Timid Egoism
Ideologies polarized in late eighteenth-century France, with Condorcet at one extreme and de Sade at the other. At every place on this spectrum, assumptions about gender shaped assumptions about self-interest, and vice versa.
Rousseau, the man most worried that women might pursue interests separate from those of men, feared that self-interest would undermine social solidarity. Anticipating the later direction of the Revolution he proposed strict limits on women's rights. Condorcet, the idealist, shared Adam Smith's confidence in the moral sentiments. He expressed great faith in the rationality and morals of women, in particular. But he failed to explain what men had to gain by ganging up either on women or one another.De Sade relieved himself of responsibility for either women or virtue by asserting that the strong had every right to dominate and exploit the weak. He rejected any double standard of morality because he had no standard of morality at all. He urged women to seize their birthright of sensuality, to pleasure themselves with one another as well as with men.47 In his lexicon, greed and lust were simply the logical culmination of self-interest.
The dark side of self-interest cast an ominous shadow on the principles of individualist political theory. Why free men from their traditional chains if they would all follow de Sade's example, taking pleasure in other people's pain? It is easy to see why women, in particular, might develop some misgivings about the rational pursuit of self-interest as an organizing principle for society. As Simone de Beauvoir put it, most Enlightenment theorists were ‘‘timid egoists”.48 They could encourage men to be self-interested only because they believed men to be so good. Condorcet was, in this respect, no more naive than Adam Smith.