Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT159 S4 P1 Q1 Explanation

Condorcet And Gouges

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsMain PointSociety

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Passage

In France in the early 1790s, the French Revolution, which sought to establish universal individual rights in French society, inspired several arguments for women's rights. Two such arguments, articulated by Marquis de Condorcet and Olympe de Gouges, both active supporters of the Revolution, are especially noteworthy because they constitute radically opposed courses wellspring of all injustice experienced by women and should therefore be battled through direct political action.

Condorcet, a mathematician and member of the Academy of Sciences with an interest in social equality, did not separate the question of women's rights from the more general one of equal rights for all members of society, believing that all discrimination was an oversight, the result of not reasoning consistently or not inequality, he argued, this intellectually untenable situation of women's inequality was historically condemned to disappear soon.

Where Condorcet's arguments were purely theoretical and did not include specific legislative proposals to end the exclusion of women from politics, the tone and content of Gouges's proposals reflected her objective that women should become politically mobilized in a war against the injustices that she saw men stubbornly perpetuating. Gouges, a writer experiencing, but unfortunately, even in the atmosphere of the French Revolution, neither's views were widely accepted.

What this question is testing

Main Point

Your task

Capture the passage's overall primary point — the claim everything else supports.

Common trap

Answers that are true but too narrow (a single paragraph) or too broad (beyond the passage's scope).

Winning move

Summarize the whole passage in one sentence first, then match it to a choice.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
1.

Which one of the following most accurately states the main point of

Answer choices

  1. Trap3% picked this

    Because of the conflicting ideas about universal individual rights, arguments in favor of equal rights for women were not easy for most

  2. Trap0% picked this

    Of the arguments advanced for equal rights for women, Condorcet's and Gouges's were not as radically opposed

  3. Trap2% picked this

    Because neither Condorcet nor Gouges proposed specific legislation to address women's inequality, their views were

  4. Correct95% picked this

    While both advocated equal rights for women, Condorcet argued that such rights did not have to be established through explicit political action, and Gouges,

    Why this is right

    Answer D is correct.

    Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  5. Trap1% picked this

    While both advocated equal rights for women, Gouges held that women could win their rights only while revolution was still raging, and

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