Pravednost i civilno drustvo

In: Politicka misao, Band 40, Heft 2, S. 3-20

Abstract

Ages ago, Plato understood justice as the purport & the essential purpose of the very existence of the state. Though Plato distinguishes between the political justice of the state & the personal justice of the individual soul, it was Aristotle who in his practical philosophy developed, apart from the general justice, an appropriate understanding of the special or particular justice & its significance for social progress. The first part of this paper deals with the different types of justice, & the second with civil society. In order to understand the contemporary theories of political justice & the roles of civil society in its realization, the author looks into the history of the European political thought & "civil society," since "civic" or "civil society" ("societas civilis"), was originally a political society. In modernity, Hegel began differentiating between the state as a political community & the "civil society" as a nonpolitical society; his intention was not to separate but to integrate them by means of the public scrutiny & the citizens' governance, Thus Hegel linked Locke's & Montesquieu's opposing definitions of the relationship between the civil society & the state. This is all the more important since Hegel's philosophy is often misinterpreted as the state totalitarianism since we overlook the dangers coming, especially today, both from the civil society reduced to economy & the absolute state, the dangers that Hegel, with his concept of customariness, detected & avoided. 11 References. Adapted from the source document.