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Sophie de Grouchy
First published Thu Dec 5, 2019

Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822) was a French philosopher whose book

The Letters on Sympathy offers clear and original perspectives on a
number of important moral, political, and legal philosophical issues. As
well as this book, which she published together with her translation of
Smiths’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1798, Grouchy wrote and
published other texts pseudonomously and anonymously. In particular,
Grouchy published articles defending republicanism and participated in
the writing and editing of her husband’s (Condorcet) last work, the Sketch
of Human Progress. Unfortunately her work remained in the shadow for
many years. The fact that it is now coming to be known in the
philosophical community is a function of the general effort in the last
twenty years to recover work by women philosophers of the past. Grouchy
is particularly relevant to philosophers working on (feminist)
republicanism, eighteenth century philosophy, Adam Smith, and social
and legal philosophy.

1. Life
2. Enlightenment and Revolution
2.1 Enlightenment Philosophy and the French Revolution
2.2 Salonières
2.3 The Gironde
3. Works
3.1 The Letters on Sympathy
3.2 Political Journalism and Translations
3.3 The Sketch of Human Progress
3.4 Other Writings
4. Philosophy
4.1 Moral Psychology

1
 Sophie de Grouchy

4.1.1 Early modern developmental psychology

4.1.2 Physiology
4.1.3 Pleasure and pain
4.1.4 Stoicism
4.1.5 Utilitarianism
4.2 Political Philosophy
4.2.1 Liberty
4.2.2 Equality
4.3 Legal Philosophy
4.3.1 Citizenship
4.3.2 Punishment
4.3.3 Marriage and family laws
4.3.4 Commercial law
Bibliography
Works by Sophie de Grouchy
Editions of the Letters on Sympathy
Other texts by Grouchy
Secondary Sources
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries

1. Life
Marie-Louise-Sophie de Grouchy, Marquise de Condorcet was born in
1764 at the Chateau de Meulan. She died in 1822 of an unknown disease.
Her parents were Marie Gilberte Henriette Fréteau de Pény and Francois-
Jacques, Marquis de Grouchy. She was the eldest of four. Her sister,
Charlotte, married Grouchy’s close friend and collaborator, Pierre-Georges
Cabanis. One of her two brothers, Emmanuel de Grouchy, Marshall under
Napoleon, was reputedly responsible for the French losing at Waterloo

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 Sandrine Berges

because he chose to finish a dish of strawberries before answering a call to

battle.

Grouchy was educated at home, benefiting from her brothers’ tutors and
her highly cultured mother’s teachings. At eighteen, she was sent to the
Chanoinesse school of Neuville, a convent finishing school for the very
rich. There she continued her studies, reading Rousseau and Voltaire and
learning English and Italian by translating texts by Young and Tasso. This
is also where she became an atheist.

At the age of 22, she married Nicolas, Marquis de Condorcet,

mathematician and philosopher, who held the post of officer of the mint
under Turgot. Together they moved to the Hotel of the Mint in Paris, and
there they started a salon, hosting members of the political and literary
international scene.

In 1791, together with Condorcet, Thomas Paine, the Girondin Brissot,

and a few others, she started a journal designed to raise awareness of
republican political thought in France. This journal, Le Républicain, only
lasted a few months as Condorcet demanded it be discontinued after the
Champ de Mars massacre, at which Grouchy and her daughter, Eliza, born
in 1790, had been present.

Grouchy contributed several pieces to that publication (unsigned or signed

“La Vérité”—Truth) and she also translated others by Paine. It was
probably around that time that Grouchy wrote the first draft of her Letters
on Sympathy, a response to and commentary on Adam Smith’s The Theory
of Moral Sentiments.

In 1793, Condorcet was added to a list of men and women who were
“proscribed” by the government of the Terror and had to go into hiding to
evade arrest. Condorcet remained in hiding until spring of 1794 when he
attempted to run and died under an assumed name (possibly of poisoning,

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 Sophie de Grouchy

possibly of a heart attack) in a small town outside Paris. During his time in
hiding, he completed the introduction to a encyclopedic work on the
progress of humanity which he had started several decades earlier. There is
evidence that Grouchy helped him with this work during her frequent
visits. At the very least, she edited an incomplete manuscript, adding
several passages which were deleted by a later editor.

After Condorcet’s death, Grouchy, whose wealth had been confiscated,

lived by painting miniature portraits. By the time the Terror was over, she
decided to publish her Letters on Sympathy, addressed to her her brother-
in-law, Cabanis, together with a translation of Adam Smith’s The Theory
of Moral Sentiments which greatly surpassed existing translations.

From 1795 until her death in 1822, she dedicated her writing time to
editing her husband’s works. She continued to participate in France’s
philosophical life through her salon and kept in regular touch with Cabanis
who worked on physiology and later, Stoicism.

2. Enlightenment and Revolution

Grouchy was very much a product of the Enlightenment ideas that
influenced the French Revolution. As a teenager, she gave up religion and
embraced Voltaire, Rousseau, and social justice. Her salon was the heart of
the revolutionary faction that had the most contact with foreigners such as
Thomas Paine. She was also, through Brissot, closely connected to the
Girondins, and through him and her husband, Condorcet, to the French
abolitionist movement. Although she did not herself write about women’s
rights, it is not unlikely that she had some influence over her husband’s
short piece on this subject written in 1790: “On the Right of Women to the
City”.

2.1 Enlightenment Philosophy and the French Revolution

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 Sandrine Berges

The Revolution was a time when philosophers came into the limelight,
books inspired acts and reforms, and the words of Rousseau, Voltaire,
Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and the Marquis de Condorcet were (at least
for some time) authoritative. But it’s important to note that some of the
philosophers who influenced the ideals and the course of the French
Revolution were women. Sophie de Grouchy was one of them.

Voltaire and Rousseau were almost universally influential—everyone who

could read had heard of them, and while some preferred one to the other,
both figured in the collective imagination as a model for thinking social
and political reforms. Grouchy had read both at convent school and
Voltaire had been Condorcet’s friend and mentor. Unfortunately, his
acquaintance with Voltaire began after the death of Voltaire’s partner,
philosopher Emilie du Chatelet, which meant that there was no direct
connection between her and Grouchy.

The main external influences for late eighteenth century French

Revolutionary philosophers were Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. Smith’s
Wealth of Nations had been a huge success in France and his economic
thought was particularly influential for Turgot, France’s finance minister
before Necker, and Condorcet, officer of the mint. Condorcet offered a
copy of his Life of Turgot to Smith. While Smith and Turgot seem to have
developed their theory of economics independently, there was certainly
some correspondence between the two at a later stage.

Thomas Paine spent much of the period of the French Revolution in Paris,
and he was a good friend of the Condorcets—Grouchy’s command of
English must have been part of the reason why he liked them, but also the
couple and their friends favored an American style of republicanism and
Paine’s knowledge and ideas were very useful in helping define what that
meant. Paine played a key role in the founding of the journal Le

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 Sophie de Grouchy

Républicain, providing several pieces, which were almost certainly

translated by Grouchy.

2.2 Salonières

Although Grouchy was a philosopher who participated fully in the

intellectual debates of her time—including those that led to political
reforms—her status was never quite the same as that of her male
counterparts because she was a woman.

The women who had any influence of the political life of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries are very often dubbed “salonières”. In other
words, they were hostesses, whose job was to make sure that the men who
came to share important philosophical insight in their home did not go
about with an empty glass. Famous salonières of the French Revolution
include Madame Helvetius, widow of the philosopher of that name,
Madame de Stael, Madame Roland, wife of the Girondin minister of the
interior, and Sophie de Grouchy. Although these women were hostesses,
their motivation for hosting was perhaps as much the desire to be part of
the debate as to facilitate it. It was easier for a woman to talk politics in
her own home than anywhere else. Although women could attend men’s
clubs—at least until 1793—and the Assembly, they could only listen.
Several of the salonières of the revolution became writers of note,
including Madame Roland, Madame de Stael, and Sophie de Grouchy.
Unfortunately, historians of the revolution, starting with Michelet but
continuing to these days, ensured that they only became famous as
hostesses rather than as the thinkers and writers they were.

2.3 The Gironde

One faction of the Revolution that was particularly welcoming to women

was the Gironde. This was in part at least because their unofficial leader,

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 Sandrine Berges

Brissot, found it easy to admire and respect women’s intellect. He had

known Catharine Macaulay in England and been instrumental in her
republican History of England being translated to French. He was a close
friend and correspondent of Manon Roland and had published
(anonymously, following her wishes) several of her reflections on the
Revolution in his paper Le Patriote Francois. Brissot was also a close
friend and collaborator of fellow editor Louise Keralio-Robert. It was he
who convinced the French Theatre to put on Olympe de Gouges’s
abolitionist play, Zamore and Mirza, and then invited her to join his
Society of Friends of the Black. He was also on the editorial board of Le
Républicain, and advertised it in Le Patriote.

Condorcet was strongly implicated in the Girondist party by February

1793 as he drafted the Gironde’s constitutional project. In July 1793, a list
of 21 “proscribed” Girondins was issued, and 39 names (including
Condorcet’s) were added shortly afterwards. Brissot and twenty-one others
were arrested. They were tried on 24 October and executed on the last day
of that month. It took just over half an hour for the twenty-two heads to
fall. Others who had escaped, including Manon Roland’s husband (the
interior minister Jean-Marie Roland) and her lover (the politician François
Buzot) committed suicide shortly afterwards. After several months spent
in hiding in Paris, Condorcet too attempted to escape. He died in prison in
Bourg-la-Reine in March 1795, either by swallowing poison hidden for
him in a ring by his brother in law Cabanis or from a heart attack brought
on by his long walk from Paris.

Many of the projects began by the Gironde were more or less given up by
those who came after, including the abolition of slavery and the
emancipation of women.

3. Works

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 Sophie de Grouchy

Sophie de Grouchy only published one book in her own name: a short text
entitled Huit Lettres sur la Sympathie translated as The Letters on
Sympathy, which she appended to her translation of two texts by Adam
Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Origins of Language. We
do, however, have evidence that she wrote other texts. Grouchy edited a
republican journal with her husband in 1791 and there are two articles
that, although unsigned, can be attributed to her. She also contributed
translations and articles by Thomas Paine to the journal, and later
published her own translation of Adam Smith’s works. There is also
evidence of some unpublished (and possibly unfinished) work, which
Condorcet refers to in a letter to his daughter.

3.1 The Letters on Sympathy

The Letters on Sympathy were first drafted in 1791 or 1792, but published
in 1798 alongside a translation of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment and
Origins of Language. According to Grouchy’s daughter, Grouchy decided
to translate Smith because she needed money. It also provided her with the
opportunity to publish her own response to Smith. She ensured that it did
not get mistaken for a simple introduction by printing it at the end of the
translations, rather than the beginning.

Grouchy is enthusiastic about Smith’s views—she agrees with him that

moral sentiments and judgments can be derived from sympathy and that
we need to develop our rational abilities in order to render this capacity
useful. But she takes issue with certain aspects of those views. In
particular, she feels that he has not dug sufficiently deep in order to
understand what sympathy is. He has noted “its existence, and its principal
effects”, but not gone back to “its first cause, showing how it must belong
to all sensible beings capable of reflection” (Letter I, p.3). This first cause
she traces back to infanthood, and to the very physical relationship of a
baby with its nurse. Grouchy does not talk about mothers there. She is

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 Sandrine Berges

careful to distinguish between the physical relationship, skin on skin,

feeding, and the moral one, the duty a mother may have to nurture her
children, and the duties of the children to love and respect their mother. In
that she differs from Manon Roland and Mary Wollstonecraft who thought
that an infant needed to be fed by his own mother in order to flourish
morally. What Grouchy is looking for is a physical trigger to the
sensations of pleasure and pain that will eventually give rise to sentiments
of sympathy, and this trigger has to be common to all human beings in
order to account for the ubiquitous presence of sympathy in human
societies. Every baby that survives to an age where they may develop
sentiments will have been fed by another human, and there will have been
no previous universal experience suited to stimulate the sensations that can
lead to these sentiments. Grouchy not only traces sympathy back to its
origins, but her account is distinctly naturalistic. This cashes out in her
description of the growth of sympathy and the birth of morality.

The text takes the form of eight letters, addressed to C***. Although some
readers have conjectured that C*** was her husband, Condorcet, there is
evidence that the letters are addressed to her brother-in-law, close friend
and collaborator Pierre-George Cabanis. Cabanis shared an interest with
Grouchy on the role of physiology in human behavior and morality, as
well as in social reforms.

The eight letters function like chapters and take the reader through the
argument, which starts with the origins of sympathy, and end with the
application of the theory developed to social, legal and political reform.
Although the format is epistolary, there is no question that these are not
real letters but chapters of a short treatise. The argument sustained
throughout the text and the addresses to C*** at the beginning and at the
end serve as transition passages from one part of the argument to the other.

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 Sophie de Grouchy

The first letter explains how the author is going to depart from Smith’s
own argument. Smith, she says, has merely postulated sympathy as a
human disposition, but what is needed in order to understand more fully
the workings of sympathy is an inquiry into its origins. She then goes on
to argue that these origins are physiological in nature, arising from an
infant’s first human, skin on skin contact (with her nurse) and the
discovery of pleasure and pain. The next two letters offer a theory of the
development of sympathy through reason, showing how we extend our
sympathy to a greater circle as we develop, and distinguishing between
different sorts of sympathies. Letters IV and V offer an account of the
origins of morality out of sympathy, in which the author mostly agrees
with Smith. In the final three letters Grouchy explores the implications of
her theory for the legal, social, economic and political reforms called for,
and made possible, by the French Revolution.

3.2 Political Journalism and Translations

Le Républicain, edited by the founding members of the Society of the

same name (Condorcet, Brissot, Paine, Duchatelet, Dumont, and Sophie
de Grouchy) lasted for four issues in the spring/summer 1791. Grouchy
seems to have been quite involved in the production of the journal. In the
first issue, she translated two pieces by Thomas Paine (one of which is
signed Duchastellet, despite having been written by Paine). The third piece
in that first issue is signed “La Vérité” (Truth) which featured as a
signature on Grouchy’s stationary. Stylistically, it appears to have been a
collaboration between Grouchy and Condorcet. Its argument is a
justification of the revolution to foreigners, an explanation of how the
republican principles it embodied contribute to freeing the people of
France and how they will, at the right time, do the same for other
countries. The main piece of the second issue is the first half of a long
paper discussing a letter written by Louis XVI to the people of France
before his attempted escape. It offers a republican analysis of the pitfalls

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 Sandrine Berges

of monarchy, even when the monarch in question is not a tyrant. The

article was first drafted by Dumont, but he later withdrew it and it was
significantly rewritten using arguments, phrases and style that can be
found in the Letters on Sympathy. The third issue contains the end of that
article, another letter by Paine, translated by Grouchy, and a short piece
entitled “Letter from a Young Mechanic” which is unsigned but attributed
to Grouchy in which the fictional mechanical inventor who is a student of
Vaucanson proposes that the royal family be replaced by a set of automata.
Even though such machines are expensive, it says, they will cost a fraction
of what the French people are spending on their actual king. And what’s
more, the mechanical king, far from being a tyrant, will raise its pen and
sign everything its government wants it to! Jacques Vaucanson, the
putative teacher of the fictional author was a famous inventor, and one
whose inventions Condorcet had praised in his works as an example of the
sort of technical activity that could be just as inspirational as theories
(Condorcet, Oeuvres, 413–437, and Belhoste 1994: 127).

A recurrent theme both in the “Letter from a Young Mechanic” and

“Observations on the King’s Letter” is the financial cost of maintaining a
royal family. Grouchy, who had lived for some years in the Hotel de
Monnaies while Condorcet was the inspector general of the Monnaie de
Paris under Necker, had some knowledge of economics. Condorcet
himself advocated a liberal economy, much closer to his previous superior,
Turgot, a Physiocrat who believed in a laisser-faire economy. Together
Turgot and Condorcet had attempted in 1774 to solve the problem of the
growing price of bread by letting the farmers decide how they sold their
flour, instead of controlling the market. Unfortunately their reform was
followed by a drought and later severe hail storms so that whatever grain
had managed to push through the dry soil was destroyed because it could
not be harvested. The king, rather than following Necker’s advice and
waiting for his reforms to have their effect—after all no amount of reform
could change the weather—sacked Turgot and gave his job to Necker. This

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 Sophie de Grouchy

did nothing to prevent the people from starving and France found itself in
the midst of the “flour wars” with riots in Paris and pillages in the
countryside by people who could no longer afford to buy bread, or who
spent their entire income on it, leaving nothing for clothes or housing. The
final issue of the journal contains a long essay on the creation of an
electoral council, a piece later reprinted as part of Condorcet’s works.

In 1798, Grouchy published a two volume translation of Adam Smith’s

The Theory of Moral Sentiments and A Dissertation on the Origins of
Languages. Her translation was notable in that it was based on the seventh
(1792) and most authoritative edition of Smiths’s work. Also, unlike
previous translators of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Grouchy followed
the text closely, without summarizing, interpreting, adding, or deleting
parts. Her translation remained in print until the late twentieth century.

3.3 The Sketch of Human Progress

In 1794, while Condorcet was in hiding, Grouchy advised him to work on

the introduction of his unfinished history of human progress. There is
evidence that the couple worked closely together at that time. Moreover,
there are discrepancies between the final manuscript in Condorcet’s hand,
and the first published version, edited and introduced by Grouchy. There
are notable passages added that deal with the role of women and families
in the evolution of humanity. On the first page of the first part, “Les
Hommes sont reunis en peuplades”, Condorcet writes that human groups
are always family based and this is because mothers and fathers have a
natural tendency to form strong emotional attachments towards their
children:

A family society seems to be natural to man. Its origin is to be

found in the child’s need for its parents and in the natural solicitude
of the mother and—though to a lesser extent—of the father for

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 Sandrine Berges

their offspring. But the child’s need lasts long enough to bring into
existence and foster a desire to perpetuate this life together and to
awaken a lively sense of its advantages. A family that lived in a
region offering ready means of subsistence could increase and
become a tribe. (Lukes and Urbinati 2012: 9)

These passages were deleted in a later edition by François Arago who

preferred to see them as inauthentic than as the product of a collaboration
between Condorcet and Grouchy.

Condorcet’s discussion of the importance of the family for human society

in these first paragraphs does not lead, as one might expect, to further
discussion of how the family develops, and how it influences the progress
of humanity. But in Grouchy’s 1795 edition, the idea that studying
families is important in order to understand human progress is
reintroduced in the last pages (Condorcet, 1795, p.322:

Until now, political history, as indeed, the history of philosophy

and of science has always been the history of a few men. But what
the human species actually consists in, the families, subsisting
nearly entirely from their labor, has been forgotten.(my translation)

A history of families, Grouchy and Condorcet conclude, is what we need

to study in order to truly understand human progress because focusing on
isolated individuals, exceptionally bred royalty, or heroes whose paths are
exceptional, cannot give us an accurate picture of how humanity in general
changed through the ages.

If we take into account the influence of Sophie de Grouchy as his

collaborator, we can interpret this framing of the work with considerations
about family life as hers. It does give the work a distinctly proto-feminist
flavor of the kind that goes beyond Condorcet’s principles. Focusing on
the family and its importance for human development is crucial to the

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 Sophie de Grouchy

proper integration of women into the history of humanity and to make

their lives central to any plans for future progress. Not only does it allow
us to look beyond the odd, isolated woman who against all historical odds
succeeded in asserting herself at the top of some discipline or other, but it
also reminds men that they have a life and a set of duties within the family
unit, that they are not free individuals moving history along with the sheer
force of their courage or intellect, but fathers who need to change a nappy
and help their daughters with their homework so that they too have a
chance at participating in human progress.

3.4 Other Writings

We have evidence that Grouchy wrote other texts beside those listed in the
previous sections. In his 1794 “Advice to his daughter”, Condorcet refers
to texts and fragments by his wife, besides the eight letters on sympathy,
dealing with moral philosophy. In 1792 Grouchy wrote to Etienne Dumont
to ask him to read a draft of the Letters and the beginning of a
philosophical novel. The fragments have not been found so far, and it is
possible that they were destroyed.

4. Philosophy
The Letters on Sympathy, where the greatest part of Grouchy’s philosophy
is to be found, are principally a response to Smith’s Theory of Moral
Sentiments. The author states in the first letter that her writing was
prompted by reading Smith’s book, and that where she disagreed with
him, she wanted to develop her own views and arguments. Later in that
letter she says what specifically she disagrees with: Smith does not
investigate the origins of sympathy, and hence his account of its effects
must be incomplete. Elsewhere in the Letters she specifies aspects of her
argument where she either agrees or disagrees with Smith.

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 Sandrine Berges

Grouchy is also writing in the context of the French revolution, and

attempting, with her husband, to help bring about a number of reforms in
France. This means that her philosophy is mostly focused on value theory
—specifically moral, social, legal, economic and political theory.

Theoretical influences come from philosophers who turned to psychology

and cognitive development such as Locke and Condillac. As far as
political philosophy was concerned, we find influences from Voltaire and
Rousseau, but also Fenelon and Montesquieu.

A further influence must be noted, that of her choice of correspondent,

C***. Jean-George Cabanis was a medical doctor by training, but also a
writer who attempted to combine his scientific knowledge with moral and
social philosophy. His main work, On the relations between the physical
and moral aspects of man in 1802 describes the effects that physiology has
on moral psychology—character, he says, is inevitably affected by the
body’s reaction to the weather, and by the function of organs, such as
digestion. In her work, Grouchy also emphasizes the role of physiology in
morality, arguing that sympathy arises first and foremost out of the
sensations caused by internal organs.

4.1 Moral Psychology

Grouchy’s moral philosophy cannot be defined in terms of one particular

influence. Her arguments carefully weave together elements from what we
would recognize now as distinct ethical theories: ancient virtue ethics,
stoicism, and utilitarianism.

4.1.1 Early modern developmental psychology

Locke was a major influence in eighteenth century moral psychology,

especially through his Thoughts on Education in which he argued that
every aspect of an infant’s experience contributes to her moral and

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 Sophie de Grouchy

cognitive development. Like him, Grouchy traces the development of

morality to infancy, arguing that its first sources occur “in the cradle”
when an infant experiences the pain of being separated from her nurse and
the pleasure of being reunited with her.

From Locke, but also Condillac, Grouchy takes the idea that cognitive
development is primarily physiological at source, but can lead, with the
proper education, to the development of moral sentiment on the one hand
(the soul) and of abstract ideas on the other (the mind). The two together,
for Grouchy, gives us the idea of justice.

4.1.2 Physiology

The most important physiologist thinker during Grouchy’s lifetime was

her brother in law Pierre-Georges Cabanis. In 1796, two years before the
publication of the Letters, but four years after they were first drafted,
Cabanis presented a number of lectures on a topic that was central to the
most original parts of Grouchy’s response to Smith, namely, the role of the
sensations of pleasure and pain in bringing about sympathy, and ultimately
morality. His lectures were printed in 1802 under the title Les Rapports du
Physique et du Moral. Arguing that morality was the result of reasoning
about sensations, Cabanis proposed that “moral properties were nothing
but physical properties considered from certain particular points of view”
and that

[i]t is from that point of view that the physical study of man is
principally interesting: this is where the philosopher, the moralist,
the legislator must direct their gaze, and where they can find at the
same time new lights on human nature, and fundamental ideas on
its perfectioning. (Cabanis 1802: 78, 80)

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 Sandrine Berges

Grouchy agrees with Cabanis that the ultimate source of human

development is physical, and this is how she departs from Smith’s account
of sympathy. Smith acknowledges that sympathy exists as part of human
psychology, but Grouchy insists on tracing its origins and finds them in
sensations of pleasure and pain. While Cabanis is mostly interested in
finding physiological correspondences for particular moral or
psychological phenomena, Grouchy, starting from simply physiological
sources, builds a complex and complete theory of moral development,
which starts from particular and personal attachments and ends in the love
of humanity in general.

4.1.3 Pleasure and pain

The first causes of sympathy, Grouchy argues, are the sensations of pains
and pleasure one experiences as part of our relationship to another. A baby
who finds comfort at the breast of its nurse will experience pain when it is
separated from it, and later learn to recognize and care for the pain
experienced by the nurse. Grouchy distinguishes between physical and
moral pleasures and pains on the one hand, and present and remembered
pleasures and pains on the other. She also argues that we can derive
abstract ideas of pleasures and pains.

4.1.4 Stoicism

The principal Stoic element in the Letters on Sympathy is the way in

which Grouchy describes the development of sympathy as reminiscent of
the Stoic “cradle arguments,” that is, offering a description of infant
behavior as evidence of what is natural to human beings and not merely
conventional. Stoic cradle arguments often invoke the concept of
oikeiosis. The Stoics claim that what can be observed in infants is a natural
concern for self-preservation. This tendency, oikeiosis, naturally grows to
extend one’s tendencies towards self-preservation to an impartial concern

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 Sophie de Grouchy

for all (Annas 1993: 265). Animals and young children are capable of the
early stages of the process—that of recognizing their own bodies as
belonging to them, and learning how to use them for their own survival.
Mature animals are also able to engage in later stage of oikeiosis, that of
caring for their young. Human oikeiosis starts as it does with animals, but
develops further—as far as cosmopolitanism.

The development of sympathy in Grouchy follows a similar pattern. We

start in infancy by recognizing our own pains and pleasures, those that
signal to us what we need to stay alive. From this the circle of sympathy is
widened to include others who form part of our life, starting with the
observations of physical pleasures and pains, in oneself and in others, then
moving towards psychological sufferings, and extending the circle further
to humanity in general.

4.1.5 Utilitarianism

Grouchy’s strong emphasis on pain and pleasure might suggest that her
moral theoretical leanings are towards consequentialism rather than
Stoicism. And indeed some of her discussions of what it means to do the
right thing seem to be informed by consequentialism. In Letter V, she
claims that acts receive reason’s approval depending on the extent to
which they benefit humanity. In Letter VIII, she suggests that the value of
the law can be measured in part in terms of the pleasure and pain it
produces.

Cabanis (C***) agreed with Grouchy that the ability to see and recognize
pain was central to sympathy and ultimately to morality, but he also
sought to reconcile this with a form of Stoicism. What attracted Cabanis—
and presumably Grouchy—to Stoic philosophy was the possibility it
opened for a form of atheism that nonetheless saw something divinely
pleasing in all living things. Cabanis’s last work is a defense of hylozoism

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rather than the materialism he is known for, i.e., the view that spirit, as
reason, is everywhere, and most especially in humans and “higher”
animals. But nonetheless, Cabanis explicitly rejects the Stoic view that
pains and pleasure don’t matter morally, and indeed, suggests that even the
Stoics did not believe this:

We cannot possibly agree with the Stoics that pain is not bad.
Perhaps pain is not always bad in its effects—it can offer useful
warnings, sometimes even strengthens physical organs just as it
impresses greater energy and strength of will to morality. […] But
if pain was not an evil it would not be so for others anymore than
for ourselves. We should discount it in others and in ourselves. So
why this tender humaneness that characterizes the greatest stoics
much more than the firmness and the constancy of their virtues?
(Cabanis 1824: 84)

Cabanis goes on to cite Cato, who gave up his horse for his companion on
a scorching road in Sicily, and Brutus, who gave his coat to a sick slave on
a freezing winter night. Stoics themselves do not countenance the view
that pain should be ignored when it comes to acting. Therefore, one can be
an ethical stoic and make the relief of pain central to one’s morality.

4.2 Political Philosophy

4.2.1 Liberty

Since the revival of neo-republican thought in contemporary political

philosophy, several philosophers of the past have been re-interpreted as
republican thinkers. This is the case, for instance, with Mary
Wollstonecraft, who until recently was thought of as a liberal thinker, is
now seen by many as an important source for feminist republicanism
(Halldenius 2015; Berges & Coffee 2016). Although we should be weary

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 Sophie de Grouchy

of reading too much contemporary political theory into past thinkers, in

particular when it comes to very technical arguments and definitions, it is
nonetheless often helpful to focus on the central themes of republican
thought in order to understand these thinkers. In particular, the
Revolutionary engagement with liberty was very often framed in Roman
terms with arguments that to become a republic was to become free from
domination by an arbitrary power. These thoughts resonated particularly
strongly, and sometimes differently for women philosophers as they
considered whether their positions as wives and daughters in a patriarchal
society meant that they too were dominated, and would carry on being so
in a republic unless marriage and family laws were reformed. This was the
focus of Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges, but it was less so in
the case of Grouchy, who to some extent relied on her husband’s more
powerful and influential voice to propose feminist reforms.

Placing Grouchy in a republican context highlights the importance of her

work for the French Revolution and vice versa. Few political philosophers
write in a vacuum; most are influenced by or wish to influence the events
unfolding around them. But when the events are as remarkable as a
revolution, then it makes no sense to ignore their impact on the work we
are looking at. In the case of Grouchy, it is even clearer that she wished to
participate, through her writings, in the making of the new Republic; in the
summer of 1791, together with Condorcet and a few friends, she
established a political journal, Le Républicain, the purpose of which was
to enlighten the public as to what republicanism was.

Le Républicain lasted for just over a month, framed by two events: Louis
XVI’s attempted escape from France, and the Champ de Mars Massacre.
The aim of Le Républicain stated in its opening article, “Avis aux
Français,” was to promote the ideal of republicanism, attempting to make
it more respectable and better understood than it was at the time: “to

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enlighten minds on the subject of republicanism, which is slandered

because it is misunderstood”. (Condorcet and Paine 1792, p.5

A theme that is strongly present in all the articles of Le Républicain,

including the ones attributed to Grouchy, is the threat to freedom
constituted by any monarchy, no matter how well-intentioned the monarch
is. In this, Grouchy and the other authors of the Républicain differ from
republicans inspired by Montesquieu, such as Sieyès, who believed that
the form of government was incidental to a republican constitution as long
as the ruler always acted in the public interest. Grouchy and others
disagreed on the grounds that the hereditary power granted to a monarch is
always arbitrary, so that even if it is benign, it is not reliably so. It does not
matter, says Paine, whether a monarch is “a fool a hypocrite or a tyrant”—
what matters is that this individual has “absolute power” over everyone,
including those who are not yet born (Condorcet and Paine 1792, p.5. A
monarch who is well intentioned may change his attitude for personal
reasons and become a tyrant, or he may die and leave the power in the
hands of a tyrannical successor.

4.2.2 Equality

Philosophers of the French revolution were interested in equality as well

as liberty (fraternity was added later to the motto), but the equality that
concerned them was equality of status, specifically civic status, rather than
political status. Very few of them even thought about economic equality.
Sophie de Grouchy wrote that all citizens are owed the same respect, and
this implies that there should not be extreme economic inequality.

The central argument of Grouchy’s Letters is that virtue, moral or

political, is born out of sympathy, the ability and propensity to feel others’
pain and to want to relieve it. Grouchy claims that we first experience
sympathy as an infant in the arms of a nurse, and that we learn

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 Sophie de Grouchy

progressively to feel sympathy for the physical and mental pain that any
other person experiences, whether or not we are close to them. But in
order for this to be possible, we do need to see the suffering other as a
human being, as someone just as capable of experiencing pain as we are.
Extreme inequality means that this does not happen: the very rich and the
very poor do not regard each other as being part of the same species, so
that they cannot sympathize with each other and will not apply the laws of
morality and justice in their dealings with each other (Letter VIII).

Grouchy’s concrete proposal to reduce extreme inequality does not include

even the possibility of future inequality. She assumes that without legally
supported inequality, natural inequalities (in intelligence and fecundity)
would result in three quarters of the land being distributed randomly
according to luck and skill and one quarter distributed equally between
families. But this, she argues, with figures at hand, would still exclude
extreme poverty or extreme wealth and would be sufficient to ensure that
all citizens recognized each other as equally worthy of respect.

Although there is definitely a feminist background to Grouchy’s Letters,

one which reflects her husband’s 1790 paper on the inclusion of women to
the rights of the city, and perhaps in fact inspired that paper, it does not
have a clear or central feminist agenda. Humanity in general is the focus
of her discussion; women are explicitly included in the arguments (indeed,
the very first teacher of sympathy is the wet-nurse, the most prominent
example given of a good teacher is Sophie’s own mother, and mothers and
fathers are equally enjoined to participate in a child’s proper education)
but they are not given separate consideration. In her discussion of family
law, she does mention reforms that would affect women more particularly.

4.3 Legal Philosophy

4.3.1 Citizenship

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In her defense of equality, Sophie de Grouchy considers the problems

brought about by inequality of status, privileges, and wealth and the way
in which the law contributes to these problems by maintaining privileges.
She is in agreement with the principles debated in the early days of the
French revolution, in particular by Emmanuel Sieyès who argued that to
be unequal in the eyes of the law is to be potentially dominated. That is, a
citizen can use a privileged relationship to the law to abuse another.
Grouchy argues that this was one the greatest wrongs of the Ancient
Régime, i.e., when the law is not applied equally to all, those who cannot
manipulate it perceive themselves as dominated:

[When the law allows for] privileges, hereditary, personal or local

which offer a legal loophole, direct or indirect, [t]hen the people
are tempted to see criminal laws as made against them and in favor
of the rich, as the result of an association designed to oppress them.
(Letter VIII, p. 152

4.3.2 Punishment

Much of Grouchy’s discussion of the law focuses of the question of

punishment. Before 1789, there were a number of ways in which the law
could kill its criminals depending both on the kind of crime they had
committed and their station. Aristocrats were decapitated with a sword.
This was regarded as the most honorable death, although it was not always
the least painful or horrible. The Count Lally-Tollendal, who received the
death penalty in 1766 for having betrayed the King’s interest at war, had to
be hit three times by the sword before his neck could be broken and the
head detached. Sanson, the executor of the Revolution, cited his example
when defending the proposed new machine that would cut heads off neatly
and instantly. Nonetheless, decapitation was more honorable than the
sentences reserved for commoners of death by hanging (murderers) or the
wheel (thieves, highway robbers). The crime women were most

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 Sophie de Grouchy

commonly accused of was infanticide or performing abortions. These were

punished by hanging when they were found guilty of having killed their
infants, but, as was most often the case, when evidence was lacking, they
would do prison time for fornication, or be freed until more evidence
could be found.

Grouchy’s discussion of punishment is clearly influenced by the writings

of the Milanese criminologist Cesare Beccaria. Beccaria had already
argued for the necessity of equal penalties for all as even privileges must
rest on an equal respect for the law. His book On Crimes and Punishment
published in 1764 was translated in French that same year and published
with a lengthy commentary from Voltaire. Beccaria came to Paris and
spent much of 1776 in Madame Helvetius’s salon in Auteuil. His influence
was no doubt still present some years later when the Marquis de
Condorcet, and their future brother-in-law Pierre-George Cabanis, and
later Condorcet’s wife Sophie de Grouchy also became frequent visitors.
This, as well as Condorcet’s close connection with Voltaire, and his own
engagement at the time Beccaria’s book was published in penal reform,
goes some way towards explaining Grouchy’s affinities with Beccaria’s
claims. In her Letters on Sympathy, she argues that:

In order for the fear of a sentence to be effective and beneficial the

sentence must not outrage. Its justice must be perceptible to
average reason, and it must especially awaken the conscience, at
the same time as it punishes its silence and slumber. But this will
not be so […] if a judge can arbitrarily harden or soften a sentence;
if there are privileges, hereditary, personal or local which offer a
legal loophole, direct or indirect. (Letter VIII)

4.3.3 Marriage and family laws

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Divorce was legalized and made more accessible for a brief period during
the French Revolution before it was codified under Napoleon in a way that
made much more difficult to obtain, especially for women. Grouchy in her
Letters argues in favor not only of divorce, but of short-term, renewable
marriage contracts and clear rights for children born outside marriage and
for their mothers. In these she is in agreement with another woman
philosopher of the Revolution, Olympe de Gouges. Grouchy derived these
arguments at least in part from Montesquieu’s analysis of the Roman law
in the Spirit of the Law.

4.3.4 Commercial law

Grouchy also argued that a heavily regulated market increased poverty,

forcing the poor to remain poor, or even become poorer because they
couldn’t regulate their exchanges or negotiate their work and production
fairly. Grouchy, like Condorcet and Turgot, believed that shackling the
market with strict laws was a form of domination and that allowing
farmers and merchants to set their own prices would go some way towards
relieving poverty in the country. Thus she can be interpreted as one of the
original defenders of commercial republicanism (Bergès 2018a).

Bibliography
Works by Sophie de Grouchy

Editions of the Letters on Sympathy

1798, Théorie des Sentiments Moraux, suivi d’une Dissertation sur

l’Origine des Langues, par Adam Smith, traduit de l’Anglais sur la
septième et dernière édition, par S. Grouchy, Ve Condorcet. Elle y a
joint huit Lettres sur la Sympathie, Tome II, Paris: Buisson.
1993, Lettres sur la Sympathie suivies des Lettres d’Amour à Maillat

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 Sophie de Grouchy

Garat, Jean-Paul Lagrave (ed.), Montreal: Presses de l’Universite du

Quebec.
2008, Letters on Sympathy (1798): A Critical Edition, Karin Brown (ed.)
and James McClellan III (trans.), (Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, New Series, 98(4)), Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society.
2010, Les Lettres sur la Sympathies (1798) de Sophie de Grouchy:
philosophie morale et reforme sociale, Marc André Bernier and
Deidre Dawson (eds), Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
2019, Sophie de Grouchy’s “Letters on Sympathy”: A Critical
Engagement with Adam Smith’s “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”,
Sandrine Bergès (trans./ed.) and Eric Schliesser (ed.), (Oxford New
Histories of Philosophy), New York: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/oso/9780190637088.001.0001

Other texts by Grouchy

Condorcet, Nicolas de, 1808, Oeuvres, Edited by Mme de Condorcet

(Sophie de Grouchy), P.J.G Cabanis, and D.J. Garat.
Condorcet, Nicolas de and Thomas Paine, 1792, Aux Origines de la
Republique 1789–1792, Volume III, Le Républicain par Condorcet et
Thomas Paine, 1791, Paris: EDHIS, 1991 (Contains several articles
attributed to Grouchy).
Condorcet, Nicolas de, 1795, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès
de l’esprit humain , Paris: Agasse (edited posthumously by Grouchy).
Martin, Jean, 1927, “Achille du Chastellet et le Premier Mouvement
Républicain en France d’Après des Lettres Inédites (1791–1792)”, La
Revolution Française, Revue Historique, Nouvelle série, 33 (Janvier-
Février-Mars 1927): 104–132. (Contains letters from Grouchy to
Etienne Dumont.
Schandeler, Jean-Pierre and Pierre Crépel (eds.), 2004, Notes sur le
Tableau Historique des progrès de l’esprit humain, projets, Esquisse,

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Fragments et Notes (1772–1794), Paris: Institut National D’Etudes

Démographiques. (Contains the original and edited text of the Sketch,
which Grouchy worked on with Condorcet).

Secondary Sources

Annas, Julia, 1995, The Morality of Happiness, New York: Oxford

University Press. doi:10.1093/0195096525.001.0001
Beccaria, Cesare, 1764 [2009], Dei delitti e delle pene. Translated as On
Crimes and Punishments, Graeme R. Newman and Pietro Marongiu
(trans.), fifth edition, New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers.
Belhoste, Bruno, 1994, “Condorcet, les arts utiles et leur enseignement”,
in Condorcet, Homme des Lumières et de la Révolution, A.-M.
Chouillet and Pierre Crépel (eds.), Paris: ENS, 121:136
Bergès, Sandrine, 2018a, “What’s It Got to Do with the Price of Bread?
Condorcet and Grouchy on Freedom and Unreasonable Laws in
Commerce”, European Journal of Political Theory, 17(4): 432–448.
doi:10.1177/1474885118782391
–––, 2018b, “Family, Gender, and Progress: Sophie de Grouchy and Her
Exclusion in the Publication of Condorcet’s Sketch of Human
Progress”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 79(2): 267–283.
doi:10.1353/jhi.2018.0016
Bergès, Sandrine and Alan M. S. J. Coffee (eds.), 2016, The Social and
Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, Oxford: Oxford
University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198766841.001.0001
Cabanis, Pierre-George, 1802, Les Rapports du Physique et du Moral,
eighth edition, Paris: Baillère.
–––, 1824, “Letter Postume et Inédite de Cabanis à M. F*** sur les Cause
Premières” avec des notes par F. Bérard, Paris: Gabon et Companie.
Condorcet, Nicolas de, 1790 [2012], “Sur l’admission des femmes au droit
au cité”, Journal de la Société de 1789, 3 July 1790, number 5;
translated as “On the Emancipation of Women”, in Condorcet:

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 Sophie de Grouchy

Political Writings, Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati (eds.),

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 156–162.
doi:10.1017/CBO9781139108119.008
Dumont, Etienne, 1832, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau et sur les deux premieres
Assemblées Législatives, Paris: Librairie de Charles Gosselin.
Fénelon, François de Salignac, 1699 [1994], Les Aventures de Télémaque;
translated as Telemachus, Patrick Riley (trans./ed.), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gouges, Olympe de, 1791 [2014], Femme reveille-toi! Declaration des
droits de la femme et de la citoyenne et autres ecrits, Martine Reid
(ed.), Paris: Gallimard.
Guillois, Antoine, 1897, La Marquise de Condorcet, sa Famille, son
Salon, ses Amis 1764–1822, Paris: Paul Ollendorff.
Halldenius, Lena, 2015, Mary Wollstonecraft and Feminist Republicanism,
London: Routledge.
Lukes, Steven and Nadia Urbinati (eds.), 2012, Condorcet: Political
Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CBO9781139108119
Montesquieu, Charles, 1748 [1989], De l’esprit des lois, Geneva.
Translated as The Spirit of the Laws, Anne M. Cohler, Basia C.
Miller, and Harold S. Stone (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Paine, Thomas, 1830, The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, New York:
Solomon King.
Schliesser, Eric, 2017a, Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public
Thinker, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/oso/9780190690120.001.0001
–––, 2017b, “Sophie de Grouchy, The Tradition(s) of Two Liberties, and
the Missing Mother(s) of Liberalism”, in Women and Liberty, 1600–
1800: Philosophical Essays, Jacqueline Broad and Karen Detiefsen
(eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 109–122.

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doi:10.1093/oso/9780198810261.003.0008
Smith, Adam, 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Edinburgh:
Alexander Kincaid and J. Bell; seventh edition, London: A. Strahan,
T. Cadell, 1792; reprinted in 2002, Knud Haakonsen (ed.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1776 [1981], An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, reprinted in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and
Correspondence of Adam Smith, R.H. Campbell, A.S. Skinner and
W.B. Todd eds), Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Tasso, Torquato, 1581 [2009], The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme
Liberata), Max Wickert (trans.), (Oxford World’s Classics),
Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Tegos, Spiros, 2013, “Sympathie moral et tragédie sociale: Sophie
Grouchy lectrice d’Adam Smith”, Noesis, 21: 265–292.
–––, 2014, “Friendship in Commercial Society Revisited: Adam Smith on
Commercial Friendship”, in Propriety and Prosperity: New Studies
on the Philosophy of Adam Smith, David F. Hardwick and Leslie
Marsh (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 37–53.
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Wolfe, Charles T., 2013, “Sensibility as Vital Force or as Property of
Matter in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Debates”, in The Discourse of
Sensibility: The Knowing Body in the Enlightenment, Henry Martyn
Lloyd (ed.), (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35),
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Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Janet Todd (ed.), Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

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Other Internet Resources

First edition of Les Lettres sur la Sympathie
“Reappearing Ink” by Sandrine Berges. Journal of the History of
Ideas blog, 25 June 2018, on Grouchy’s collaboration with Condorcet
Letters on Sympathy in Some Texts from Early Modern Philosophy
(pdf/epub/mobi/audio, in English)

Related Entries
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de | Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de
Caritat, Marquis de: in the history of feminism | republicanism |
Wollstonecraft, Mary

Copyright © 2019 by the author

Sandrine Berges

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