Concept
Civil Society
Also Known As burgerliche Gesellschaft
Civil society (burgerliche Gesellschaft) is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's term, given its lasting philosophical structure in Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), for the intermediate sphere of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) that stands between the family and the state. Where the family binds individuals together through sentiment and love, dissolving their separate particularity into a single unit, civil society treats its members as singular, self-identical individuals who enter freely into relationships external to their own particular ends, above all through the system of needs, the network of market exchange and legally regulated labor by which people depend on one another to satisfy wants they cannot meet alone. Hegel treats family and civil society as opposite but interlocking principles whose tension the state's own institutions are built to resolve, rather than as a sphere the state merely regulates from outside.
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Hegel gave civil society its modern philosophical structure in Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820).
Source Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Source Civil Society (Wikipedia)
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1. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, section 3.2.2 Philosophy of Subjective and Objective Spirit (Elements of the Philosophy of Right)
the market-based civil society is to be understood as dependent upon and in contrastive opposition with the more immediate form found in the institution of the family
- Associated With: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
View the Source Civil Society (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Thomas Hobbes, Body textQuote, Associated With: Thomas Hobbes, Body text
Thomas Hobbes underlined the need of a powerful state to maintain civility in society.
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