Civil society

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Second class waiting room by Carl d'Unker , approx. 1865, genre painting of the bourgeoisie in the 19th century, Düsseldorfer Malerschule

The term civil society was introduced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as a translation of the English term civil society into the German language and, in his legal philosophy, describes a stage of human community which he places at a development stage between family (lowest level) and state (highest level) . However, since the 19th century the term has seen numerous reinterpretations. Social History civil society called a European Social Formation of the late 18th and early 19th century with the beginning of industrialization , by the narrow layer of possession citizens ( bourgeoisie ) and the educated classes was marked. In addition, the term also referred to the social target utopia of civil society : a society made up of free, responsible citizens who regulate their personal and economic affairs freely and autonomously independently of the state and church .

Origin and development of the term

Hegel

In Hegel's Basic Lines of Philosophy of Law of 1820, civil society designates both a historical stage of human coexistence and a social sub-area between family and state. According to Hegel, civil society consists of the three elements A: system of needs, B: administration of justice, C: police and corporation. According to Reinhart Koselleck 's interpretation of Hegel, that society, which was dependent on the state but was economically independent and "pushed itself in between family and state, as it were," did not exist before the 19th century.

Cicero translations

From 1828 Georg Heinrich Moser used civil society as a loan translation of the Latin term societas civilis, as it appears above all in Cicero's De re publica and De legibus .

Quare cum lex sit civilis societatis vinculum, ius autem legis aequale, quo iure societas civium teneri potest, cum par non sit condicio civium? Si enim pecunias aequari non placet, si ingenia omnium paria esse non possunt, iura certe paria debent esse eorum inter se, qui sunt cives in eadem re publica. Quid est enim civitas nisi iuris societas civium ? . . .

... because the law is the bond that holds civil society together, but the right that everyone has through the law applies equally to everyone, how can civil society be held together by the law if the citizens do not all have the same powers ? For even if one does not want to introduce equality of property, the talents may not possibly be the same in all; so must the mutual rights at least be equal to those who are citizens in one and the same state? For what is a state, as an association [for the enjoyment of] equal rights?

Cicero understands the terms res publica and civitas as synonymous with the union of full citizens linked by the same law for the pursuit of common purposes. The Latin expression in turn represents a loan translation of the Greek term koinonia politike (κοινωνία πολιτικ,), as used by Aristotle in his politics and in Nicomachean ethics . In his work on politics, the "community" ( koinonia ) is equated with the political association of polis citizens , which is characterized by a series of norms and an ethos according to which full citizens live equally under the rule of law ( isonomy ). The telos or goal of koinonia politike is the good life (ὸ εὖ ζῆν tò eu zēn ) of the person who is defined as a political living being (ζῷον πολιτικόν zōon politikón ).

Since we see that every state ( polis ) is a community ( koinônia ) and every community exists for the sake of a good (because all beings do everything for the sake of what they think is good), it is clear that all communities are based on aim at any good, but most of all and towards the most important good of all, that which is the most important of all communities and includes all the rest in itself. This is the so-called state (polis) and the state community (koinônia politikê).

Although Cicero took to the concept of Aristotle respect, it was only part of the Western discourse, were translated as the works of Aristotle into Latin, for instance by William of Moerbeke and Leonardo Bruni , the name often used for the concept of res publica was used . With the distinction between monarchy and public law, the term was used more and more for the estates or for the feudal elite of the landlords who tried to present their power to that of the monarch.

The German name was introduced into the German-speaking world with the translation of Adam Ferguson's treatise on the history of civil society (original: 1767; first German translation: 1901). It stands for a form of society that is shaped by the bourgeoisie and characterizes society from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century.

Marx

For Karl Marx , the term civil society is as a translation of the French société bourgeoise used and referred to the economic conditions of a society by the bourgeoisie is dominated, or in the capitalist rules of production. Especially in the early writings of Karl Marx, which are more influenced by Hegel and German idealism than his mature economic work, civil society plays a central role. Examples of this are Zur Judenfrage , published in 1844, and Das Elend der Philosophie , published in French in 1847 and 1885, translated posthumously into German by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky . In this, Marx distinguishes civil society from the (political) state , which guarantees equal civil rights, and thus creates the legal basis for contractual exchange relationships between formally free and equal citizens in civil society.

Civil society and class society

According to Utz Haltern, the most differentiated analysis of the subgroups of civil society is in the French language: aristocracie financière, haute bourgeoisie, bonne bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie moyenne, bourgeoisie populaire . In English one differentiates: middle class, lower, upper, middle middle class. In German the civil society is upper middle class , lower middle class , middle class owned (roughly equivalent to the term bourgeoisie ) and educated middle class divided. All languages ​​share the idea that the top of the bourgeoisie, especially the upper class, belong to an " upper class ".

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Further development of the term in the context of the West German student movement of the 1960s
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See also

literature

Basic texts

  • Adam Ferguson : An Essay on the History of Civil Society. 1767.
    • German translation: Treatise on the history of civil society . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1901.
    • Newer German edition: attempt on the history of civil society . Frankfurt am Main 1986.
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : Basic lines of the philosophy of the law . Edited by Jürgen Hoffmeister. 4th edition. Felix Meiner, Hamburg 1955, second section: Civil society, §§ 192 to 256.

Further literature

  • Bert van den Brink, Willem van Reijen (ed.): Civil society, law and democracy . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • Frank Adloff: Civil Society. Theory and political practice . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Werner Fuchs-Heinritz et al. (Hrsg.): Lexicon for sociology. , 3rd edition Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1994.
  • Kocka, Jürgen (1988): Bourgeoisie and civil society in the 19th century: European developments and German peculiarities, In: Jürgen Kocka (Ed.): Bourgeoisie in the 19th century: Germany in European comparison. Volume 1, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich
  • Reinhard Markner: Civil society. In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Volume 2, Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1995, Sp. 380-394.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Daniel Kremers, Shunsuke Izuta: Change in the meaning of civil society or the misery of the history of ideas: An annotated translation of Hirata Kiyoaki's essay on the term shimin shakai by Antonio Gramsci (part 1) . In: David Chiavacci, Raji Steineck, Rafael Suter (eds.): Asian Studies - Études Asiatiques . tape 71 , no. 2 . De Gruyter, 2017, ISSN  0004-4717 , doi : 10.1515 / asia-2017-0044 .
  2. ↑ a b Federal Agency for Civic Education: Citizenship and Citizenship in Transition | bpb. Retrieved May 12, 2017 .
  3. ^ Arnd Bauerkämper: From civil society to civil society. Reflections on the organizations and practice of social engagement using the example of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries from a global historical perspective. 2010, ISBN 978-3-929619-60-1 , p. 3.
  4. ^ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Basic lines of the philosophy of law. Edited by Johannes Hoffmeister. Fourth edition. Felix Meiner, Hamburg 1955, §§ 182 to 256.
  5. ↑ Reinhart Koselleck: Conceptual stories. Studies on the semantics and pragmatics of political and social language. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2010, p. 407.
  6. ↑ Cicero, De re publica I 48, 49 https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/cicero/cstaat/cstaat1.html
  7. ↑ Aristotle Politics , Book 1 1252a1–6
  8. ^ Jean L. Cohen: Civil Society and Political Theory. MIT Press, 1994, pp. 84-85.
  9. ^ Bruno Blumenfeld: The Political Paul: Democracy and Kingship in Paul's Thought. Sheffield Academic Press, 2001, pp. 45-83.
  10. ↑ Michael Davis: The Politics of Philosophy: A Commentary on Aristotle's Politics. Rowman & Littlefield 1996, pp. 15-32.
  11. ↑ Politics, trans. by Olof Gigon http://www.philo.uni-saarland.de/people/analytic/strobach/alteseite/hroseminare/pol/politika.htm
  12. ^ Jean L. Cohen: Civil Society and Political Theory. MIT Press, 1994, p. 86.
  13. ↑ Werner Fuchs-Heinritz et al. (Ed.): Lexicon for Sociology. 3. Edition. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1994, p. 127.
  14. ↑ See the numerous references in the entry civil society. In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism. Volume 2. Argument, Hamburg 1995, Sp. 380-394.
  15. ^ Utz Haltern: Bürgerliche Gesellschaft: socio-theoretical and socio-historical aspects. (= Income from research. Volume 227). Scientific Buchges., Darmstadt 1985, ISBN 3-534-06854-8 . Quoted from: Jürgen Kocka: Bourgeoisie in the 19th Century: Germany in European Comparison; a selection. Goettingen 1995.