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4 - Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Adam Tooze
Affiliation:
Yale University
Quentin Skinner
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

In his programmatic essay of 1995 Paul Ginsborg sets out a choice to be made by those studying the modern European family and its relationship to politics. The choice, he argued, is between a dichotomous model descending from Aristotle and a tripartite model deriving from Hegel. The Aristotelian model revolves around a set of binary divisions between oikos and polis, between household and political sphere, a set of distinctions that derive ultimately from Aristotle's dualistic description of man as a ‘political animal’, both political and animal, that is. This dualism, Ginsborg argues, is too simple to capture the complex position of the family in modernity. Instead, he prefers a Hegelian tripartite scheme, which distinguishes between family, civil society and state. The state is constituted by law, the family by a bond of love. The economy, relegated by Aristotle to the household, is assigned by Hegel to a third sphere of civil society. Ginsborg does not rest here. In keeping with modern usage he makes a further distinction. Whereas in Hegel the economy and associational life are intermingled in the sphere of civil society, Ginsborg removes the economy to its own sphere and defines civil society essentially as what Habermas has taught us to call the ‘public sphere’. As Ginsborg makes clear, what is at stake in these differing models are fundamental conceptions of the social order.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • Germany
  • Edited by Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Families and States in Western Europe
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511852039.004
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  • Germany
  • Edited by Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Families and States in Western Europe
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511852039.004
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Germany
  • Edited by Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary University of London
  • Book: Families and States in Western Europe
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511852039.004
Available formats
×