ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the logical structure of the categorical syllogism strictly organises the Hegelian concept of the family and the related concepts of love, marriage, sexuality, family property, parenting and the law. Thought constructs syllogistic reasoning within the sphere of its freedom. The role of syllogistic reasoning is to unite the abstract categories of universality, particularity and individuality and to overcome their immediacy. The chapter offers a detailed account of both the objectively and the subjectively determined aspects of the categorical form of the syllogism. It explains a Hegelian understanding of the ethical significance of family life by returning time and again to the insights that one can draw from the structuring dynamic of the categorical form of the syllogism. Ethical love is necessarily intersubjective in the sense that it constitutes an objective universal essence that functions as loving beings’ substantive field of interaction.
