Abstract

Hegel stresses in his “Philosophy of Right” that the intention of the text is to offer elemnts in order to reckon a State as such and not to say how it should be. One of these elements is that the State founds and sustains the moments that precede and constitute it. In this way the family as much as the bourgeois civil society have their basis in something that results from them, i.e., the State but according to Hegel this result is already present at the very beginning of both family and the bourgeois civil society. The State promotes the overcoming of both of them. The aim of this essay is to consider the relationship between the State and the bourgeois civil society trying mainly to show how Hegel understands the bourgeois civil society and also identifying the perils for a State in the hands of the bourfeois civil society. For Hegel the greatest peril is the submission of the State to the interst as something of the common interest to the interest as common and to assume it as the rule for life within it