ABSTRACT

ELEMENTS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT (1821)* The one [sex] is therefore spirituality which divides itself up into personal sufficiency with being fo r itself and the knowledge and volition of free universality, i.e. into the self-consciousness of con­ceptual thought and the volition of the objective and ultimate end. And the other is spirituality which maintains itself in unity as knowledge and volition of the substantial in the form of concrete individuality and feeling. In its external relations, the former is powerful and active, the latter passive and subjective. Man there­fore has his actual substantial life in the state, in learning, etc., and otherwise in work and struggle with the external world and with himself, so that it is only through his division that he fights his way to self-sufficient unity with himself. In the family, he has a peaceful intuition of this unity, and an emotive and subjective ethical life. Woman, however, has her substantial vocation in the family, and her ethicakdisposition consists in this [family] piety.