Hegel, Antigone, and Women

Abstract

When Hegel turns to a treatment of culture in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology-as anyone who has read his early writings would expect[1]-he begins with the ancient Greek polis. There the human spirit first fully emancipated itself from nature as it had not, in Hegel's opinion, in Egypt; yet it was still in perfect harmony and balance with the natural. In Hegel's view, this was an age of beauty that produced a social community and an ethical life where citizens were free and at home. What is a bit surprising, though, is that in the Phenomenology Hegel does not begin his treatment of the ancient world with the heroes of Homer, the philosophers of Athens, or even with the general cultural perspective of men. He starts, in the section entitled "The Ethical Order," with Antigone and the perspective of women. It is quite true that the perspective of Antigone and of Greek women is constructed from the perspective of men, the perspective of Sophocles and of Hegel himself, nevertheless, it is still rather surprising that Hegel begins with Antigone. What does this mean? Could it mean that when we arrive at Greece, quintessentially the land of the master, Hegel insists on beginning with the slave? Is it fair to see Antigone as like the Hegelian slave? Many scholars-for example, Mills, Ravven, O'Brien, and Oliver-reject such a notion.[2] Nevertheless, Antigone is subordinate to Creon and does end up subverting him-much as the slave does the master. If we admit that women are like the slave, this would tend to suggest that while dominated and oppressed they will ultimately subvert the master, emerge as an equally significant principle, and move us toward a higher development of culture.[3] Could Hegel really be suggesting this sort of thing about women? We will be pushed toward such a conclusion if we decide that Antigone is like the slave. But the question as to why we begin with Antigone is even more complicated than this. Oliver argues that, after the section on the Ethical Order, women are simply left behind in the Phenomenology-they are never resuscitated and are not preserved in later stages of the dialectical movement.[4] I think that without a doubt women are not preserved or resuscitated adequately in the later stages of the Phenomenology, or in Hegel's thought in general, but I do not think that they are simply and completely left behind. Earlier, in Chapter V of the Phenomenology, Hegel took up a discussion of the Sittlichkeit of the ancient polis in order to contrast it to the sort of Moralität that had developed in the modern world. Moralität begins with Socrates[5] and reaches its high point in Kant. Moralität is rational and reflective morality. Individuals must themselves rationally decide what is moral and do it because reason tells them that it is the right thing to do. On the other hand, Sittlichkeit is best represented, for Hegel, in the Greek polis before the rise of Socratic Moralität. Sittlichkeit is ethical behavior grounded in custom and tradition and developed through habit and imitation in accordance...

Od nacistične Antigone do »antifašistične« etike svetosti

“…Hribar, 1991, 66) v Heglovem dialektičnem povzdignjenju Kreontovega položaja na Antigonino tragično raven vidijo znak apologetske drže do državne oblasti, drugi v njegovih orisih njunega konflikta zaznavajo angažirani subverzivni impulz (gl. Kain, 2002). Barvito raznolikost teh sodb verjetno lahko pripišemo dejstvu, da lahko -podobno kot pri Heideggerju -tudi pri Heglu govorimo o raznorodnih interpretativnih pristopih k Antigoni, ki preslikavajo nekatere širše konceptualne razlike med njihovimi nosilnimi deli (gl.…”