Grudtsyna, L.Y. Philosophical and legal concept of civil society as a self-organizing social system from Hegel to our days.

Abstract: The object of studies in this article concerns nature of civil society as a self-organizing complicated social system, for which the development and quality transformation of elements (institutions) of this system causes new quality of the system itself according to the laws of synergy. If we suppose (within the Hegel interpretation) that the society includes the civil society institution plus state (generally interpreted), then everything, which is not state (its bodies, structures guaranteeing functioning of the state coercion mechanism, etc.) is civil society. And vice versa. What is not civil society is state. However, it is not the case in Russia. In our opinion there is now the third elements, which Hegel did not include into his formula by overly generalizing the construction in general. Everything outside the scope of state and civil society is a passive mass. Let us call it the “pre-level of civil society development”, which is mostly the object of state manipulation, and the state rules due to its silent consent. The author attempts to use scientific methods of synergy in order to provide an alternative to Hegel’s formula for distinguishing civil society and state, them being necessary complicated elements of a single social system, rather than two opposed systems differing in size. If one finds an antithesis to the Hegel’s formula (providing for the opposition between state and civil society as two opposing poles balancing each other in pursuit of harmony), the state shall be not a constituent element in a formula, but a result, a next stage of development of the self-organizing civil society as a dynamical system. The idea is imagined as an arithmetical progression, where the pre-level of the civil society is “mass”, the next level is civil society, which understands itself, develops and becomes more complicated, and the next level is the rule of law state as an ideal, which needs to be strived for. In this case the state becomes a result, and not an element in a formula. But such a formula should be more than just a simple sum of constituent element, but an arithmetical progression.

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