本文之主旨在於探究現今公民與國家二者之間的相互關係，以及其各自所應扮演的角色。亞里斯多德的傳統公民觀視公民同時為統治者與被治者。此即彰顯每個個體皆必然隸屬於集體之中。然而自十七、十八世紀以降，國家與社會、公領域與私領域、自私與利他，以及理想與感情之二元區分，已成為西方近代國家的組織基礎。
但是公領域與私領域之區分於今逐步淡化。馬克思與黑格爾也早已認為此種區分有超越的必要。今日自由主義與全球化之趨勢更是逐日削減公領域之範圍，使公民角色漸為消費者之角色所取代。
面對此趨勢，國家應由傳統管制者的角色轉變為規制者之角色。而在國家逐步退出社會生活，人民再次由公權力之桎梏解放出來時，更需強調個體之道德感與友愛情操，以維繫整體之秩序及其存在。

The main purpose of this article is to study the mutual relation between the citizen and the state; and its role in our epoch. For Aristotle, a citizen is both governor and governrd. This classic version assumes that all individuals belonging to a historically developed community. Since the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the oppositions between the individual and the state, the private and the public, egotism and altruism, as well as between a life governed by reason and one governed by the passions, have constitutive of human existence in the Western modern state. Just like Kant asserted, the realm of the ethical is reserved for the private workings of inner life the public arena is the sphere of right, of mutual and rational consent to the individual and collective will of others.
But nowadays the distinction between the public and the private decline. Hegel and Marx, both, in different ways, have already sought to overcome this distinction between leaglity and morality, between juridical community and ethical life that was believed by Kant. The actual tendency of the globalization and liberalism enlarges the field of the market and reduces the role of the state. The role of the comsumer substitutes for the citizen.
Facing to this trend, it is necessary for the state to change its role from a controller to a regulator. The new emancipation of the subject from the public authority demands emphasis on the force of moral sentiments and Natural affections, which roots main in community.