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PARTISAN REVIEW
American campuses - devoted to rereading all Western history from the
viewpoint of women, or, more broadly, to reforming the "canon" of
Western culture in order to break the domination of sexist male writers
- this sort offeminism seems frankly unthinkable in France today.
More important still, in my view, are the different
sensibilities
ex–
pressed by French and Anglo-Saxon feminism. In terms of clothing,
young French women continue to play the seduction game; the mini–
skirt is considered sexy, not sexist, and a boycott of it (as recently took
place in the United States) would be the subject of ridicule in France. In
terms of family life, although French couples do seek to share their bur–
dens more equally now, there is still a clear distinction between the duties
of mothers and fathers. And even French psychoanalysis, whatever school
or movement one chooses, remains ever faithful to the most
"phallocentric" aspects of Freud's theories.
Nonetheless, despite these differences, it cannot be said that the
women's emancipation movement (to use an old phrase) has had less
political success in France than elsewhere. Equal opportunity to jobs and
education are now well established here, and one notes that it is in the
United States and Germany that the rights to abortion and birth control
are being challenged today, not in France. These achievements must be
credited to the French republican tradition and not to any other French
peculiarity: abortion was liberalized through parliament (not the courts),
and equal opportunity in education and employment are defended
by
a
centralized state that standardizes public employment, social services, and
education throughout the country. If there is a French "exception"
in
this regard its roots are not in differing conceptions of political equality
or institutional equality. In my view, it arises rather more from a pro–
found difference in passions and social roles - in what might be called the
economie passionnelle fran(i1ise.
Perhaps the subtlest modern writer to plumb this
economie
was
David Hume, who was particularly well placed to understand it. Rather
critical of his own society, Hume was able to recognize the distinctive
grandeur of French society; equally skeptical of French rationalism, he
could also see what the republic of letters owed to the pre-Enlighten–
ment world. His lucidity is especially apparent in his essay, "On the Rise
and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," where he reflects on the social
conditions of "civilization" and the interdependence of law, moderate
customs and habits, and progress in science and the arts.
In this essay Hume remarks that "it is impossible for the arts and
sciences to arise, at first, among any people unless that people enjoy the
blessing of a free government," and he also sees their intimate connection
with the development of commerce. But Hume also adds an important
nuance to this somewhat traditional Anglo-Scottish view. He writes that,
