Gerasimenko D. The idea of the civil society (based on examples of Kant and Levinas)

This research focuses on the idea of civil society and its role in the history of philosophy and the subsequent impact on the formation and the development of the Western philosophical discourse. There is an analysis of the theoretical and methodological basis of the research on the idea of civil society as a fundamental concept of modern philosophical discourse, which is endowed with a lot of functions in relation to society, represented in the research. There are relationships with previous and subsequent streams, thinkers' concepts, confirming the historical conditioning of this category revealed in the work. The basic principles of the civil society are derived, in accordance with the thoughts of Kant and Levinas. There is a general criteria that is derived by the civil society that puts social groups in relation to the latter and makes their comparison with the ideas expressed by Kant and Levinas. It is proved that the approach based on Kant and Levinas' ideas of the civil society and patterns of social relationships derived from subject-subject interaction models, is relevant to the relation existing in the modern society. There were all possible vectors of development of the civil society investigated as a category that has gained an ideological importance for social life and underlined the role of Kant and Levinas' concepts in terms of determining the further development of the civil societ.