Authors: Bobbio, Matteucci, Pasquino
Summary: The entry defines civil society and notes its relation to natural law, looks at how major thinkers such as Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Gramsci have understood the term, and considers the contemporary understanding of civil society.
According to natural law, civil society is to be understood in opposition with natural society. As such, it is often seen as synonymous with political society and the state. Such an approach holds that the State has its origins in the constitution of a common power, which guaranteed the protection of certain fundamental goods to its members, such as peace, freedom, property, security and so on. Because such goods are insecure in the state of nature, the desire to protect them represents a chief impetus for the formation of civil society.
The entry then considers how several major thinkers have understood civil society. Like other scholars, Rousseau considered civil society to be a synonym of civilized society, but he distinguished between civil society and political society or the state, which arises with the social contract. According to Hegel, civil society lies at the intermediate level of the objective spirit, between the superior one occupied by the state, and the inferior one occupied by the family. The passage from civil society to the state occurs when the separated parts of society, which come from the dissolution of the family, unify themselves into an organic totality.
According to Marx, civil society is a bourgeoisie structure, which constitutes the structure of economic relations. Thus the Marxian conception turns the traditional view upside down. For Marx civil society predates the state, with the same function that natural society had for natural law theorists.
According to Gramsci, civil society in its ideological and cultural aspects is part of the "superstructure." As such, his work builds on and in an important sense differs from that of Marx.
The entry concludes by considering civil society today. In the contemporary era, civil society represents the ground of economic, ideological, social, and religious conflicts, which the state must address or suppress.