The Crisis of Modern Marriages Through Hegel’s Philosophy.

By: Paula Camila Monoga.

Why half of marriages end in divorce?

Disclaimer: This content does not constitute legal advice and does not represent the views of the organization.

In recent decades, divorce has become a normalized feature of modern life, with nearly half of marriages ending in separation. It is increasingly common and even encouraged, which makes us wonder if marriage is just a complicated matter of human behaviour that we struggle to navigate, or if we might have shifted our ideas of love, freedom, and commitment. Perhaps we’re no longer clear on what marriage is meant to be. What’s the purpose of a marriage for you?

Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle viewed marriage as a foundational element of family organization, essential for procreation, child-rearing, and the harmony of the polis. Kant, another philosopher, conceptualized marriage as a legal contract between two individuals for the mutual use of faculties and bodies. Something convenient.  For Hegel, it is something more transcendent, perhaps even spiritual, beyond physical passion, legal contracts, or emotional bonds formed through shared life experiences;

For Hegel, marriage is an ethical institution grounded in shared values, mutual commitment and the active construction of a life in common. When the bond of a genuine ethical partnership functions as intended, both partners in the marriage are committed at a deep, authentic level, being able to acknowledge their physical desire, but also to understand that their connection goes above feelings to a deeper unity of values (Hegel, 1821)[1]

Values are the core beliefs that shape how we live, make decisions, and interpret the world around us. They influence what each partner considers right, fair, or meaningful. For Hegel, these shared values creates an ethical unity and an objective commitment that unites two wills towards a commons purpose. Thus, marriage becomes an ethical institution that contributes to the moral development of individuals and, ultimately, of society. In this ethical framework, an actual union is difficult to dissolve, as its dissolution would require the disappearance of the couple’s ethical unity.

This contrasts sharply with the vision of contemporary marriages, where the legal system and cultural context protects the individual freedom to marry and divorce at will, but it does little to cultivate a shared ethical framework that provides sight of the communal, ethical, and structuring dimensions of conjugal life. This free will tendency without a deeper understanding of values, rather than empowering individuals, deprives them of the importance of a shared normative framework that gives depth, meaning, and stability to a life together. As a result, many unions are founded merely on emotions, practical interests, or idealization, lacking any real ethical foundation and mutual recognition that could sustain a relationship, vulnerable to frustration and prone to dissolution.

This helps explain the growing frequency of divorce today; it’s common not because people lack the desire to connect, but because they start relationships without ethical reflection, under an individualist approach to love, ill-equipped to support a shared life. For instance, people choose to marry based on romantic attraction alone, without a common understanding of values. Partners may start pursuing different goals or lifestyles that can lead to conflict, such as one partner prioritizing career success while the other prioritizes family time. They start making decision that are not aligned with the other couple's understanding, and they may lose trust for each other. They may have different ideas on money, work, communication, parenting, family. They will not have the emotional intimacy, and this disconnection leave both individuals feeling lonely, unsupported, or even betrayed, especially in times of stress or important life decisions.

Marriage cannot be sustained by affection or convenience alone, it must be an equal institution, actively constructed through responsibility, listening, dialogue, mutual recognition, and a rational sustained common will to endure beyond emotional fluctuations, without any subordination from one side to imposed values[2]*, and with an idea of marriage grounded in shared ethical bonds.  The challenge for the system is not to legislate divorce more efficiently, but to rebuild the cultural meaning of marriage. Unless we recover this ethical vision, we will continue to witness a structural crisis in conjugal life and a broader devaluation of deep commitment. To reclaim the ethical meaning of marriage, and of divorce as its just dissolution, is to rethink how we want to live, love, and build community.

The ethical aspect of marriage consists in the parties’ consciousness of this unity as their substantive aim, and so in their love, trust, and common sharing of their entire existence as individuals. When the parties are in this frame of mind and their union is actual, their physical passion sinks to the level of a physical moment, destined to vanish in its very satisfaction. On the other hand, the spiritual bond of union secures its rights as the substance of marriage and thus rises, inherently indissoluble, to a plane above the contingency of passion and the transience of particular caprice[3] (Hegel, 1821). 

References

[1] Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, y G W F Hegel 1821.

[2] *It cannot be ignored that marriage, despite its ethical ideal, has historically been an unequal institution. In many traditional heterosexual contexts, women have been subordinated to men in the name of procreation, domestic peace, or the transmission of property.  See Divorce as emancipation from subordination.

[3] Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, y G W F Hegel 1821.