Christian Wolff: Natural right 7 – One big family

The penultimate volume of Wolff’s work on natural right ends with a study of a household, which combines all the three relations investigated thus far: that of a husband to a wife, that of parents to children and that of master to servant (or at least two of these relations). One might assume there is a certain feeling of unity among the various denizens of the household, but Wolff actually states that each member of the household needs merely to mind their own business and avoid being in the way of others when they are fulfilling their tasks. Indeed, he insists, the purpose of combining the different societies under the same roof is just to more effectively promote the welfare of each of the societies in isolation.

For Wolff, a household is not a society of equals. Indeed, he recognises two tiers: servants and the children form the lower tier, while the married couple – the lord and the lady of the house – form the upper tier. It is the duty of the married couple, Wolff states, to decide on the rules of the household and to administer its belongings. As we have seen, Wolff suggests that naturally the husband and the wife have an equal authority, but the marriage agreement might give the full authority to only one of them (well, Wolff does mention only the possibility that the authority is given to the male part of the union).

Whatever the power structure between the husband and the wife, Wolff insists that they should show a unified front toward the other members of the household. Thus, they should bolster up the authority of each other and avoid arguments or contempt of one another in front of either children or servants.

What interactions should the children and the servant then have? Wolff appears to say that as little as possible, beyond the common acts of humanity everyone should show to others. At least he insists that the lord and the lady of the house should take care that neither the servants corrupt the children nor the children the servants. This implies, Wolff argues, that the children should be kept out of the personal affairs of servants and vice versa.