ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that feminist critiques of Hegel’s sexism can either call for a removal of the theory’s sexism or, when they take the problem to be ineliminable, they suggest that to engage with the theory is to study the internal workings of some inherently masculine concepts. Despite all the attention that has been given to Hegel’s work, his feminist critics have had little to say about the reason that Hegel gives in the Philosophy of Right for invoking the notion of sexual difference. The chapter shows why Hegel does not need to sexualise his notion of difference and argues that the notion of difference is introduced and preserved directly in the constitution of family members’ intersubjective personality. It also argues that the sexism and heteronormativity in the Philosophy of Right can be traced back to Hegel’s misidentification of the requirements of his own Logic.
