ABSTRACT
In the light of the ethical shortcomings of civil society mentioned above let me now consider the solutions to these which have been achieved in the system of democratic states.6 In what follows I am not recounting a story of how one institution replaced and improved upon another – that is, I am not giving an account of how civil society was replaced by the democratic state. Instead, it is an account of how, from our present point of view, with hindsight we can see how one social institution came to supplement and improve upon the ethical standings created in subordinate institutions. Throughout what follows it must be remembered that citizens in democratic states whom I am about to discuss are already civilians; that is, they are well-constituted participants in civil society. The ethical advances achieved through their becoming citizens in democratic states are only available to people who are already rights holders in civil society – to people who are already constituted as civilians.
