Suchergebnisse

In his main oeuvre from the field of political philosophy ('Basic Traits of the Philosophy of Right'), Hegel wished to reconcile civil society with state. Civil society is for Hegel the way of abstract notion of property concretization. Subjective form of property is evolutioning into objective relationships among title holders. It is in the state where the will is set free from its particular interests and is becoming free in the widest sense of the word. Since civil society is established as per marketing principles, it is subject to inequalities. Since inequalities bear destructive effect on the life in community, civic particularism may be overcome only in institutional way. That institution is the state as the 'seriousness of the spirit', and the essence of civil society. Civil society is a liberal one, and the state is based on liberal principles. For Hegel, contrary to Hobbes and Locke, liberal society is not a social contract among individuals who possessed some natural rights (property), but reciproque and equal agreement among citizens and states which wish to recognize themselves mutually. It is not an own interest, but searching for rational recognition. The same as citizens, states also wish to reconcile themselves mutually, what in the situation in Kosovo and Metohia alike gets the original form.

The paper analyses the class basis of the civil society in Serbia in the period of post-socialist transformation. The analysis is based on data from several empirical studies implemented by the Institute for Sociological Research of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade over the past twenty years, specifically in 1997, 2007 and 2012. The main objective of the analysis is to determine whether there is rootedness of civil society activities among the middle class. The basic hypothesis of the paper is that members of the middle class are the key actors of civil society in the entire period observed. Results of the analysis show that the members of the middle class have been holders of civil protests during the period of blocked transformation - almost the only phenomenal manifestation of the civil society in Serbia in the 1990s. On the other hand, research findings from 2007 and 2012 indicated a significant decline of civic activism among all social groups, and the decline was most marked precisely among the middle class. Although members of the middle class, compared with other social groups, were still more willing to engage in civic activities, data show that the differences between social classes were not especially marked, and therefore we can talk only conditionally about rootedness of civil society activities among the middle class.