in society. He denounced patriarchal norms of oppression, present at every institutional level, and continuously subjugating and marginalising women. Like fellow Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his book Emile ou De l'Education (1762), Condorcet identified education as crucial to the emancipation of individuals. He stated: "I believe that all other differences between men and women are simply the result of education". He saw it as the only solution for women to deconstruct gender roles and promote another kind of masculinity, not based on violence, virility and the subjugation of women but rather on shared attributes such as reason and intelligence. In her book Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, Hooks calls this new concept "feminine masculinity", "new models of self–assertion that do not require the construction of an enemy 'other,' be it a woman or the symbolic feminine, for them to define themselves against". Condorcet's whole plea for gender equality is founded on the recognition that the attribution of rights and authority comes from the false assumption that men possess reason and women do not. This is, according to J. Nall, an obvious example of an individual practising and advocating this feminist masculinity. As such, women should enjoy the same fundamental "natural right". Scholars often disagree on the true impact that Condorcet's work had on pre-modern feminist thinking. His detractors point out that, when he was eventually given some responsibilities in the constitutional drafting process, his convictions did not translate into concrete political action and he made limited efforts to push these issues on the agenda. Some scholars on the other hand, believe that this lack of action is not due to the weakness of his commitment but rather to the political atmosphere at the time and the absence of political appetite for gender equality on the part of decision-makers. Along with authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, d'Alembert or Olympe de Gouges, Condorcet made a lasting contribution to the pre-feminist debate. The Idea of Progress Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit (1795) was perhaps the most influential formulation of the idea of progress ever written. It made the Idea of Progress a central concern of Enlightenment thought. He argued that expanding knowledge in the natural and social sciences would lead to an ever more just world of individual freedom, material affluence, and moral compassion. He argued for three general propositions: that the past