"Civil Society" Deduced from the Horse's Own
Mouth
(§181) The family disintegrates, in a natural manner and
essentially through the principle of personality, into a
PLURALITY of families whose relation to one another is in
general that of self-sufficient concrete persons and consequently
of an external kind. In other words, the moments which are bound
together in the unity of the family, as the ethical Idea which is
still in its concept, must be released from the concept to self-
sufficient reality. That is the stage of DIFFERENCE. To put it
first in abstract terms, this gives the determination of
PARTICULARITY which is related to UNIVERSALITY, but in such a way
that the latter is its basis -- though only still its INNER basis;
consequently, this universality is present only as a formal
APPEARANCE in the particular [auf formelle, in das Besondere
nur scheinende Weise]. This relation of reflection
accordingly represents in the first instance the loss of ethical
life; or, since the latter, as the essence, naturally APPEARS
[...], this relation constituted the WORLD OF APPEARANCE of the
ethical, i.e., CIVIL SOCIETY.
(regress)