civil society

Meanings

1. All of the institutions, voluntary organizations and corporate bodies that are less than the state but greater than the family.
2. Those things expected of a democratic society, such as free speech and human rights.
3. Organized, internally peaceful human society; civilization.

Etymology

From the archaic sense of civil, “peaceful and well-ordered”. Later senses of civil society reflect 19th-century Hegelian influence, as well as the earlier argument that tyrannical governments exist in the state of nature in relation to their subjects.