THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

The standpoint of civil society seeks to explain and justify social institutions,
practices, and contractual agreements in terms of the desires of the individuals who
sustain them. It holds that individuals enter into various personal, institutional, and
economic relations in order to satisfy needs and desires that precede these relations. Thus
it explains society as the result of actions performed by self-interested individuals. It also
justifies society in similar terms. Existing social relations must satisfy the needs and
desires of the “individuals” or “private persons” who sustain them. Otherwise, they are
illegitimate or oppressive.
The conceptual articulation of civil society rests upon the rigid distinction
between the needs and desires of the private individual, on the one hand, and the
institutions, practices, and agreements that constitute social existence, on the other hand.
In Hegel’s discussion of civil society, three related dichotomies develop and express this
original distinction. These include: (1) the dichotomy between the natural and the social,
(2) the dichotomy between consumption and production, and (3) the dichotomy between
the private and the public good. In each case, the standpoint of civil society privileges
the first member of the dichotomy, and it explains and justifies the second member as a
means for achieving the first. Thus, for instance, many theories of civil society explain
and justify the development of society as a means for satisfying the pre-social needs and
“Its chief features are first that the persons comprising it, whether they are human individuals or
associations, have their own private ends which are either competing or independent, but not in any case
complementary. And second, institutions are not thought to have any value in themselves, the activity of
engaging in them not being counted as a good but if anything a burden. Thus each person assesses social
arrangements solely as a means to his private aim” (p. 521). A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971). Rawls
argues that his contract theory does not necessarily imply private society as the ideal. He argues that
humans “in fact…value their common institutions and activities as goods in themselves” (p. 522). Rawls
grounds this “fact” in human biology or psychology, in what he terms “the Aristotelian Principle.” One
corollary of this principle reads: “When men are secure in the enjoyment of the exercise of their own
powers, they are disposed to appreciate the perfections of others, especially when their several excellences
have an agreed place in a form of life the aims of which they all accept” (p. 523).
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