Original scientific paper
CONTRIBUTION TO THE GENEALOGY OF HEGEL’S CONCEPTION OF CIVIL SOCIETY
Domagoj Vujeva
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The starting point in this article is Hegel’s mature understanding of civil society
as the birthplace of the modern meaning of the concept. Since this understanding
is primarily the consequence of Hegel’s coming to terms with political
economy, the author problematizes Hegel’s first attempt at incorporating
modern economic topics into ethical totality in the 1802 Article on Natural
Law. It is shown how the fundamental paradox of the first variety of Hegel’s
science of the state is his effort to renew the classical natural law framework
in circumstances of modern economic and political life. It is for this reason
that Hegel fails to see the full extent of the emancipatory potential and the
specifically modern character of the system of economic and private-legal interdependence
of individuals, thus, on the one hand, interpreting these as the
consequence of the disintegration of antique ethical life while, on the other
hand, in the construction of ethical totality, placing its members in the estate
of the unfree. It is precisely due to this historical point of origin of these systems
and the ways they incorporate into ethical totality that the article on natural
law, concludes the author, cannot be seen as the place where Hegel finally
formulated his theory of civil society.
Keywords
Hegel; civil society; natural law; ethical life; political economy
Hrčak ID:
50942
URI
Publication date:
12.3.2010.
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