Matter and Form: Hegel, Organicism, and the Difference between Women and Men

Abstract

Infamously, Hegel in his 1821 Elements of the Philosophy of Right maintains that it is an essential feature of modern European societies—and in accordance with the principles of right—that women are confined to the family, excluded from the public spheres of work and politics. “Woman [die Frau]... has her substantial vocation in the family, and her ethical disposition consists in this piety.”¹ Feminist scholars have offered a range of interpretations of Hegel’s philosophical rationale for making these claims. For instance, according to Carole Pateman in The Sexual Contract, Hegel makes these claims because he retains classical social contract theory’s male-defined conception of the civil individual.² Others see these claims as rooted more broadly in Hegel’s philosophical system. Genevieve Lloyd thinks that his relegation of women to the family reflects a hierarchical opposition between life (gendered female) and self-consciousness (gendered male) that structures his whole philosophy of mind. Even more broadly, Luce Irigaray thinks that Hegel’s claims about women and family reflect the nature of his dialectic: he places whatever is oppositional and other to (male) subjectivity at the service ofthat selfsame male subjectivity, thus having women serve men within the family.³