to Whites for what it is: an illegitimate, ad hoc claim designed to serve the colonial agenda rather than being grounded in objective truth. At the same time, she advances a counterargument for racial equality, similarly treating Nature as a source of guidance as to how we should structure our societies. The difference, as in the case of her argument for sex equality, is in what she takes this guidance to be: by creating us as equals, Nature compels us to recognize our shared humanity and treat one another accordingly.
