Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The German is bürgerliche Gesellschaft : 1. A Bürger was originally a defender of a castle ( Burg ), hence, from the twelfth century on, a town-dweller or townsman. It also means a ‘citizen’, but it retains its association with the French bourgeois , and suggests a contrast with the nobility and the clergy. Bourgeois comes from the cognate bourg , a ‘market town’ or ‘borough’. It is distinct from citoyen (from the Latin civis ), which Hegel uses when he wishes to specify the sense of a ‘citizen’ of a state . The adjective bürgerlich thus means ‘civil, civic’ (as in ‘civil law, rights’ and ‘civic duty’) and also ‘middle-class, bourgeois’. In bürgerliche Gesellschaft , both senses are in play, but with a stress on the latter. 2. Gesellschaft (‘society’) comes from Geselle , originally someone who shared one's dwelling space, later a ‘companion, friend’, etc., but also a ‘journeyman’. A Gesellschaft is any amicable association, whether temporary (e.g. a ‘party’) or enduring (e.g. a commercial ‘company’). Since the fifteenth century it has been used for the ‘social order’. ( Gesellschaftswissenschaft is the same as Soziologie , but both words postdate Hegel.) Tönnies later distinguished Gesellschaft , a mechanical association based on self-interest, from Gemeinschaft (from gemein , ‘common’), an organic community based on shared values, affection, etc. ( Gemeinschaft ... log in or subscribe to read full text