Great IdeasLiving together

Family and home

Parents and children, marriage and the household.

The question

What is a family for, and what do parents and children owe each other?

The stops on a time line 9 stops, from 725 BC to 1880. Each number is a stop below, placed at its year.
  1. 1 Homer 725 BC
  2. 2 Plato 375 BC
  3. 3 Aristotle 335 BC
  4. 4 William Shakespeare 1595
  5. 5 William Shakespeare 1606
  6. 6 G. W. F. Hegel 1820
  7. 7 Leo Tolstoy 1869
  8. 8 Henrik Ibsen 1879
  9. 9 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880

How the books answer

Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.

  1. c. 725 BC (from older oral poetry)

    Homer, The Odyssey

    Odysseus spends ten years trying to get home to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. Penelope stays loyal, and Telemachus grows up looking for his father. When Odysseus finally arrives in disguise, his old dog Argos is the first to know him.

    “As soon as he saw Ulysses standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master.”

    Go to the rung: Homer: The Odyssey

  2. c. 375 BC

    Plato, The Republic, Books I–V

    In his ideal city, Plato proposes that the guardians should have no private families, so they will treat the whole city as their family. It is one of his most startling ideas. Even ancient readers found it hard to accept.

    Go to the rung: Plato: The Republic, Books I–V

  3. c. 340–322 BC

    Aristotle, Politics and The Athenian Constitution

    Aristotle answers Plato that the family is the first natural community, out of which villages and cities grow. Sharing everything would weaken love, he argues, because what belongs to everyone is cared for by no one. A city needs real families.

    Go to the rung: Aristotle: Politics

  4. c. 1595

    William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

    Two families in Verona are locked in an old feud. Their children fall in love and marry in secret, and the hatred between the houses leads to their deaths. Only then do the parents end the feud, too late.

    “Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

    William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, the Prologue. (First printed in quarto, 1597). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

  5. c. 1605–1606

    William Shakespeare, King Lear

    Old King Lear divides his kingdom among the daughters who flatter him most and banishes Cordelia, who loves him truly but will not flatter. The flatterers then turn on him. The play is about what children and parents owe each other, and about forgiveness that comes almost too late.

    “How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!”

    William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I, scene 4 (Lear, of Goneril). (First printed in the First Folio, 1623). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Shakespeare: King Lear

  6. 1820

    G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right

    Hegel sees the family as the first place where people live in unity through love. Children are raised there to become free, independent adults. Then they leave to form families of their own.

    Go to the rung: Hegel: The Philosophy of Right

  7. 1865–1869

    Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

    Tolstoy follows several families through war and peace, above all the lively Rostovs. Their love, quarrels, losses and new marriages carry the story. In the end the novel finds much of life's meaning in family and home.

    Go to the rung: Tolstoy: War and Peace

  8. 1879–1892

    Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House

    In A Doll's House, a family that looks happy rests on secrets and on a wife treated as a child. Ibsen asks what a marriage should be: a partnership of equals or something else. Many audiences of his day were shocked by the ending.

    “Before all else you are a wife and a mother.”

    Ibsen, A Doll's House, Act III. Translated by William Archer (Ibsen's Prose Dramas, ed. William Archer (Walter Scott, London), 1890). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Ibsen: The Plays

  9. 1879–1880

    Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

    Three very different brothers, a passionate soldier, a brilliant skeptic and a gentle novice, have a selfish father. Dostoevsky asks what we owe a parent who has failed us, and what brothers owe one another. Through Alyosha, he suggests that love and good memories of childhood can save a person.

    Go to the rung: Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

For young readers

A family is the people who take care of you and love you. Families come in many shapes. They give us food and a home, but also love, stories and someone to come home to.

In the great stories, families quarrel, forgive and help each other. Odysseus spent ten years trying to get back to his family. Even his old dog was waiting for him!

Talk about it

  • What makes your family special?
  • What do parents owe children? What do children owe parents?
  • Why do you think Cordelia wouldn't flatter her father?
  • Romeo and Juliet's families were fighting. How can families end a quarrel?
  • What is a family tradition you love?

Where else on the site

Every rung tagged with this idea:

These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.

@teddyrookbook GitHub Sources and credits