Page 189 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 10: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

giving women a significant role. He discussed women while analyzing the role of the family, Notes
which he described as a “natural ethical community” and an “ethical mind in its natural or
immediate phase”. The family was natural because its bonds were based on feelings that were
intuitive and immediate. It had an ethical quality because the love that it imparted had a universal
and spiritual quality. It was not based on brute force or unmediated egoism. It contained reason
in its embryonic form.
Like Aristotle, Hegel regarded marriage as necessary for procreation of the human race, which
was natural, outside history. He moved beyond this initial formulation and regarded marriage as
“a union of mind”, dismissing the arguments that it was purely sexual, contractual and emotional.
Marriage symbolized reason and unity, attributes which were essential for the state.
Within the family, men had the capacity for conceptual thinking, granting them universality and
real freedom, enabling them to make history and engage in politics and learning. Men were
powerful and active, while women were passive and subjective, because they were self-conscious
and lacked the capacity for reflection. They could be educated, but lacked the ability for science,
philosophy or art—subjects that guaranteed access to the Ideal. They continued to therefore remain
creatures of experience, unable to transcend it altogether. Since women lacked the universal faculty,
they were prohibited from participating in the public domain. Men could attain individuality,
reason and universality, while women were denied personal autonomy, since individuality and
family life were incompatible.
For Hegel, like Rousseau, women were enemies of the community, for they identified their interests
with those of their family. Unlike Rousseau, Hegel did not prescribe separate educational curricula
for boys and girls, but even if they were equally educated, they would grow up representing
unequal interests. Sons became heads of new families. Through marriage, the parties surrendered
their individual personalities and formed a union, which was why the family was a basic element
in human life having an ethical form and a legal persona. The man became the representative of
the family in law. Natural and biological differences generated social differences. Hegel did not
recognize domestic work as worthwhile. Women enjoyed an ethical status only because of the
marital bond that they had with their husbands. Men could enjoy the same because of their public
transactions in civil society and the state. He regarded marriage as a girl’s destiny while a
promiscuous man could regain his honour qua citizenship. Hegel contended that if women held
public positions or participated in government, it would be disastrous, for they lacked universality
and were bound by arbitrary inclinations and opinions. They would bring into the public domain
a morality and a sense of justice that was appropriate within the private sphere. They could not be
impartial, since they were not detached and lacked the capacity for abstraction.
Hegel placed a lot of importance on marriage and argued that the ethical life of the community
depended on it. He discouraged marriages among the well-known, and favoured that “the parties
should be drawn from separate families and their personalities should be different in origin”
(Hegel 1969 : 168). He was against marriage between blood relations. The husband was the head
of the family. Family property was described under no single individual’s exclusive preserve,
while each had a right to the common fund or property. Hegel emphasized the importance of self-
subsistence and independence of the family unit.
Hegel, like Locke, argued that children had a right to maintenance and education, and that parents
were responsible for their discipline and education. The punishment of children was essentially
moral, “to deter them from exercising a freedom still in the toils of nature and to life the universal
into their consciousness and will” . Children were potentially free and could not be treated as
property by parents. In the formative years the emphasis was love, trust and obedience. The
purpose of education was to make children self-reliant, so that they could enjoy the freedom of
personality. This would enable them to gain power in order to leave the natural unity of the
family. At this stage, the children became adults and were capable of having property and families

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