Civil Society: Theories, Contracts, and Assumptions

Features of Civil Society

Civil society designates the mode of organization and structure of society at a particular time of development, existing between the family and the state, within which social groups are displayed.

Marx and Hegel:

Represents the space for expression and the satisfaction of the needs of individuals.

Material covers the exchange of individuals, encompassing all commercial and industrial life.

Its organization is based on production and exchange.

Forms the basis of the state.

This is engineered and regulated by legislation, providing for social rights and civic duties.

Social Contract: Rousseau

Rousseau criticizes previous theories:

Hobbes believes that their form of contract, the contract of submission, denies the natural freedom of man and does not establish or allow political freedoms and civil rights.

Locke, Rousseau seeks a contract much more radical in which man may have the civil liberty of all their rights.

Rousseau says that man is born free and is chained.

Contract by Locke

1. Despite all the privileges they enjoy, man, by nature, is drawn into political society.
2. It needs an established and firm law known by men.
3. Every man is judge and executioner of the natural law; it is possible that resentment would take them too far.
4. It lacks in the state of nature a power powerful enough to support and sustain the verdict.

The Idea of Contract and Assumptions

To understand the different theories of contract, one must take into account the assumptions.

Only after the denial of the theocratic conception did the theory of contract emerge.

The modern state and its theory of law are closely linked to the affirmation of a natural right.

"This law does not depend on God and the eternal law, but the dictate of reason."

The question of whether man is or is not social by nature is of great interest. According to the answers, priority will be given to the state over the individuals or to the individuals over the state.

It is important to consider the relationship between political philosophy and methodology in knowledge and logic, which makes its way from the seventeenth century. It is the reduction and reconstruction from them to reach that genesis.

In this methodological framework, the concept of the state of nature makes sense. It designates a situation that is not phatic or empirical, a historical fact that was without doubt and to be remembered with nostalgia.

Contractualist theories face a simple task:

• Thinking over the state of nature to the socio-political community
• Thinking of incorporation and the state and the bond that is based
• Establish the conditions and limits on the exercise of power by the state