THE QUESTION OF FAMILY, SEX AND WOMEN
IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SPIRIT.
David Martínez-Amador.
Introduction.
The aim of this paper is to
perform an inquiry in to the question of Family, Sex and Women as presented in
the magna opus of G.W. Hegel The Phenomenology
of Spirit. The latter work, can
be understood as an introduction to the Science of Logic and to a greater
philosophical system in which Hegel attempts to introduce the subjective
principle of the older modern philosophy, wherein what is other than
self-consciousness is related to it, through a reflective logic, as forms of
consciousness. In short words –and understanding the risk of providing a
simplified explanation of the main purpose of one of the most important
philosophical works of all times- The
Phenomenology of Spirit is the comprehension of the development process
of the subject as certain of itself to the truth of that certainty. In a briefly manner, we can argue that in the
context of Hegel’s Phenomenology of the
Spirit, philosophy is understood as a form of “absolute Spirit”. Hegel
treatment of the concepts mentioned at the beginning of this paper – family,
sex and women- is indeed complicated, specially for the non-professional reader
of Hegel’s Phenomenology. It has been my intention by elaborating this paper to
grasp a basic and coherent comprehension of the Hegelian thought regarding the
mentioned issues with out –and I should make emphasis on it- having
recourse in to other secondary sources. If there is a miss-understanding
of the Hegelian literature in this presentation, I should be the only one to
blame.
The content of this academic paper is the following: I would first
explain the concept of Spirit and how Hegel links his analysis of the
development of self-consciousness around the crucial beginning the master/slave
dialectic. As a second order of business, I will address the notion of ethical
theory and show the importance of the concept of “ethical life”
in which the notions of family, sex and women are developed.
The Obscure Concept of Spirit.
The concept of Spirit is, nevertheless, complicated and obscure in
the context of the Hegelian literature. Yet, it can be argue that there is
indeed a reflective relation in the process of the appearance of what we
understand Spirit to be: A creative thinking which, through the rational
effort, knows its creation as itself. Absolute Spirit, as that in which
historical reality and subjective freedom are united and developed, hold their
reality in Spirit. The notion of a phenomenon is crucial if we
intended to comprehend the agenda of Hegel’s philosophy and the concept of
natural consciousness. Hegel argues that the development of natural consciousness towards
the truth is a rational self-development process were natural consciousness
develops by assuming a series of various forms and shapes –the original
expression in the German language is Gestalten- ; and
eventually, this series of different
shapes discover themselves to be a mere appearance of knowing.
To
understand the notion of Spirit, let me quote on Hegel, from paragraph. 438 of
the Phenomenology of The Spirit (I have used the translation by A.V. Miller,
and all quotes of the PS will be extracted from this translation). Hegel links
the concept of Spirit directly to Reason, and to his idealism. Quoting on
Hegel: “Reason is Spirit when its certainty of being all reality has been
raised to truth, and it is conscious of itself as its own world, and of the
world as itself” . Hegel draws a distinction between two stages of development
of social existence, Spirit-as-substance and Spirit-as-subject, which is
crucial for his ethical theory. The concept of Spirit is divided by Hegel into
subjective spirit (individual self-consciousness), objective spirit (social
existence) and absolute spirit.
Individual
self-consciousness can be grasped as a form of Spirit only in retrospect. As
Hegel writes in para. 440: “All
previous shapes of consciousness are abstract forms of it. They result from
Spirit analyzing itself, distinguishing its moments, and dwelling for a while
with each. This isolating of those moments presupposes Spirit itself and
subsists therein; in other words, the isolation exists only in Spirit which is
a concrete existence. In this isolation they have the appearance of really existing
as such; but that they are only moments or vanishing quantities is shown by
their advance and retreat into their ground and essence. ... Spirit, then, is
consciousness in general which embraces sense-certainty, perception, and the
Understanding.”
The
concept of Spirit unifies three main concepts: Freedom, Reason, and self-
consciousness, which are interdependent almost to the point of identity. The
only interest of Spirit is to realize its own principle of true freedom, and it
does this by unfolding as human history, where the consciousness of universal,
rational freedom is the driving force. Before it is fully developed,
ethical life is substance without being spirit. Hegel describes this
undeveloped form of social existence as “spiritual essence that is in and
for itself, but which is not yet consciousness of itself” (paragraph. 438).
This spiritual essence Hegel calls 'ethical substance' (para.439). Hegel's
paradigm of ethical substance is the world of the ancient Greeks, the polis.
According to Hegel, ethical life in this substantial, merely sense, is not yet
Spirit, because it is not yet self-conscious.
The
next step in the process of comprehending Hegel’s effort in the Phenomenology
of the Spirit is to understand how Hegel links his analysis of the development
of self-consciousness around the crucial beginning the master/slave dialectic.
This is important because, unlike preceding German Idealists, Hegel does not
assume that the conscious agent is self-conscious a priori; instead, the agent must develop this notion of self-conception
through experience. Thus, self-consciousness is far from innate in terms of the
individual agent; Hegel’s disassociation with the tradition in this regard
seems to be in believing that self-consciousness develops out of
non-self-consciousness over time in a process that is historically conditioned.
Ethical Theory.
Once the main philosophical
development is achieved in the process proposed by Hegel, that is, a path in
which the development of Consciousness, Self Consciousness, Mind and Reason has
taken place, we are presented with his notion of ethical theory in relation to
the notion of the Spirit. The central
concept in Hegel's ethical theory is the concept of “ethical life”,
a term that in the German language is express as Sittlichkeit and
derives from the term Sitte meaning customs or laws. The concept of Sittlichkeit
it is commonly translated as the ethical norms embodied in the customs and
institutions which conform the social body. Sittlichket can also be understood as a
term covering any behaviour based on norms provided by the general
consciousness of a particular community. [1]
It is important to remember that, in the context of the development of the term
Sittlichkeit a contrast should be made with the notion of Moralität. This word
is understood by Hegel as individual morality as conceived in any other moral
theory in which the primary notions are duty and individual responsibility.
What I would like to set clear in my analysis of this two terms is that, although
Hegel grants that Moralität is a higher stage of dialectical development than
Sittlichkeit, he does considers an error
to regard Moralität as independent from Sittlichkeit.2
The
concept of ethical life is explained by Hegel introducing two stages of
development. At the beginning, and before it is fully developed, ethical life
is substance with out being Spirit and, more important, as Hegel argues in
paragraph 438 of the Phenomenology of the Spirit it lacks social existence as
“spiritual essence that is in and for itself, but which is not yet
consciousness of itself. “ It cannot be denied, and it is important to
clarify that Hegel's conception of ethical substance is the world of the
ancient Greeks, the polis. Not mistaken reference to the modern world should be
elaborated. With this in mind, lets mention the following Hegel quotations
regarding the concept of ethical substance: “ Thus what is object for consciousness has
the significance of being the True; it is and it is authoritative, in
the sense that it exists and is authoritative in and for itself. It is...
ethical substance; and consciousness of it is the ethical consciousness. Its
object is likewise for it the True, for it combines self-consciousness and
being in a single unity. It has the value of the Absolute, for
self-consciousness cannot and does not want any more to go beyond this object,
for in it, it is in communion with itself: it cannot, for it is all being and
all power; it does not want to, for it is the self or the will of this self” (paragraph 420). In paragraph 439, Hegel
labels out that “…the substance and the universal, self-identical, and
abiding essence, is the unmoved solid ground and starting-point for the action
of all, and it is their purpose and goal, the in-itself of every
self-consciousness expressed in thought”.
What
we can understand of the latter passages is basically that the notion of ethical
substance involves a conception of collective realite which is, much stronger
than the conception of society as the product of contractual relations
between individuals. In this context of ethical substance –seems to me-, we
have an ideal community where each grasps their own individual identity through
the law of the community or, in Hegelian terms, in the law of the Volk . This
condition of pure and strict Sittlichkeit dissolves, however, precisely because
it is merely immediate: Social agents experience custom and law as an absolute
given, as Hegel argues in paragraph 476:
“This downfall of the ethical substance and its changeover into
another Configuration is thus determined by the very fact that the ethical
consciousness is essentially oriented toward the law in an immediate manner.” Once the notion of ethical life is fully
developed, Spirit is more than ethical substance because is the actuality of
the substance, and therefore, the door is open to deliver a perspective
regarding the theory of civil society and view of the state.
Family,
Women and Sexual Desire
Yet,
although this is not the aim of Hegel’s effort in the Phenomenology, we find,
however, that the notion of the family holds a crucial position in Hegel’s
philosophy: it is the immediate phase of ethical life which in turn is the
third, and highest, stage in Hegel’s system. Hegel presents three different levels
through which individuals can move as they recognize their self-consciousness.
As I have argue in previous lines, these levels formulate the concept
"Sittlichkeit". The first, and lowest, is that of the family, where
the moment of the universal is emphasized over that of the particular. The
family is the first place where one can come to have any sense of self,
however, this moment is limited. A family member receives their identity through
being a member of the family. As Hegel claims in paragraph 451: “ …It seems
then, that the ethical principle must be placed in the relation of the
individual member of the Family to the whole Family as the Substance, so that
the End and content of what he does and actually is, is solely the Family.
“
In relation to the social
turn, Hegel labels out a recognition to the family as the most ancient of all
societies and the only one that is natural and, more important, the immediate
being of community practices, rituals and unspoken rules for every community
member. In order to explain the
transition from family to society, R. Salomon argues that Hegel points out a
tragic conflict between them -family and society- (pag. 494, of the work in the Spirit of Hegel) using the contradiction within the
Greek world articulated in Sophocles' Antigone; that is, between Divine Law
(natural relationships, family) and Human Law (purely social relationships).
Although the purpose of this
essay is not to address the perspective regarding the problem of male
domination over the female gender, an honest effort in addressing Hegel’s
perspective over the concept of Family cannot avoid mentioning how the
philosophical dominant paradigm in Western history has influenced academia. As
one of the mayor influences in the world of philosophy, it is not possible to
denied that Hegel was strongly influenced by the beliefs and social
expectations of his time: He sees
society as a social entity composed of a man and a woman since he acknowledges
that the masculine and feminine roles are set by nature and fix for eternity.
This is argued in paragraph 466, with a very obscure language: “Now,
because, on the one hand, the ethical order essentially consist in this
immediate firmness of decision, and for that reason, there is for consciousness
essentially only one law…”. This
heterosexual perspective of the family can also be found in the in a very
interesting quote from the Phenomenology of Right, where Hegel labels out that: ‘The unity of marriage, which in substance is
merely inwardness and disposition but in existence is divided between the two
subjects, itself becomes in the children an existence which has being for
itself, and an object which they love as their love and their substantial
existence.”3
Along
with the notion of the family, Hegel’s approach over the concept of desire and
women seems to me extremely interesting. In the case of the notion of desire, Hegelian
philosophy recognizes that we can be aware of ourselves only when others are
conscious of us – this is the main lesson of the master-slave dialectic-: The master
is a master only when the slave desires to be master. This Hegelian perspective
might also explain the reality of the sexual desire (of course, after a strong
hermeneutical effort), nevertheless, when desiring to control over the other in
the sexual relation, then sexual desire becomes into something like the
Hegelian model of power. And the notion of sexual desire cannot be separated
from Hegel attitude toward women. There are four sequential figures of women in
the Phenomenology of the Spirit: a) Antigone, the virgin that does not
represent the erotic female other; b) the sexually seductive woman (the erotic
other is seen as necessary for procreation yet understood as disruptive and
destructive), c) the serving girl (Das Mädchen) and d), Mary, the Virgin Mother
of Christianity which is seen as a non-erotic woman. It seems very interesting
to note that, at least for 2 of the female figures in the Hegelian Philosophy,
the lack of an erotic desire in the figure of the women is the main element
that provides, either the ethical consciousness (as in the case of Antigone)
or, the servitude capacity to das Mädchen to serve men because
her erotic force is dormant. It seems also interesting the conclusion in which
the feminine eros is seen as difficulty for man, if not to say, to male
philosophers.
It
cannot be more clear after an objective reading of the Phenomenology of the
Spirit what Hegel claims about women; basically, that since the community only
gets an existence through its interference with the happiness of the Family,
and by dissolving self- consciousness into the universal, it creates for itself
what it suppresses and what is at the same time essential to it an internal
enemy. As Hegel itself argues: “…The
community, however, can only maintain itself by suppressing this spirit of
individualism, and, because it is an essential moment, all the same creates it
as a hostile principle…” (paragraph 475). It seems not only pathetic that in the
context of the Hegelian philosophy, women are not allowed to enter civil
society to interact, they cannot then their self-conscious being. Yet, the
situation of men is completely different, as Hegel labels out on paragraph 460 “…The
husband is sent out by the Spirit of the Family into the community in which he
finds his self conscious being”. Faithful
to his style, Hegel points out when making an interpretation of Sofocles
tragedy Antigone; that the conflict Antigone suffers “makes
her aware of her self-conscious, and this conflict is not between human and
divine law, but rather, to sets of obligations, two notions of justice.” Yet,
if we make a serious reading of Hegel’s interpretation of the Antigone, “ in the Hegelian schema woman cannot achieve the
self-consciousness of the slave since she does not experience the two central
elements of slave consciousness….. personal fear of death …. work on nature as
thinghood. … woman is represented as
someone that does not do anything and therefore
achieves no universal recognition of her actions” . 4
Conclusion.
Hegel’s
agenda over the concepts of Family, Sexual desire and Women is fully developed
in the work The Phenomenology of Right,
a work that was published 15 years after the first appearance of the
Phenomenology of the Spirit. The manner in which Hegel writes in the
Phenomenology of Right holds a stronger political aroma, and the political
connotations of his approach over the latter concepts is wide clear. Much more contemporary
authors, like Jacques Derrida have taken the effort of including in their
methodology Hegel’s interpretation regarding this notions. As one of the most
important and influential system of philosophy, the methodology proposed by
G.W. Hegel and his dealing of the socio-economic phenomena (even in a mayor
work where the main purpose is to explain how we became aware of our
consciousness ) are of considerable importance and they consist a mayor
challenge for the amateur scholar.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.