Getty L. Lustila (Northeastern University), "Sophie de Grouchy on the Problem of Economic Inequality"

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2023

By Getty L. Lustila

Economic inequality is a pervasive feature of human society. Philosophers have long asked whether and to what extent economic inequality is immoral. Despite their disagreements, most seem to agree that economic inequality often results in social disharmony once it reaches a certain degree. The issue of economic inequality became a point of contention in 18^th century France, as the hereditary honors and privileges of the clergy and aristocracy became targets of the press and of intellectuals inside and outside of France. To these critics, these hereditary honors, and privileges, to be enjoyed by some and not others, had cemented relations of social inequality and allowed the clergy and aristocracy to amass large amounts of wealth, much of which either went untaxed or was taxed at an extraordinarily low rate, with most of the tax burden being borne by professionals, artisans, laborers, and farmers. The result: by the latter years of the 18^th century, revolution went from a distant fear to a present reality.

Certain members of the aristocracy broke with their class, to support the political and social reforms necessary to undercut these relations of inequality in French society. One such figure was Sophie de Grouchy (1764-1822), who is best known for translating Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments in French. Her translation, which appeared in 1798, remained the foremost translation of the work until 1999. Alongside her translation, Grouchy published Letters on Sympathy, a philosophical treatise structured in epistolary form, which aimed to expand on Smith’s “system of sympathy.” I have written on Grouchy’s version of the system of sympathy more generally elsewhere (see: “Remorse and Moral Progress in Sophie De Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy,” The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy). While the lion’s share of Letters of Sympathy is concerned with moral theory towards of end of this work Grouchy turns to politics and to the issue of economic inequality, which she considers to be the primary social issue to be addressed in French society. Like others, Grouchy argues that economic inequality is the unsurprising consequence of centuries of hereditary honors and privileges. She argues that these privileges must be revoked if we wish to restore social harmony. 

So far Grouchy’s point does not seem to differ from many of her contemporaries. I argue that what makes her interesting, both historically and philosophically, is that she gives a relatively novel argument for why economic inequality, in at least its more extreme forms, is the social ill we take it to be. On her view, economic inequality tends to undercut mutual trust between people and with it a sense of shared accountability. Under these circumstances, Grouchy claims, people fail to see one another as moral equals. This failure is most apparent in the relations between the wealthiest and poorest members of society. As Grouchy notes, the wealthy and poor become “strangers to each other”; each rank “gets lost in the distance between them, the one [the wealthy] may oppress the other nearly without remorse, while the other [the poor] will in turn cheat him with impunity, even believing that he is in this way bringing justice to himself” (Grouchy, Letters on Sympathy, 151, 152). In both cases Grouchy points out that neither the commands of justice nor the calls of humanity have any effect on either party. All that remains is a sense of mutual hatred and a desire to rid the world of the other.

Of course, you know what I am going to say next – that the world Grouchy is describing is not unlike our own. I do not wish to overstate the comparisons between 18^th century France and, say, the United States in the 21^st century. The differences between the two are vast enough to make any comparison uninteresting or even suspect. Still, I take it that Grouchy is right to think that vast degrees of economic inequality contribute to a loss of shared accountability between members of society, and that this loss is no less palpable in present-day America, not to mention many other countries around the world. I have little insight as to how we can address these concerns. Fortunately, Grouchy gives us a couple of potential strategies to consider. You will have to see what you think of them yourself – check it out.