Familiens etikk

Abstract

The Ethical Family. A Doll's House in the light of Hegel's philosophy of right. In this paper I intend to establish a link between Ibsen's play The Doll's House and Hegel's theory of the modern bourgeois family, such as expressed in The Philosophy of Right (1821). The play will be read as a moral critique of the bourgeois marriage, in which Ibsen, through Nora's revolt, shows the inadequacy of Hegel's consept of marriage as ethical love. The main point is that the ethical value of the family cannot be maintained in an institution in which the wife is not recognized as a moral subject. Ibsen's critique makes use of key concepts in Hegel's philosophy of right, such as the dichotomy of ethical life vs. morality and the dichotomy of family vs. civil society. It questions Hegel's opinion that the education of children, as a joint effort, makes marriage into a relationship based on mutual recognition.

Keywords

• Henrik Ibsen
• A Doll's House
• Hegel's philosophy of right
• family
• ethics
• the education of children