| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation examines sexual difference in its logical, natural, and spiritual iterations throughout Hegel’s Encyclopedia system, in light of the fact that no previous feminist interpretation of Hegel has adopted a systematic approach to sexual difference in Hegel’s mature work. I proceed as Hegel does, through logic, nature, and spirit, making general connections between the three phases of the system in preparation for the more specific discussions about the relationships between logical sexual difference, natural sexual difference and spiritual sexual difference. I argue that spiritual sex difference (marriage) is inadequate to the concept of sex difference (in speculative logic), which anticipates sex difference as a relationship (in nature and beyond) between two equal but different animals. As it turns out, marriage is a relationship between two incompatibly different beings, man and woman as akin to animal and plant. Marriage is thus a relationship of consumer (man/animal) to consumed (woman/plant). And since Hegel did not deduce plant nature in speculative logic, plants and, further along, women do not belong to the system at the conceptual level. The fact that the system seems to require both plants and women despite their tacit conceptual exclusion challenges Hegel’s notion of the concept and its predominance. | |
