Sandrine Berges
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Liberty in their Names

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Aristocratic as a dog

12/3/2019

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In a 1790 text addressed to Necker, when he is about to leave France to go into exile, Olympe de Gouges announces that she too is ready to leave France. She has done her best, but that was not enough, and she now has too many enemies to stay safely. But her message is also to the French: unless you change your way fast, she says, you will lose your revolution, and your liberty, and you will find that you are better off with a king.

She goes on to tell him the following story: a coach driver insulted a national guard. When Olympe challenged him, he said that the national guards treat people like him badly, that they don't pay, and that he and his family are starving despite his work. He concludes: 

I were a good democrat when the Revolution started, because I thought I would get something out of it. But now, I'm aristocratic as a dog

​Olympe reflects sadly on this state of things, and judges that democracy has not yet taken hold in the French and that they may not be ready for it: 

The counter-revolution will happen by itself, through the force of nature, especially if the French go another six months at this present rate. Things are destroyed, nothing is built. Everyone wants to be in charge, no-one wants to obey. All is reduced to nothing, everything is in a terrible disorder. The love of liberty still turns French heads, but once it is gone, they will recognize, I hope, that one master is better for them, than all men being masters at once.
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  • Home
  • Liberty in thy name!
  • The Philosophy of Domesticity
    • The Home: A Philosophical Project
  • Women Philosophers Calendars
  • Research
  • Public Philosophy
  • Events
    • Wollstonecraft at Bilkent
    • Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time
    • Wollapalooza
    • Wollapalooza II
  • Historical zombies and other fiction
  • Teaching
  • Crafts and things
  • Feminist History of Philosophy