Hegel on law, women, and contract

Stone, Alison (2014) Hegel on law, women, and contract. In: Feminist encounters with legal philosophy :. Routledge, London, pp. 104-122. ISBN 9780415497602

Abstract

Hegel is infamous for his view that in properly constituted societies women are confi ned to the family and excluded from the public spheres of work and politics. In his very well-known discussion of the matter in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right , published in 1821, he claims that:The one [that is, the male sex] … divides itself up into personal selfsufficiency with being for itself and the knowledge and volition of free universality , that is, into the self-consciousness of conceptual thought and the volition of the objective and ultimate end. And the other [that is, the female sex] … maintains itself in unity as knowledge and volition of the substantial in the form of concrete individuality and feeling … [T]he former is powerful and active, the latter passive and subjective. Man therefore has his actual substantial life in the state, in science, etc., and otherwise in work and struggle … so that it is only through his division that he fi ghts his way to self-suffi cient unity with himself. In the family, he has a peaceful intuition of this unity, and an emotive and subjective ethical life. Woman, however, has her substantial vocation in the family, and her ethical disposition consists in this piety .