Ethical Realm: Hegel
Woman, like man, is for Hegel an ethical being. Just as man enters into an ethical community when he identifies himself as a citizen, so too the family is an ethical whole in terms of which each member, including woman, defines her or his identity. Participation in the family as well as the state constitutes a relationship with the universal, and thus through such identification one enters the ethical realm. In regard to the family, Hegel explains that although the Family is immediately determined as an ethical being, it is within itself an ethical entity only so far as it is not the natural relationship of its members, or so far as their connection is an immediate connection of separate, actual individuals; for the ethical principle is intrinsically universal, and this natural relationship is just as much a spiritual one, and it is only as a spiritual entity that it is ethical.

In other words, the ethical dimension of the family arises from an identity that is not a "natural" relationship, that is, according to Hegel, not one of feeling or the relationship of love. research paper writing services - get custom research paper written from scratch by trusted writers! Rather, individuals must identify with the family itself, making the family rather than one's connections to particular individuals the end and content of one's actions. "It is not a question of this particular husband, this particular child, but simply of husband and children generally." 44 In this way one participates in the universal. Woman, thus, through her participation in the family, enters the ethical dimension. Hegel, however, clearly perceives the law of the state, human law, as superior to that of the family, divine law. The scope of human law is the society as a whole, not simply the individual family. Man, through entrance into the polis, obtains knowledge of the universal. Woman, although possessing the highest intuitive awareness of what is ethical, does not attain to consciousness of it. It is human law that Hegel identifies with the universal spirit.

The Family, as the unconscious, still inner Notion [of the ethical order], stands opposed to its actual, self-conscious existence; as the element of the nation's actual existence, it stands opposed to the nation itself; as the immediate being of the ethical order, it stands over against that order which shapes and maintains itself by working for the universal; the Penates [household gods of blood and kinship] stand opposed to the universal Spirit.