The “New” Private Sphere: Family as an Intimate Community of Feelings

Abstract

This monograph, written for the author’s university habilitation, is intended to contribute to the reconstruction of modern political philosophy. The concept of family as understood by Rousseau forms the central point for the text’s departure; the text reads Rousseau’s writings in terms of their approach to gender constructions and bourgeois gender order. The basic concern of the study is to examine bourgeois sensibilities with regard to their primary interest in the private sphere and placed in the context of modern philosophical musings on social contract theory. The author argues that Rousseau must be granted a “key position” in the history of bourgeois gender and family order (9). He introduced and solidified the separation between the private and the public spheres.