Thursday, May 04, 2006
(5:12 AM) | The Young Hegelian:
Three Slightly Jaundiced Views of Marriage
‘In their dumb uniformity all these families are the bare grave of freedom and true life. Does she make him happy, does she live wholly for him? Does he make her happy, is he all amiability? Are both never so happy as when one can sacrifice him- or herself for the other? O do not torture me, vision of the misery that dwells deep behind their joy, of the approaching end that only conjures up before them, as usual, this last illusion of life.’Schleiermacher, Monologues
‘Finally he does get the girl and some job or other, marries and becomes a Philistine like all the others; the wife runs the household, children inevitably arrive, the adored woman who initially was the Only one, the Angel, looks roughly like everyone else, the job involves work and unpleasantness, the marriage the burden of domestic life, and so it is that one ends up with the hangover that everyone else has.’
Hegel, Aesthetics
‘…a conjugal partnership of leaden boredom, known as “domestic bliss.”’
Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
