Civil society (n.) is a sphere in which society passes over into the state through professional guilds which provide, on the one hand, an ethical connection and common direction between individuals, and on the other, a mediating link between the individual's particular life as person and subject, and the individual's common life as member of a universal society.
Civil society (n.) is a sphere of private contracts and economic exchanges where cold egoistic and calculative reason surpasses feelings (in contrast to the family where feelings surpass reason).
Civil society (n.) is a sphere of social interaction corresponds to economic life or the 'system of needs.'.
Civil society (n.) is a term that carries an ambiguity in that 'burgerliche' means both bourgeois and citizen. As such, civil society contains the individual both as bourgeois and as citizen.
Civil society (n.) is a true society, in which individuals acquire definite social identities, develop determinate ethical interests in the right well-being of others, and are driven to relate themselves to shared or collective ends.
Civil society (n.) is an association of members as self-subsistent individuals in a universality which, because of their selfsubsistence, is only formal.
Civil society (n.) is an essential component for ethical life because it is where particularity gets its due, it is where the right of individuals to their particular satisfaction manifest itself.
Civil society (n.) is defined by the modern economy, but it is far more than that... it is the realm of social and civil institutions by means of which individuals pursued ethical ends which went beyond their self-interest.
Civil society (n.) is made up not of citizens, but of the bourgeois, as they must obey coercive laws without recognizing, and without having public and official recognition of, their role in constituting legitimate law.
Civil society (n.) is not conceived as a sort of natural realm resulting from individuals pursuing their private desires through unconstrained participation in the open market.
Civil society (n.) is not merely the domain in wich desires are satisfied, it is also the space where the self is actualized.
Civil society (n.) is not simply a domain to satisfy the individual's contingent wants, rather it gives actuality to the individual's abstract self-image as a person and subject.
Civil society (n.) contains the individual both as bourgeois and as citizen.
Civil society (n.) is that domain in which the individual is self-actualized by limiting himself exclusively to one of the particular spheres of need and thereby acquiring a determinate mode of life, a dignity recognized by others, and determinate standards for measuring subjective self-worth. Without this, one's only identity in civil society is that of a free-lance hustler of what-ever commodities (including oneself) one has to offer in the market.
Civil society (n.) is the so-called 'state external': 'external'because it does not fulfill the requirements of political autonomy and because the state institutions in civil society, the administration of justice and the public authority, are viewed as mere instruments for achieving personal aims.
Civil society (n.) is the sphere in which subjective selfishness turns into a contribution towards the satisfaction of the needs of everyone else.
Civil society (n.) is the sphere within which individual self-interest could be reconciled with the demands of the community.