This is the second of three posts concerning three passages in the third section, “Children & Dissolution,” of the third chapter, “Ethics,” of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, a book I reread this Christmas.
The philosopher:
It should be noted that, on the whole, children love their parents less than their parants love them…
The commentator: From her deathbed, my mother looks up at me and I look away from her sad eyes: my love for her is nowhere near her love for me. Even here, in the middle of her final hours, I love her less than she loves me. My mother is leaving the world with the clear understanding that I will not miss her in the way she will miss me. I know this understanding because I love her grandson more than he loves me. When ever I look at him, try to look at his eyes directly, he turns away from this understanding—he could never love me with the same intensity. Not in him is the will to one day miss me as much as I will certainly miss him.
Maybe you should beat him so that he knows this disparity in love at an early age
Damn, that may be the truest thing I’ve ever seen you post.
I think that parents love their offspring because in them parents are free to express a level of self-love that would otherwise be extremely repugnant- and would be more so if the offspring was a pure reflection of the parent instead of being the product of the parent and that parent’s partner.
The miracle of birth is not that a new life is brought into the world, it is that the parent has been able to change himself as a whole to himself as two or more parts while remaining whole.
A parent is beaming with pride at the sight of his child because of this accomplishment- he remains whole and yet there he stands looking down at himself, holding himself, loving himself.
This child arrives into the world with that gift. The gift of being able to love yourself in a way you never could before. What gift does the parent have to offer that compares with that?