When it comes to why Olympe De Gouges should replace a philosopher and who it should be, it is no other than Bernard Mandeville. When going over his philosophy in the Fable of the bees he describes how society only functions because of the selfish nature of humans, and how they constantly are motivated by competition and vices. Such a connection allows for hypocrisy among people and if they were to live true “virtuous” lives they would need to depart from society altogether. Now this argument does bring up some good points as to what is virtuous and how far we stray from it, however, he goes on to claim that education is not virtuous and was against it. His reasoning? The fact that those who had access to education were more wealthy and therefore had more chances to take out their evil desire in a much more oblivious way, making them have more vice. Such an argument goes against what many specifically De Gouges thought about education, while it could add more “evil” into society, by having education accessible to all wouldn’t many begin to see the flaws in this hypocrisy of virtue Mandeville calls out? Essentially education can help society turn to a better virtuous place because others would be required and more likely to understand this “competition” between one and other that Mandeville argues about. His theory is very counterproductive, and as mentioned earlier De Gouges advocated for a right to education because within education there is more freedom, more ways for people to break free from this hypocritical society and venture off on their own not to partake in evils but rather to work towards a way to fix them. De Gouges is one of the earliest feminist and has a basis for her wanting equal rights that men received (property, divorce etc.) she is a representation of the future and therefor deserves a spot on the syllabus for speaking out for these rights.
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introduction
biography
philosophical explanation
comparison with Jean Jacques Rousseau
closing argument
bibliography