Abstract

This paper offers an original interpretation of the concept of «patriarchy» by engaging with Kant’s marriage contract from the perspective of Hegel’s criticism. Based on the hypothesis that modern contractarian theories establish a brand-new analogy between the sexual and the social contract, the Author illustrates how Kant’s theory of marriage mirrors his construction of the Republic and produces the same contradiction, namely a structural gap between the individual will and the common will. In so doing, the Author suggests that the distinctive trait of patriarchal rule in the Kantian doctrine does not properly consist in a pre-emptive normative definition of sexual difference but in the formalistic gendering of a hierarchical relationship that paradoxically results from the postulate of absolute sexual equality.