Reconciling Family and Freedom: Hegel and Contemporary Laws of Parental Authority

• Main Author: Hunziker, Peter
• Other Authors: Brudner, Alan
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Family Law; Legal Theory; 0398
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/25627

The law assigns to parents primary responsibility for their children and invests them with significant powers and discretion to discharge their duties. The considerable deference the law affords parents can appear to undermine important social and political values like equality, tolerance and social stability. The aim of this thesis is provide a rational account of why parents are invested with legal responsibility and authority over their children, and why the law limits state scrutiny of parental choice. To do so, I develop Hegel’s legal and political philosophy in order to show the family to be a necessary part of a system of institutions that constitute human freedom. As such, Hegel’s thought provides grounds to affirm the family, and broad scope of parental authority, even though the family constrains efforts to achieve equality of opportunity and can propagate intolerant and idiosyncratic values to subsequent generations.