Gender and the Ethical Given

Journal of Religious Ethics 41 (4):643-667 (2013)
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Abstract

G. W. F. Hegel's discussion of the Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit has provoked ongoing debate about his views on gender. This essay offers an interpretation of Hegel as condemning social arrangements that take the authoritativeness of identities and obligations to be natural or merely given. Hegel criticizes the ancient Greeks' understanding of both the human law and the divine law; in so doing, he provides resources for a critique of essentialist approaches to sex and gender. On this interpretation, Hegel views the conflict between Antigone and Creon as tragic because the gendered identities and obligations inherent to Greek Sittlichkeit are naturalized and withheld from scrutiny and revision. In the conclusion, I suggest how Hegel's criticisms pose a challenge to certain approaches to religious ethics

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Molly Farneth
Haverford College

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References found in this work

Natural law and natural rights.John Finnis - 1979 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Phenomenology of Spirit.G. W. F. Hegel & A. V. Miller - 1977 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (4):268-271.
Phenomenology of spirit.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - 1977 - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Edited by Arnold V. Miller & J. N. Findlay.

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