Joan B. Landes

Hegel's Conception of the Family

Hegel advances a theory of family life which takes account of the forms of consciousness of the modern world as well as its characteristic social practices. He attempts to forge a new unity between ethical and political life in the face of the social fragmentation that has accompanied the rise of modern economic relationships. The immense appeal of Hegels conception of the family, however, is marred according to Professor Landes by a series of internal contradictions concerning the relationships between the family and property, the family and love, the position of women, and the inevitability of the historical form of the family associated with the rise of industrial capitalism.

Marcuse's Feminist Dimension

Recently, Marcuse identified the womens liberation movement as “perhaps the most important and potentially the most radical political movement that we have.” He denied that feminism is simply a body of ideas about womens equality, intended “;for women only.” Rather, in his view, feminism recovers certain unfulfilled, Utopian visions within the socialist tradition. Feminism contains an image “not only of new social institutions, but also of a change in consciousness, of a change in the instinctual needs of men and women,” freed from the requirements of domination and exploitation. Feminism also challenges the classical theory of the revolutionary subject. Marcuse, therefore, regarded feminism as a critique of socialism, but one which can be incorporated within a more advanced socialist perspective.