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Western Political Thought

Notes of their own. The individual, at the end of the family relationship, had total freedom to dispose of
his property in a manner he deemed fit.
Hegel ended the discussion of the family when families grew to form parts of the larger civil
society. The disintegration of the family was a natural occurrence, and with it the larger formations
emerged. Here also, dialectics was in operation, as the unity of the family provided the ethical
basis of life, which, while disintegrating, captured the universal principles of life. The expansion
of the family was the key to the understanding of the larger formations like a nation or a federation
of different groups on a voluntary basis with a power centre. But the bases of this larger formation
remained the same : needs and reciprocity.
Civil Society

In the ethical connotation of Hegel, the important formation between the family and the state was
the arena of civil society, which he stated categorically was of modern origin. This was because of
the fact that the modern understanding of what constituted social was very different from the
ancient perception; for instance in Aristotle, civil society was identical with the political community.
Cicero described “civic” as an attribute of civility, or knowledge of civic affairs and prudence. In
Hegel, the nature and basis of civil society were very different from those of the family and the
state. The bases of the family were love and affection. On the other hand, the state was governed
competently and impartially by a universal class—the civil service. Civil society, for Hegel, reflected
a “system of needs” where the individual pursued his own interests according to his inclinations
and abilities. This was an achievement of the modern world, reflecting division of labour and the
actualization of a new science— political economy. This new science was of enormous importance,
as it had discovered the laws which governed an individual’s behaviour in civil society—the
major arena for the bulk of the people for the major part of their time. Hegel regarded the theories
of Smith and Ricardo as important as those of Kepler and Galileo.
Civil society, in Hegel, contained three different but interrelated things : (a) the system of needs,
(b) the administration of justice, and (c) need of police and cooperation. Regarding the first, Hegel
said that these were particular needs of particular individuals, which existed in contrast to universal
principles. They were subjective needs. Hegel argued that the needs of animals were limited in
scope, whereas those of human beings multiplied. Division of labour was one of the major means
of their attainment, as by this the individual’s work became simpler and his skill increased with
growth in output. They became interdependent, leading to a “dialectical advance” as self-interest
generated a situation where everyone else’s needs were also satisfied. The cumulative effects of
the particular motivations led to a universal minimum in which each person’s enjoyment led to
similar enjoyment by all others out of this complexity of interdependence. By education and the
skills of multitudes of people, the general wealth of civil society also increased.
Civil society inevitably got divided into various classes and estates. This division was bound to
take place because of the different levels of skills, outlooks, interests, ways of life, opportunities
and other factors like risk or fortune. The three broad groupings of the peasantry, the business
class and the universal class of bureaucracy mediated between the family and the state. The state
being very large and impersonal, the individual’s public spirit and feeling for the community had
to grow within the ambit of civil society. Hegel’s corporation was the mechanism to achieve this
by the flowering of professional associations and voluntary organizations. Here, Hegel sounded
like Tocqueville, and accepted that freedom of association was one of the key rights of the modern
world. Corporatism was to perform a number of crucial functions. It was an essential requirement
for actualizing freedom. He could even go to the extent of arguing that freedom of association was
more important than freedom of speech and opinion. Freedom of association was important for
furthering different human capacities and for identification of a particular individual for a particular
kind of grouping of one’s liking or interest. Associations helped not only in preventing over
centralization of the state but also in preventing fragmentation of the market at a particular level.

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