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Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3 |
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the French Revolution, and which gave rise to much literature exhibiting the conflict between love and lucre, was largely a revolt, particularly on the part of the women, against that state of things. The notion that the contracting of marriage unions should be determined by affection was regarded by conservative opinion as savouring of libertinism and immorality, and as tending to weaken the security of family ties and the stability of the institution's foundations. But a survey of the whole history of marriage shows that those economic motives were no less absolute in the most lowly societies as among the propertied European classes, and that all usages and regulations affecting marriage and family policies have been determined by economic conditions. For similar reasons parental affection toward female children was often scanty, and the joys of motherhood and fatherhood were not regarded as fully realised unless they had for their object a son and heir.
The European conception of that social group which holds such an important place in ideas of morality and of sociology that it has been constantly referred to as the foundation of society derives, like all European social and cultural concepts, from Rome. It is, indeed, noteworthy that a term denoting that social group does not exist in most non-European languages, and is entirely lacking in the languages of lower cultures. Familia derives from the Oscan, famus, a slave or servant, and denotes originally the whole of a man's possessions and chattel. "Familia", says Sir Henry Maine, "in classical Latinity, means always a man's slaves... In the language of Roman Law... the group consists of animate and inanimate property, of wife, children, slaves, land, and goods, all held together by subjection to the despotic authority of the eldest male of the eldest ascending line[1]" The term "family", by which the sacred social group is denoted, has thus in its origin a purely economic denotation.
In all juridic relations, the family is represented by its head, the other members of the family having no juridic authority. That authority of the head of the family is an essential part of the concept. A family group in which all members should be juridically equal and which could only act as a democratic whole would differ totally from the established notion of the family. Abolish the principle of authority, and you abolish the family. The expression, "the family is the foundation of society", thus really means that society is constituted by heads of families, that is, by owners of property. The aphorism is closely equivalent to the English political dictum that the body politic is constituted by
Max Horkheimer (Hrsg.): Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 3. Jg 1933, Heft 3. Librairie Felix Alcan, Paris 1933, Seite 357. Digitale Volltext-Ausgabe bei Wikisource, URL: https://de.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Seite:Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_Sozialforschung_Jahrgang_2_Heft_3.pdf/39&oldid=- (Version vom 31.5.2022)
- ↑ Ancient Law, p. 208; Early Institutions, p. 310.
