Can an egalitarian and truly emancipatory notion of marriage be promoted within Hegel’s framework?

In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel explores the conditions that transform the abstract freedom that we all have as human beings, into concrete freedom. Surprisingly, although men and women are equally free beings, the content of their freedom turns out to be very different in practice. While men achieve liberation by participating in every aspect of social life, the entire scope of women’s freedom is contained in marriage and the family. In this essay, we will first argue that the logic in Hegel’s notion of marriage depends on the assumption that men and women have naturally different dispositions. We will then remove this assumption, which we take to be erroneous, and show that what logically follows is an egalitarian and ungendered notion of marriage and the family that still fits within Hegel’s larger framework.

In his notion of marriage, Hegel reckons with two features of human nature as he understands it: sexual drive and biological sex. Through marriage, which Hegel also calls ethical love, both features contribute to our progression towards self-consciousness and concrete freedom. In love, men and women are liberated from the immediacy of their sexual drive: their desire becomes subsumed in the couple, where they are free to express it (§161). In addition, each person finds recognition through the other (§158). Therefore, the moment of love is equally liberating for man and woman, because “in it they attain their substantial self-consciousness” (§162), i.e. they transcend the bondage of biological nature and they transition from simple subjectivity to inter-subjectivity. This, however, describes the abstract existence of the couple. In practice the couple now forms a “concrete unity” (§165), which must exist in the world: it must provide for itself, live freely, and stay together. This is made possible by the “natural determinacy of the two sexes” (§165), which according to Hegel is as follows. Man is the will in its universal moment, he is the part that projects itself outwards, towards an “objective, final goal” (§166); woman is the will particularized, which is “maintaining itself in unity” (§166). A dialectic appears within marriage: woman preserves the unity of the couple, while man moves the couple forward. It follows that the realm of activity of men and women is different. Women need only be concerned with the couple itself, so their life is entirely contained in the unity of the family (§166). Men need to interact with what is external to the couple, so their life is in “the state, in science” (§166). Thus men and women are both free; the content of their freedom is simply different, in accordance with their natural inclinations. In Hegel’s view, he is simply reckoning with the facts of human nature. Still, we know that there is no ‘natural determinacy of the two sexes’ as such. This, too, must be reckoned with. Admittedly, this could be quickly absorbed into Hegel’s narrative. The determinacy of the sexes is socially constructed, one could argue, but this construction is rationalized in exactly the same way: marriage is gender fully realized. Even then, we have two reasons to contest the logic of Hegelian marriage. First, gender is not being constructed like it used to; without gender, the internal dialectic of the couple is lost. Second, traditional constructions of gender and the institutions based on them, such as Hegelian marriage, have not been conducive to freedom.

We want to propose a framework for sexual desire and reproduction, based on the assumption that there is no natural determinacy of the sexes, and that no such determinacy is demanded by reason. Moreover, we want to account for same-sex attraction, which often is a natural determinacy. In the first place, let us recognize that abstract Hegelian love is not gendered, and can therefore be maintained as is. The ‘concrete unit’ of the married couple, however, cannot function in the way Hegel envisions. While Hegel relies on biological sex to create an inner dialectic within the couple, we claim that the dialectic must occur both within and between each person. As human beings, both members of the couple experience the push to exist and participate in the external world, but they also feel the need to be concrete persons and feel unity within themselves. This dialectic occurs within each person separately, yet at the same time there arises another dialectic between the two persons. This dialectic is a product of love. The source of each person’s confidence and strength is in their recognition by the other, and in their recognition of the other – but this recognition is not a single event, it must constantly be renewed. Then, the concrete existence of the couple is maintained by the interaction of each person’s internal dialectic with the couple’s inter-personal dialectic. The question of reproduction, too, must be altered. It is important for Hegel that, through the child, the couple’s love is objectified and made concrete (§173); as the child becomes an adult, the former family is dissolved and a new one is formed (§177). This provides a rational framework for reproduction: it unifies the family, but also reproduces the family unit, which is the basic unit of civil society. Hegel seems to assume a direct biological link between parents and child; if this assumption is maintained, then same-sex desire cannot be rationalized. Indeed, if this desire is subsumed into ethical love, the couple must remain childless, and will dissolve into nothing: in this view, there is no logical progression for same-sex desire. This implies that, in some cases, love must be negated for reproduction to occur; but the original rationality of the child is as an objectification of its parents’ love, so reproduction has no meaning without love. We resolve this contradiction by doing away with the assumption that there must be a biological link between parents and child. In this way, the notion of the family becomes rooted in love instead of biological necessity.

In this essay we have argued that Hegel’s notion of marriage and the family is based on the erroneous assumption that biological sex has substantial meaning. We have then shown that, when this assumption is removed, we logically arrive to a form of marriage that is ungendered and freeing for both members, and a form of the family that unshackles love from biological bonds. In the end, Hegel’s notions of marriage and the family are radically altered, but the rest of his framework can be kept as such.

References:

G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, translated by A. White, Focus/R. Pullins.