A Conceptual History of Civil Society:From Greek Beginnings

to the End of Marx

Boris DeWiel*

ABSTRACT: The idea ofcivil society has undergone a renaissancein recent years, but missing from this literature is an explanation forits historical transfonnation in meaning. Originally civil society wassynonymous with political society, but the common modem meaningemphasizes autonomy from the state. This paper traces this historicaltransfonnation within the context ofthe history ofideas, and suggeststhat the critical event was an eighteenth-century reaction againstthe rationalistic universalism associated with the FrenchEnlightenment. The continued significance of the question ofuniversalism is suggested by the fact that universalistic Marxist­Leninist theories provided the ideological underpinnings for thedestruction of civil society in Eastern European nations. The paperconcludes that three elements are essential to the modernunderstanding of civil society: its autonomy from the state, itsinterdependence with the state, and the pluralism of values, idealsand ways of life embodied in its institutions.

INTRODUCTION

Interest in the idea of civil society has been growing inrecent years. Contemporary discussions may be broadlycategorized into two schools of thought. The first is thepost-Marxist attempt to find a new foundation for socialistideals, broadly understood. Within this group, writers likeJohn Keane l seem to be moving towards a more liberalaccount, emphasizing the distinction between state andsociety, while others like Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato2

are more interested in ways to regulate civil society whileavoiding the dangers ofstatism and bureaucracy. A novelcontribution comes from Paul Hirst,3 who argues for a

Past Imperfect. Vol. 6, 1997, pp.3-42

4 Past Imperfect

plurality ofvoluntary socialist organizations within civilsociety, as an alternative to compulsoty socialism at thelevel of the state. Others, like Charles Taylor,4 believe inthe continuing relevance ofHegel. Besides these writersin English, a host ofothers have taken up the idea, includingtheorists in Asia, the Middle East, and post- communistEurope.s

A second group of theorists working on the idea ofcivil society may be categorized as belonging more ftrmlyin the liberal tradition. Writers like Seymour Martin Lipsetpoint out the importance of the pluralistic institutions ofcivil society to the viability of liberal democracy itself.6

This point has been strongly supported by Robert D.Putnam's study ofItalian democracy,7 which demonstratesan empirical connection between autonomous pluralisticassociations and successful democratic governance. Thecentral point seems to be that, as Tocqueville claimed, theseinstitutions are the arena in which people learn to trustothers with whom they have no blood tie. The notion oftrust also enters the account ofAdam B. Seligman,8 whoemphasizes the religious supposition ofuniversalism as aprecondition to Locke's idea of civil society.9 Finally,Edward Shils10 demonstrates that an ethic of civility isnecessaty between adherents ofthe variety ofways oflifewithin civil society. This civil ethic may ftll the role ofan"overlapping consensus," the ideal pursued by John Rawlsin his more recent work. II Generally for writers in theliberal tradition, the renewal of the idea of civil societymay hold the best answer to communitarian critics ofliberalism who charge that liberal ideology has led to theatomism and moral poverty ofmodern life.

But neither post-Marxist nor liberal democratic writershave provided an explanation for the historical emergenceof the modern idea of civil society itself. For example,Keanel2 describes various incarnations of the idea withinthe liberal tradition, but does not tty to explain why the

Civil Society 5

idea should have developed as it did. This paper will arguethat the critical event in the transfonnation ofcivil societyfrom a purely political idea into a primarily sociologicalconcept was an eighteenth century reaction against therationalism ofthe French Enlightenment.

The original idea of civil society, as equivalent inmeaning to political society, will be traced from antiquityto the Enlightenment. It will be further shown that afterthe Enlightenment, as part of the reaction against it, themeaning ofcivil society began to change. The shift awayfrom the conception of civil and political society assynonymous, toward the modern idea of civil society asdistinct from the state, will be shown to originate withvarious writers in the eighteenth century, each of whomwrote in reaction against the rationalistic universalismassociated with the Enlightenment.

With this reaction emerged the idea of each nation asthe home of a particular people, in the ethnographic orsociological sense; that is, a cultural group with its ownorganizing traditions, mores and ethos. This idea of asociety as a people was the prerequisite for the modemconcept ofcivil society as a unique entity apart from thestate. Finally, the tradition of thinkers whose theories ledto the dissolution of the distinction between state andsociety will be examined. By returning to universalisticpretensions, these writers, from Hegel to Marx to Lenin,provided the essential ideological justification for thedestruction ofthe autonomous institutions ofcivil societyin Eastern European nations.

The approach taken in this paper is to focus on thehistory of ideas. While it is beyond the scope of thisdiscussion to trace the fun range ofsocial, economic andpolitical causes that contributed to the evolution of theidea of civil society, it should be remembered that ideasdo not exist in isolation from events. The reaction againstrationalism, for example, was part ofthe broader reaction

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against the French dominance ofpolitical, intellectual andsocial life in eighteenth century continental Europe. Thisfact is essential in understanding the ideas ofHerder andhis German followers, who sought sources ofuniquenessin their own culture. A full explanation for the modemidea ofcivil society also would include the growing powerofthe independent bourgeois class that emerged with theindustrial revolution, a development which was central toHegel's, and then Marx's, concept of civil society. Inaddition, the religious wars ofseventeenth-century Englandled thinkers like Locke to see the need for tolerance of arange of conflicting ways of life. The recognition of theinevitability ofconflict underlies liberal constitutionalismand the ideal of the limited state, which opened the spacefor an independent civil society to flourish. 13 However,while these political, economic and social events shouldbe kept in mind as providing the context for the conceptualhistory discussed here, this paper will be limited to adiscussion ofthe evolution ofthe concept ofcivil societyitself.

ANCIENT ROOTS

The first attempts to answer the basic questions ofpoliticalphilosophy have been traced with certainty no further thanthe fifth century B.C. 14 The Sophists are commonlycredited as the first to discuss these issues. 15 These itinerantteachers were united less by a set ofcommon beliefs thanby their vocation and methods, but they did share therevolutionary doctrine that virtue could be taught. Thismeant that anyone with a suitable education could beentrusted with political power. Thus the Sophist Protagorasappears to have been the first to discuss the underlyingtenets ofdemocratic theory.16 Another Sophist innovationwas the idea ofprogress, held in contrast to the prevailingHellenistic doctrine that history was cyclical, or

Civil Society 7

alternatively that the golden age lay in the past. The idea ofprogress led Critias, who was both a Sophist and astudent ofSocrates, to the beliefthat mankind could emerge from sav­agery onlythrough the instrumentofthe civil stateand its legalsanctions,17 a view that would reappear much later withHobbes.

Among the Sophists' rhetorical techniques was thedialectical method ofdrawing out the contradictions withinpopular ideas. The best known example of Sophistdialectics is the tension between natural and conventionalcriteria ofright and wrong. This foreshadowed the debatebetween theorists ofnatural versus positive law. A centuryafter the height ofthe Sophists' influence, the Stoics wouldsuggest a resolution to this tension in favour of naturallaw, a doctrine that would be taken up much later yet byLocke, via Cicero and Aquinas, in his departure fromHobbes. By providing moral principles for society that arelogically and historically prior to the state, Lockean naturallaw would become one ofthe necessary conditions ofthedistinction between state and society.

Aristotle is credited with the first usage of the termcivil society, although his meaning has been distorted subtlyin the translation from Greek to Latin and then to English.The Greek phrase used by Aristotle, at the outset of hisPolitics, was koinoniapolitike. 'B The noun, koinonia, hasbeen translated by Liddell and Scott as "communion,association, partnership,"19 and according to Riedel,"means nothing else than association, union."20 Thecommon rendering into Latin was societas orcommunitas.With this transition, the word began to take on new shadesofmeaning, becoming somewhat closer to what we todaymean by society or community. But it is important to notethat these words in their Greek and Latin meaning, and intheir early English usage as discussed below, had none ofthe sense of "the people" as a cultural group, as weunderstand the terms today. For the Ancients, the idea of

8 Past Imperfect

culture in this sense did not exist, as we will see, and wasnot implied by words like koinonia and societas.

The adjective,poUtik€, is a derivative ofpolis. Apo/isis in general a Greek civic republic, but more preciselymeans the city as a political community. Originally, thepolis referred only to the citadel at the centre ofthe Greekcity, like the Athenian Acropolis, while the asty was theresidential area surrounding it. Butpolis in time came tomean the inhabitants ofthe city and its close environs as asingle organized political unit.21 The adjectival form ofpolis, politik€, "signifies the theory (or rather the art) ofthe common life of the polis and the betterment of thatlife.''22 In the Latin translation,politikebecame civilis, anadjective pertaining to a member ofa city-or originally,a resident ofa citadel; hence the word citizen. This seemsto mirror the Greek derivation, so the translation hereseems straightforward, without significant change ofmeaning.

So koinonia politikewas translated by writers ofLatinas societas civilis, and thus in English became civil society.But a more literal translation ofAristotle's phrase wouldbe political community or political association. Indeed thetranslation ofPolitics by Benjamin lowett23 used the firstof these alternatives, while that ofErnest Barker used thesecond. Barker's term, association, better capturedAristotle's belief that politics was the deliberate andpurposeful activity of self-organization in an effort toachieve common ends. Thus Aristotle's koinonia politikeis best translated as political association.

As its etymology shows, civil society for Aristotle wasidentified with the polis itself. Aristotle saw the politicalorganization of the polis as natural, arising through theintermediate stages of the household and the village. ForAristotle, man was naturally a political animal, but theadjective had none of today's pejorative sense. Aristotlewrote that there was "an immanent impulse in all men

elv" Society 9

towards an association of this order"24-the order, thatis, ofthe polis in which human life has reached its highestsocial fonn.

For Aristotle, all associations were purposeful-theyexisted because their members had common ends. Whilemany kinds of associations existed, political associationwas the highest fonn, encompassing and prevailing overall others, because political ends were the highest ends ofman.2S This theme was repeated in the NicomacheanEthics.

Now all forms of community are like parts of thepolitical community; for men journey together with aview to some particular advantage, and to providesomething that they need for the purposes oflife; and itis for the sake ofadvantage that the political communitytoo seems both to have come together originally and toendure, for this is what legislators aim at, and they calljust that which is to the common advantage. Now theother communities aim at advantage bit by bit, e.g.sailors at what is advantageous on a voyage with aviewto making money or something of the kind, fellow­soldiers at what is advantageous in war, whether it iswealth or victory or the taking ofa city that they seek,and members oftribes and demes26 act similarly (Somecommunities seem to arise for the sake ofpleasure, viz.religious guilds and social clubs; for these existrespectively for the sake of offering sacrifice and ofcompanionship. But all these seem to fall under thepolitical community; for it aims not at present advantagebut at what is advantageous for life as a whole), ....All the communities, then, seem to be parts of thepolitical community.21

Aristotle recognized sub-communities within thepolis,but the polis itself was supreme. However, this passage

10 Past Imperfect

shows that other forms of association were notincompatible with citizenship in Aristotle's account.

His idea of the polis as an association based on sharedends suggests the idea ofa social contract. This is explicitin another passage from the Ethics: "Every form offriendship, then, involves association, as has been said ...Those of fellow-citizens, fellow-tribesmen, fellow­voyagers, and the like . . . seem to rest on a sort ofcompact."28 The social contract would become a centraltheme ofpolitical philosophy much later, but the idea wasknown in Aristotle's time. It has been traced as far as theSophist Lycophron, and was familiar to Aristotle's teacher,Plato.29

If, for Aristotle, civil society was inherently political,the distinction between state and society also had ancientroots, including the Stoic idea ofuniversal natural law. Inthe Christian era, natural law would become associatedwith God-given powers of reason, leading to the age ofrationalism. Religious faith itselfwould become importantas a locus ofresistance against the state with the historicrise of liberalism itself, particularly in the religious warsthat followed the Reformation.3o Seeds of this resistanceappeared in Jesus' answer to the Pharisees' question aboutwhether it was right to pay Roman taxes. His reply­"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which areCaesar's; and unto God the things that are God's"-impliedthat church and state involve separate realms oflife. Thisdistinction would be formalized by Aquinas as thesacerdotum and regnum, respectively the jurisdictions ofthe sacred and the secular, within the respublica christiana,or Christian society. For Aquinas, while these categorieswere conceptually distinct, iftheir interests should conflict,the state should be subordinate to the church-theEmperor should bow to the Pope.31 Religious authority,in contrast to that of the state, would become central tothe natural law doctrine of Locke.

Civil Society 11

FROM HOOKER TO HOBBES TO LOCKE

The conception of"the people" as an independent entityhaving an autonomous purpose and identity was alreadypresent in the Old Testament. As Laslett observed, theidea was implicit in "the Judaic sense ofthe chosen people,the people led by the hand ofGod through the wildernessbecause they had an enduring pwpose and being. WheneverChristian political theorists thought ofthe people as havinga voice in the appointment ofa king or a regime, or oftheking as having a duty to his people, their model was thepeculiarpeople ofIsrael."32 This conception ofthe peopleas a single entity would become central to the modemidea ofcivil society as a zone ofautonomy apart from thestate.3]

But early usage of "society" did not have thisconnotation. It had none of the sense in which we todaymight speak of "the norms of Victorian society" or "'thehistory ofWestem society," denoting aparticular people,joined by common mores and culture. As we will see, thissense would emerge only as a reaction against theuniversalizing rationalism ofthe Enlightenment. In earlyusage, society meant association with one's fellows, as inthe phrase, ""People naturally seek the society ofothers."Still in its early form, the word came to include a collective,concrete sense, as in, "People naturally desire to create asociety."34 But in these usages there was none of themodem sense ofa society as "a people," a singular entitydefined by common culture, language, geography, history,and so on. (The agricultural origin of the word "culture"suggests this organic sense of orderly growth-a peopleas a single entity arising naturally from its own historicalsoil.)35 This modem connotation ofa society as culturallydefined-an orderly whole, self-organized according toits own unique mores and customs-is crucial to thecontemporary idea ofcivil society as distinct from the state.

12 Past Imperfect

It is important to see that the early English politicalwriters did not make the distinction between state andsociety. Before the Enlightenment, in the era of Hooker,Hobbes, and Locke, political society and civil society wereinterchangeable phrases. For these writers, civil societywas a political union based on an implicit consensualarrangement. Before such political union or civil society,there was only the state ofnature.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives Shakespeare'sprologue to Romeo andJuliet as the first English usage of"civil" in the relevant sense,J6 closely followed by RichardHooker's Laws ofEcclesiastical Polity: "Civil Society dothmore content the nature of man than any private kind ofsolitary living."37 The Aristotelian sense of man as apolitical or social animal is clear here-civil society forHooker was political society. Hooker took from Aquinasthe differentiation between positive and natural law; forHooker, these were combined in the eternal law of God,the lex aeterna. But they were conceptually distinct:positive law was a necessary supplement to natural law.While mankind was naturally gregarious, social liferequired both kinds oflaw:

We see then how nature itselfteacheth laws and statutesto live by. The laws which have been hitherto mentioneddo bind men absolutely even as they are men, althoughthey have never any settled fellowship, never any solemnagreement amongst themselves what to do or not todo. But forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficientto furnish ourselves with competent store of thingsneedful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a lifefit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply thosedefects and imperfections which are in us living singleand solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced toseek communion and fellowship with others. This wasthe cause of men's uniting themselves at the first in

Civil Society 13

politic Societies, which societies could not be withoutGovernment, nor Government without a distinct kindofLaw from that which hath been already declared.)8

Hooker was a defender ofthe Anglican Church againstPuritan dissenters. The latter's political claims wereillegitimate, argued Hooker, because they relied entirelyon divine revelation, to the exclusion of natural law. Heargued further that secular government was theembodiment of natural law, just as the church embodiedthe revealed law of God; thus the ideal state and churchwere congruous. In this way, Hooker could defend theAnglican monarchies ofHenry VIII and Elizabeth, whiledenying the claims of extreme Puritan sects. Hooker,writing in support ofa popular queen, did not envision theneed to revolt against tyrants, but Locke would later makeexplicit the conclusion that Hooker's argument seemed toimply: Any government that fails to embody natural lawmustbe thereby illegitimate. While the separation ofchurchand state was not compatible with Hooker's political goals,his defence ofnatural law set the stage for later religiousdissenters against the Crown.

In Hobbes' Leviathan, political and civil society werethe same thing. But some ofthe modem meaning ofcivilsociety began to emerge, as in the approbative sense ofthe adjective, "civilized." Thus for Hobbes the characteroflife in the state ofnature was entirely uncivilized. Beforecivil society there was only, in his famous phrase, "War,where every man is Enemy to every man.... And the lifeof man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."39 ForHobbes, natural law was minimal prior to the socialcontract, so whatever order existed in the world was dueto the sanctions ofpositive law.

Locke too began by considering man's lot in the stateofnature, though that state for him was very different thanthe one described by Hobbes. In Locke's Second Treatise

14 Past Imperfect

ofGovernment, he wrote that we need to understand theorigins of political society-which was, for Locke, civilsociety-before we can understand its true nature.

To understand political power right, and derive it fromits original, we must consider, what estate all men arenaturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom toorder their actions, and dispose oftheir possessions andpersons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the lawofnature, without asking leave, ordepending upon thewill of any other man. A state also of equality ...without subordination or subjection.40

Locke went on to quote a long passage from Hooker'sEcclesiastical Polity on the obligations of justice andcharity implied by man's natural equality. Thus natural lawfor Locke continued to have force even after civil orpolitical society had been established.

Unlike Hobbes, Locke was true to the Aristotelianvision of man as naturally sociable. Human nature forLocke, like Hooker, was divinely given, and included theimpetus to form social groups. "God having made mansuch a creature, that in his own judgment, it was not goodfor him to be alone, put him under strong obligations ofnecessity, convenience, and inclination to drive him intosociety.'>41 This vision ofhuman nature led to Locke's ideaofpolitical or civil society:

Those who are united into one body, and have a commonestablished law and judicature to appeal to, withauthority to decide controversies between them, andpunish offenders, are in civil society one with another;but those who have no such common appeal, I meanon earth, are still in the state ofnature. . .. Where-evertherefore any number of men are so united into onesociety, as to quit every one his executive power ofthe

Civil Society 15

law of nature, and to resign it to the public, there andthere only is a political, or civil society.42

To understand Locke's argument, it is helpful to identifyhis political goals. Where Hobbes was a supporter ofCharles I against the Puritan Revolt, Locke was born onthe side of the Puritans-his father was a captain inCromwell's army.43 Where Hobbes was patronized byCharles II following the Restoration, Locke's patron wasthe first Earl ofShaftesbwy, whom he followed into Dutchexile aftera conspiracy against Charles. Hobbes' goal wasto defend royal poweras the embodiment oflaw and order,but Locke's was more complex. Following Shaftesbury,Locke supported the Glorious Revolution that broughtWilliam and Mary into power in 1689. Thus Locke had atonce to justify the overthrow of one monarch whiledefending the right to rule of another. Arguments likeRobert Filmer's thesis that kings had a divine right to rulebecause they were the direct descendants of Adam, orHobbes' defence of whatever ruler could best maintainorder, were inadequate for Locke's purposes. Instead, hefound his model in Hooker's ideas of legitimacy andconsent.

While Locke rejected Hobbes' view ofa belligerent stateofnature, he followed Hooker in arguing that men, whilenaturally peaceful and sociable, were none the less partialto their own interests. This meant that life and propertycould not be secure unless an impartial authority existedto mediate disputes. But an absolute ruler does not fit thiscriterion, because a ruler with unrestricted power wouldbe partial to his or her own interests.

And hence it is evident, that absolute monarchy, whichby some men is counted the only government in theworld, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and socan be no form ofcivil government at all. For the endof civil society, being to avoid, and remedy those

16 Past Imperfect

inconveniences ofthe state ofNature, which necessarilyfollow from every man's being judge in his own case,by setting up a known authority, to which every one ofthat society may appeal upon any injury received, orcontroversy that may arise, and which every one ofthesociety ought to obey.44

Thus civil government for Locke was compatible, notwith absolute monarchy as Hobbes had claimed, but withsomething like a constitutional monarchy. Thus, in Locke'susage, civil society was political society, but a specific kindof political society, one in which the powers of the statewere carefully limited.

Locke endorsed an idea implicit in Hooker, thatgovernment is a trust granted on the sufferance of thepeople. Locke took the further step that Hooker did not:a ruler who violates the people's trust may be deposed.Natural law and positive law are distinct, and natural lawgives men natural rights, discoverable by reason. Whererulers contravene the natural rights oftheir subjects, theymay be overthrown.

Locke was thus a critical figure in establishing the ideaof legitimacy of government. But he was also central tothe birth ofthe Enlightenment. In the era following Locke,the idea of natural law would be transformed into therationalistic ideas like those of the Encyclopedists inFrance, where Locke's idea of legitimacy ofgovernmentwould become the doctrine that there is a single, universallylegitimate way oflife, discoverable by reason. And it wouldbe in reaction to this doctrine that the conception ofeachsociety as a unique cultural entity would arise.

EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN IDEA OF CIVIL SOCIETY

In its modem meaning, civil society is a phrase used, notin contrast to the state of nature, but in contrast to the

CivU Society 17

powers ofthe positive state.4S Locke was the critical figurein this development: his usage confonned to the ancientmeaning, while his argument pointed to the modem one­but in divergent ways. On one hand, natural law in Locke'sinterpretation pointed to certain rights which the state maynot abridge. But on the other hand, his idea ofnatural lawwas universal law. And since Locke's interpretation ofnatural law as entailing natural rights was open to question,it could be reinterpreted by others in less liberal ways. Itwould be the universalism of natural law, and itsculmination in Enlightenment rationalism, that would leadto ideological and political counteractions. And in thesewould be born the modem idea ofsociety, wherein everysociety is a culturally unique, orderly whole.

The idea ofculture in this sense was first fonnalized byEdward Tylor in 1871, who defined it as "that complexwhole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, lawcustoms, and any other capabilities and habits acquired byman as a member of society.''46 But the sources of thisidea preceded Tylor. With the opening of the worldfollowing the Renaissance, international travel becamepopular among the educated elite, and their reports werewidely read. By the close of the eighteenth century,"governmentofficials, missionaries, naturalists, and othershad gathered a considerable body of trustworthy andsurprisingly detailed ethnographic information.''47

The best known of these earlier ethnographers wasMontesquieu. Between 1729 and 1731, he travelled widelyin Western Europe to study the laws and customs oftheselands. With the same purpose, he studied the ancientRomans. Using the methods ofcross-cultural and historicalcomparison, Montesquieu tried to draw lessons for France,which he feared would fare badly in its rivalry with Englandand enter a period of decline.48 Thus Montesquieu wasthe ancestor of the cultural sciences: sociology,anthropology and ethnography. But he was a social scientist

18 Past Imperfect

of a certain kind. His goal was to find the true causes ofsocial phenomena. "From the 'nature of things,'Montesquieu set himself to derive the principles of lawswhich express necessary relations."49 Although herecognized the different customs of various peoples, hebelieved these could be rendered into a few simpleprinciples which applied universally, and which had thesame status as physical laws. In short, Montesquieu was,in his goals if not in his methods, still a rationalist in thespirit ofthe French Enlightenment.

Enlightenment rationalism in its purest form was thedoctrine ofthinkers such as:

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The characteristics ofthis kind of rationalism are: (a) the belief that it ispossible to obtain by reason alone a knowledge ofthenature ofwhat exists; (b) the view that knowledge formsa single system, which (c) is deductive in character;and (d) the beliefthat everything is explicable, that is,that everything can in principle be brought under thesingle system. 50

This systematic thesis neither began nor died with theAge ofReason,51 but there it was clearly articulated as aconsistent philosophical doctrine. Its most dramatic effectswere in France, where it was consummated in theRevolution. Although this event had other, more concreteantecedents and goals,52 it was animated by the rationalismthat Edmund Burke would denounce as "the mazes ofmetaphysic sophistry."53 But before Burke, and before theexcesses of the Reign of Terror, French rationalism hadother critics.

Outside ofFrance, the arts and letters also flowered inother European nations in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, but less so in the disunited German-speakingregions. 54 While some Germans of this era began to

ClvU Society 19

emulate the French, others reacted against them. As IsaiahBerlin described, the German reaction against Frenchuniversalism caused these thinkers to look for the essencethat made Germans unique:

The inner life, the life ofthe spirit, concerned with therelation ofman to man, to himself, to God-that alonewas of supreme importance; the empty materialisticFrench wiseacres had no sense oftrue values-ofwhatalone men lived by.... Gradually this German self­image grew in intensity, fed by what might be called akind ofnationalist resentment. The philosopher, poet,critic, pastor Johann Gottfried Herder was perhaps thefirst wholly articulate prophet of this attitude, andelevated this cultural self-consciousness into a generalprinciple.55

Berlin traced Herder's ideas through Vico andMachiavelli,s6 but in Herder's search for the organicsources ofGerman cultural uniqueness, the modern senseof culture-and thus the idea of a society in the holisticsense of"a people"-first emerged fully formed.57 Culturaldifferences were not just superficial manifestations ofuniversal principles, as for Montesquieu. For Herder,culture was what gave apeople their identity. Berlin wrote,

This was a novel doctrine.... What, for him, makesGermans Gennan is the fact that the way in which theyeat or drink, dispense justice, write poetry, worship,dispose ofproperty, get up and sit down, obtain theirfood, wear their clothes, sing, fight wars, order politicallife, all have a certain common character, a qualitativeproperty, a pattern which is solely Gennan, in whichthey differ from the corresponding activities of theChinese or the Portuguese.58

20 Past Imperfect

Thus the Gennans make up a culture, or a society inthe modem sense, and the Chinese another, and thePortuguese a third. And in recognizing these particularities,the modem idea of a society as a self-ordered culturalwhole was born.

Concurrently with Herder, the better known reactionagainst French rationalism came from Edmund Burke.Beginning with his earliest published writings, Burke wascritical ofabstract reasoning as providing guiding principlesfor politics.59 Following the French Revolution, Burke'scritique reached its height. Unlike Irish and Americansecessionists, whom he saw as defenders oftheir traditionalrights, Burke viewed the French revolutionaries-the"sophistic tyrants ofParis"60-as ideological zealots, benton destroying the existing social order so they could rebuildsociety according to a rationalistic blueprint, based onnothing but "the nakedness and solitude ofmetaphysicalabstraction.''6) Burke argued that politics should be guidedby acknowledged traditions rather than pure speculation,and in doing so he did for England what Herder had donefor Germany: He idealized the existing practices, moresand values of Englishmen, arguing in effect that theseconstituted their cultural identity. Thus Burke wrote of"ournational character"62 and the "fabric of... society.''63For him, it was "British Tradition versus FrenchEnlightenment."64 That tradition, he argued, constituted aset ofnormative rules which political leaders should followrather than create anew. Traditional rules should be bindingon the state. Thus for Burke, the state should be the servantof civil society-now understood as a set of evolvedcultural practices and beliefs-rather than its master or itsembodiment.

Meanwhile, a second Enlightenment, without thecharacteristic rationalism of the French movement, wasoccurring in Scotland. As Daniel N. Robinson describedit, "What united the architects of the Scottish school was

Civil Society 11

apassion for natural science, a wariness toward speculativemetaphysics, and the common sense convictions that allepistemic claims are finally settled in thecourt ofconsciousexperience. "65 The philosophers of the ScottishEnlightenment had very different approaches to the kindsof problems addressed by the thinkers of the Cartesianrationalist school. Adam Smith's idea, for example, ofthe"great society" was notone that was rationally constructed,but one that arose naturally through the co-ordinatingprinciples of what Burke would call "enlightened self­interest," and Smith famously called the "invisible hand.'t66A well-ordered society had its own rules of organizationapart from those imposed by the state. These rules ororganizing principles meant that society could be seen asa single orderly entity which the state should serve. ThusSmith described the role ofthe state in terms ofits dutiesto society.67 For Smith as for Burke, the state should beneither the embodiment nor the master ofsociety, but itsservant.

With Smith's friend and colleague Adam Ferguson, thephrase "civil society" was presented for the first time inthe title of a major work,68 Ferguson made explicit hisdebt to Montesquieu,69 and there are similarities betweenthem: Both men studied Ancient Rome as an exercise incomparative history, both recognized the culturaldifferences ofvarious nations, and each may be seen as apredecessor of the modem cultural sciences. But whereMontesquieu was essentially still a rationalist, Fergusonand his Scottish colleagues expressly were not. Whererationalists proceededby searching for first principles fromwhich a blueprint for society could be drawn, Fergusondenied that society's constitutive rules could be understoodin this way:

The peasant, or the child, can reason, and judge, and

22 Past Imperfect

speak his languaget with a discemmentt a consistencYtand a regard to analogyt which perplex the logiciant themoralis~ and the grammariant when they would findthe principle upon which the proceeding is founded, orwhen they would bring to general rulest what is sofamiliart and so well sustained in particular cases. Thefelicity ofour conduct is more owing to the talent wepossess for detailt and to the suggestion of particularoccasions, than it is to any direction we can find in theoryand general speculations.70

This passage shows clearly that Ferguson rejected therationalists t goal of guiding social behaviours by thedictates ofabstract theory. Thus he complained about hisera:

It is peculiar to modem Europet to rest so much ofthehuman character on what may be learned ... from theinformation of books.... [W]e endeavour to derivefrom imagination and thoughtt what is in reality a matterofexperience and sentiment: and we endeavour ... toarrive at the beauties of thought and elocution, whichsprang from the animated spirit ofsociety.71

This "animated spirit of society" was an idea closer toHerder than to Montesquieu. Where the latter still wantedto derive from social diversity a single set of principlestFerguson, like Herder, was more consistently a pluralist."Nations ... like private men, have their favourite ends,and their principal pursuits, which diversify their manners,as well as their establishments."72 Ferguson celebrated thediversity ofcultures, and saw that the competition betweenthem was inevitable. In faett he thought conflict wasbeneficial to the development oftheir distinctive virtues."Athens was necessary to Spartat in the exercise of hervirtue, as steel is to flint in the production of fire.,,73

Civil Society 23

Ferguson denied both the truth and the usefulness ofthe idea ofa state ofnature from which civil society arose.The evidence, he argued, shows that people have alwayslived in groups. "[Bloth the earliest and the latest accountscollected from every quarter of the earth, representmankind as assembled in troops and companies; and theindividual always joined by affection to one party, whilehe is possibly opposed to another."74 The idea ofthe stateofnature for Ferguson had "led to many fruitless inquiries,and given rise to many wild suppositions.''7.5 Civil societyfor him was not characterized by the beginnings ofcollective life, but was marked by the emergence of artsand letters, vigorous commercial activity, and the thrivingofurban life, which in total he described as the "bustle ofcivil pursuits and occupations."76 Civil society was thenonnal outgrowth of natural sociability and the instinctfor self-preservation, but also of the restless longing forindustry and self-improvement.

Consistently with his anti-rationalist philosophy, civilsociety for Ferguson did not arise from conscious orpurposive decision, but emerged slowly from historicalcircumstances. Indeed Ferguson did not define the term,and actually used it infrequently-in the 430 pages oftheoriginal text, it appeared perhaps a dozen times. Hence itdoes not seem possible to force adefinition ofcivil societyonto Ferguson without adding something that was not inthe original. Instead, Ferguson gave a description of thegradual historical development ofWestem nations. Wherehe did come close to a definition, it revolved around thecharacter and virtues of a free people, rather than adescription of the state.

During the existence ofany free constitution, and whilstevery individual possessed his rank and his privilege,orhad his apprehension ofpersonal rights, the membersof every community were to one another objects of

24 Past Imperfect

consideration and of respect; every point to be carriedin civil society, required the exercise of talents, ofwisdom, persuasion, and vigour, as well as ofpower.77

The essential accomplishment ofFerguson's book was todescribe civil society in tenns of the people; that is, asarising through the gradual evolution ofa way oflife, whichwe have come to call a culture. With Ferguson, civil societydescribed the culture of a people, and was no longer asynonym for political society or the state.

In summary, the modem meaning ofsociety, in the senseofa culture or a people, emerged in the eighteenth centuryfrom these sources: German romanticism and historicism,personified by Herder; English anti-rationalism andconservatism, represented by Burke; and the proto­sociological and market-based economic ideas of theScottish Enlightenment. These writers and their followerswere widely read by the educated generation thatsucceeded them. By the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, the distinction between state and civil societywould be taken for granted, as in the work of Hegel,Tocqueville, and Marx.

ASSOCIATIONAL PLURALISM

AND STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS

Once the hold of universalistic rationalism had beenweakened, the idea could grow that different ways ofHfehad their own legitimacy. With the continued opening ofthe world through large-scale migrations, this pluralismwould take a new form. Nations that had been home tounique cultures became more mixed, so that cross-culturalpluralism would come to be replaced by multiculturalpluralism.

But if the door to the acceptance of multiculturalismwas opened by the attack on universalism, this kind of

Civil Society 25

pluralism at best was implicit in the new understanding ofcivil society. Insteadt the pluralism contained within themodem idea of civil society took an intermediate form.By the eighteenth centuryt the idea of civil society hadcome to include what we might call associational pluralismtto depict the variety of institutions formed by freelyassociating individuals within civil society. As Shilsdescrib~ "In the views which prevailed in the eighteenthcenturyt civil society was pluralistic; minimally it was asociety with numerous private activitiestoutside the familyand not assimilated into the state."78

The idea of civil society as the realm of activitiesintermediate between the family and the state was acceptedby Hegel. Hegel was familiar with the ideas ofthe ScottishEnlightenmentt79 and market relations were central to hisdevelopment ofthe notion. As Shils pointed outt"Like allother usages of 'civil society' in modem timest Hegel'susage enunciated the right to private ownership ofpropertyas the central and indispensable feature ofcivil society."80

Howevert Hegel was above all a systematic theorist ofhistoryt and it is of questionable usefulness to considerany particular phrase or segment ofhis theory in isolation.In Hegel's triadic system ofthesistantithesis and synthesiStcivil society was but one stage ofa progress that itselfwasa part ofa triadic progression. Thus Hegel's Encyclopediaofthe Philosophical Sciences in Outline was made up ofthe sections: Logic, Philosophy ofNaturetand Philosophyof Mind, and the latter was subdivided into SubjectiveMindtObjective Mind, and Absolute Mind; the second ofthese consisted oflawt subjective moralityt and objectivemorality or the ethical life. FinallYt the latter of theseincluded the dialectic triad offamilYt civil society and thestate.81

Within each of these triadst the thesis arises throughthe development ofa previous synthesis; the antithesis is akind ofspontaneous outgrowth or development from the

26 Past Imperfect

thesis; and the synthesis is the final flourishing of thatsegment or stage of the system, from which the nextdialectic triad begins. Thus the family was the naturalconsequence that followed when purely private orsubjective morality was resolved into the ethical life:"Hence in a family ... one is in it not as an independentperson but as a member."82 But the family too involves atriadic process: marriage, the accumulation offamily capitaland property, and the education of the children.83 In theHegelian progression, this education is made possible bythe previous accumulation offamily wealth, but it leads tothe child's self-sufficiency, and thus to the dissolution ofthe family. At this point, a new stage has been reached andcivil society becomes possible.

This is of course a very different mode of argumentthan is typical in the liberal tradition, and raises a host ofquestions. For example, it might be asked whether Hegelconsidered the development of civil society to be ahistorical process that culminated in this stage of socialdevelopment, or to be an ongoing process that occurs inevery generation. The answer seems to be that he allowedboth to be true; that is, reality consists of, or is constitutedby, the tension between thesis and synthesis and theirrenewal into a synthesis, and that this process (a) occursduring historical stages, and (b) provides an impetus forthe movement ofhistory itself. In Hegel's idealist ontology,without the tension between thesis and antithesis, nothingwould exist-reality is forged out ofdialectic process, asif the Big Bang itselfwere a dialectical phenomenon, thepulling apart of matter and anti-matter that makes allexistence possible. Thus the dialectic process is creativein both the constitutive and developmental senses.

Whether or not explanations ofthis sort are convincing,the preceding description is sufficient to show theessentially economic nature ofHegel's civil society, whichofcourse has its own triad of "moments": the "system of

Civil Society 27

needs" which encompasses the market; ajustice system toprotect property, and more general systems of authorityincluding the police and the corporation.84 These systemsofauthority are generalized or synthesized as the state, asthe dialectical process begins anew.

This sense of transition from civil society to the stateintroduced a new theme in the history ofthe concept, thatcivil society and the state are interrelated, an aspect thatmodem writers like Shils emphasize: "Civil society andthe state are bound together by the constitution and bytraditions which stress the obligations ofeach to the otheras well as their rights vis-a-vis each other.n8S Taylorsuggests that Hegel had successfully combined thecorporatist ideas ofMontesquieu, whereby political poweris dispersed and mediated through aplurality ofinstitutions,with the Lockean distinction between state and society.86

Hegel's seemingly contradictory notion ofthe unity ofopposites, captured in the dialectic, may be one way tomaintain the essential distinction between state and societyon one hand, and their interrelatedness on the other,although to do so would seem to require that we acceptthe entire Hegelian system. More than any of the writerssurveyed here (Hobbes is closest to him in this sense),Hegel's ideas stand or faU as part ofhis system. Withoutthis comprehensive idea, it is hard to believe that Hegelwould have been more than a minor figure in history­Hegel without the dialectic is like Gutenberg without thepress. Furthermore, Hegelian metaphysics seems to moveaway from Locke's straightforward idea of natural law.Although the philosophical foundation of morality is adifficult topic,87 for the citizens of liberal democracies­that is, members of civil societies-the idea of moralrealism, that some things are objectively right or wrong,still has a greatdeal ofintuitive appeal. Finally, Hegel sawthe state as a superior or more advanced entity than civilsociety, a step closer to the Absolute Mind and the universal

28 Past Imperfect

state. The Hegelian idea ofprogress may in the end leaveless room for civil society than someone like Taylor wouldhave us believe. As Seligman points out, "In Hegel'sattempt to save civil society as an ethical entity, civil society,at least as it was classically conceived, disappears."88Perhaps the Lockean tradition may yet be more attractivethan the Hegelian system.

Whatever the viability of Hegelian metaphysics, hisaccount does serve to highlight two important aspects ofcivil society: the pluralism ofassociations within it, and itsinterrelatedness with the state. These themes reappear withTocqueville. In his visit to the new American democracy,Tocqueville admired the multitude of associationsspontaneously formed by Americans in the pursuit ofshared goals.

Americans ofall ages, all condition, and all dispositions,constantly form associations. They have not onlycommercial and manufacturing companies, in which alltake part, but associations ofa thousand other kinds,­religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted,enormous or diminutive.... Wherever, at the head ofsome new undertaking, you see the government inFrance, or a man ofrank in England, in the United Statesyou will be sure to find an association.89

Tocqueville recognized that this willingness to associatewas educative-that the art of association in one sectorenhanced sociability in another-and thus fundamental toa workable democracy. But he did not think the transferof skills from politics to civil association, or the reverse,was unidirectional. Instead, he argued that the educativeprocess worked both ways at once. Associations withincivil society fostered democratic participation, but at thesame time, democracy forced Americans to take care oftheir own common affairs, and thus encouraged them to

elvu Society 29

associate politically. "Civil associationstthereforetfacilitatepolitical association; butt on the other handt politicalassociation singularly strengthens and improvesassociations for civil pwposes.tt90 Tocqueville believed thatin a democratic statet political and civil society must bemutually supporting. He had no illusions that collectivepolitical action was unnecessaryt and he was no dogmaticlibertarian-he saw that sometimes "liberty degeneratesinto license.''91 But he recognized in the right ofassociationone ofthe central securities against oppressiont includingthe tyranny by a democratic majority. "There are nocountries in which associations are more needed, to preventthe despotism ofa faction or the arbitrary power ofa prlncetthan those which are democratically constituted.n92 Thusthe freedom to associate is fundamental to democracy andto liberal society itself. "The right ofassociation thereforeappears to me almost as inalienable in its nature as theright ofpersonal liberty. No legislator can attack itwithoutimpairing the foundations ofsociety.''93

MARX AND THE RETURN OF RATIONALISM

Hegel ts idealist metaphysics had been intricate enoughto retain the central features of the modem idea of civilsociety. He had recognized civil society, with its pluralityof social institutions, as independent from but linked tothe state. However, in Marx's less rarefied materialisttheory ofhistorical progress, civil society was no longerseen as legitimately independent. Instead, Marx saw civilsociety as the site ofoppression, and its aura oflegitimacyas an ideological mirage. Forhis followerst the replacementofthe pluralistic institutions ofcivil society by the rationallyplanned state would become a political goal.

Marx's famous inversion ofdialectical idealism arosefrom his studies of Hegel's idea of civil society. Afterreading Hegel's Philosophy ofRightt he wrotet

30 Past Imperfect

I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legalrelations as well as forms of state could be neitherunderstood by themselves nor explained by the so-calledgeneral progress of the human mind, but that they arerooted in the material conditions of life, which aresummed up by Hegel after the fashion of the Englishand French of the eighteenth century under the name'Civil Society'.94

For Marx, civil society was the realm within which thebourgeoisie exploited the labouring class. The economicrelations within that realm were the underlying reality, ofwhich all else was just a superstructural manifestation.Marx too distinguished between political and civil society,but to the detriment of the latter.

Where the political state has attained its puredevelopment, man ... leads a twofold life, ... life inthepolitical community, in which he considers himselfa communal being, and life in civil society, in which heacts as a private individual, regards other men as ameans, degrades himself into a means and becomes aplaything ofalien powers.95

Civil society for Marx was the locus of degradation, notliberation.

While Marx was concerned with the same questions asearlier political writers-the relationship between theeconomic, social and political orders, and the role ofindividuals within them-his solution was fundamentallydifferent. With the rise of the proletariat would come thedissolution ofcivil society and the oppressive structures itsupported. Marx's differences with Hegel on this pointcan be illustrated by an ambiguity in the phrase itselfin itsGerman form: civil society in German is burgerlicheGesellschaft. But Burger may be translated as either

elvU Sodety 31

townsman or citizen. While Hegel retained both senses ofthe word,96 Marx put all the emphasis on the former, so inhis usage, as when Burger is rendered into the French asthe more pejorative bourgeois, the economic sense ofexploitation was all that remained. Thus civil society forMarx was something to be overcome, as would the stateitself: "Marx, as is well known, followed the Hegeliancritique ofcivil society. positing its 'sublation' not in theexisting political state of the nineteenth century but in afuture metahistorical entity where the 'true' essence ofman would unfold."97

Marx's ideas about the post-revolutionary state werenotoriously incomplete, but the utopian nature ofmaturecommunism seems to follow from the idea that all socialconflict arises from class struggle. With the end ofclasscomes the end of social disharmony. In "On the JewishQuestion," Marx was both utopian and communitarian.reacting against liberal notions such as rights, property,and individualism. These are associated with civil society:

Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights ofman, the droits de I 'homme, as distinct from the droitsdu citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member ofcivil society, i.e., the rights of egoistic man. of manseparated from the other men and from the community.98

With the end of the class struggle, and the demise of itsoppressive manifestation in civil society, will comeparticipatory democracy. communitarian harmony, and thewithering awayofthe state. "Onlywhen the real, individualman re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen ... andconsequently no longer separates social power from himselfin the shape of political power. only then will humanemancipation have been accomplished."99 All theseelements-the absorption of political power into socialpower. the withering away of the state, emancipation

32 Past Imperfect

through totalizing participatory democracy on the modelofRousseau's General Will-these amounted once againto the dissolution of the distinction between state andsociety. Thus Marx had set the stage for the totalitarianstatesmen who followed.

Whatever the contingencies of revolutionary politics,Lenin's-and then Stalin's-efforts to eliminate theinstitutions of civil society were not strategies thatoriginated solely with them, or that arose through theparticularities ofEastern European history alone. The ideasofMarx and Engels about the withering away ofthe state,following the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat,were taken up in Lenin's revolutionary programme. InStateand Revolution, \00 written just before the events of 1917,Lenin took up Marx's communitarian, participatory ideal.

Only in communist society, when the resistance of thecapitalists has been completely broken, when thecapitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes. . . only then a really full democracy, a democracywithout any exceptions, will be possible and will berealised. And only then will democracy itselfbegin towither away, due to the simple fact that, freed fromcapitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery,absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation,people will gradually become accustomed to observingthe elementary rules ofsocial life that have been knownfor centuries and repeated for thousands ofyears in allschool books; they will become accustomed toobserving them without force, without compulsion,without subordination, without the special apparatusfor coercion called the state. 10\

With the culmination ofthe revolution, the functions ofthe state would be absorbed into society, and the distinctionbetween the two realms would disappear. "From the

Civil Society 33

moment when all members of society, or even theoverwhelming majority, have learned to govern the statethemselves ... the need for any government begins todisappear altogether."102 This would lead to ''the transitionfrom the first phase of Communist society to its higherphase, and along with it to the complete withering awayof the state."103

Today we know that this higher phase of communismwould never arrive in the USSR, but Lenin believed thatthe proper route to that goal was through his policy ofaggressive centralization ofpower. While this policy wasaccelerated in response to the practical political challengeshe faced,104 it was also consistent with his original ideology:As part ofthe process by which the state would disappear,all functions of governance would be taken over by thevanguard party acting in the name ofthe people. And Stalinin tum would continue this policy, as with his own policyofforced collectivization. As noted by Paul Johnson,

The whole of the gigantic operation of collectivizingthe peasants, involving about lOS million people, wasconducted from Stalin's study in the Kremlin ... withoutany kind ofpublic debate, in the last weeks of 1929. Itwas typical of the way in which the pursuit ofUtopialeads the tiny handful ofmen in powerabruptly to assaulta society many centuries in the making. lOS

The ideology that justified Stalin's power was derivedfrom Marx via Lenin. All institutions, including the church,the family, and all spontaneously formed associations ofpublic life-in short, all the institutions ofcivil society­were illegitimate unless they were taken over by therepresentatives of the people, the Communist Party, andput into the service ofthe Revolution. The universalistic,totalizing ideology ofMarxism could not allow, in theorynor in practice, any autonomous associations apart from

34 Past Imperfect

the Party, because the Party was the true and completeembodiment ofthe will of the people.

With the demise of the Soviet empire, a great deal ofattention has been paid by post-Marxist scholars to therestitution of civil society.l06 While some Marxists stillquestion the value ofthe idea,107 others have attempted torehabilitate the concept within a Marxist framework. Bestknown is the work ofAntonio Gramsci, as interpreted byNorberto Bobbio. 108 Gramsci criticized the reductionismofMarxist materialism. "Between the premise (economicstructure) and the consequence (political organization),relations are by no means simple and direct; and it is onlyby economic facts that the history of a people can bedocumented."109 As Bobbio puts it, civil society is nolonger part of the base in Gramsci's understanding, butpart ofthe superstructure.110 This means that the ideologiesembodied in the institutions and practices ofcivil societyare notjust tools ofoppression, but provide opportunitiesfor the transformation of society through persuasiveleadership. (Bobbio uses the terms "cultural" vs. "political"leadership in his depiction ofGramsci's thought, but giventhe historical realities, it is hard not to think ofGramsci asadvocating democratic, persuasive leadership, in contrastto the coercive leadership of Lenin and Stalin.) Butwhatever his improvements to Marx's theory, in Gramsci'svision civil society remains primarily useful for its strategicvalue. III On its own terms, it is just a condition to betranscended in reaching the utopian future.

CONCLUSION

The history of the idea of civil society shows that threecentral elements ofthe concept have emerged. First, in itsmodem form civil society represents the realm ofpublicinstitutions that are separate from the state. This newunderstanding arose with the idea of each nation as the

Civil Society 35

home of a distinct people, a cultural entity with its ownconstitutive beliefs, values and ideals. The idea ofa cultureas aself-organized whole meant that the state was no longerseen as the sole source ofsocial cohesion. Thus the politicaland the social came to be seen as distinct.

The second essential feature ofthe modem idea ofcivilsociety is its continued interdependence with the state. Ifthe social and the political are distinct, this does not meanthat political institutions no longer have a central role inorganizing and regulating the public life ofcitizens. Utopianor anarchist ideas about the end of politics, such as thewithering away of the state, have been shown to result inthe loss of autonomy for the institutions ofcivil society.Instead ofdisappearing, the state must exist both to servethe interests ofcivil society and to regulate social life.

These two features of civil society-its separatenessfrom, and its interdependence with the state-areconceptually distinct but in tension. Writers who emphasizethe autonomy of civil society may tend to underplay therole of the state, while those who concentrate on thedependency of society on the state may tend to diminishthe distinction between them. This tension is what is atissue between the two schools ofthought discussed at thebeginning ofthis essay, the liberals and the post-Marxists,both of whom recognize the importance of civil society,but with these respective emphases.

This brings us to the third element, the pluralism ofinstitutions within civil society. It remains to be seenwhether a deeper understanding of the idea of pluralismitselfmay help us to maintain together the distinction andinterdependence between state and society.

Pluralism-the idea that there are a variety oflegitimatebut conflicting values, ideals and ways of-lifell2-ishistorically related to the modem concept ofcivil society.

36 Past Imperfect

The idea of the people of each nation as a cultural entitytook hold in reaction to the rationalism of the FrenchEnlightenment. Implicit in the recognition ofdifferencesbetween nations was a denial that there are universalanswers to the problems of life. Pluralism represents therejection ofEnlightenment universalism, because it assertsthat there is no singular answer to the question ofhow tolive. Thus civil society and pluralism were joined at theroot.

Today, pluralism is a feature of cultural life withinnations rather than between them, so that now we maybegin to see civil society as including a diversity ofwaysoflife within each modem nation-state. This understandingwould represent a further development of the original,counter-Enlightenment version of pluralism, whichoriginated as the recognition ofthe existence ofa pluralityof cultures or societies, each comprising its own nation.While the era oflarge-scale migrations has resulted in thetransition from cross-cultural to multicultural pluralism,the rejection of universalism remains,1I3 so ourunderstanding of civil society today should include arecognition ofvalue pluralism, ideological diversity andmulticulturalism. This recognition would represent arefinement or explication of the associational orinstitutional pluralism already inherent in the modem ideaofcivil society.

In conclusion, any definition of civil society isincomplete without the understanding that it is the realmwithin which free people may pursue a diversity oflegitimate values, ideals, and ways of life. This suggeststhat the argument between the various theorists of civilsociety may be resolved by seeing which school ofthoughtcan bestac~mmodatea pluralist conception ofcivil societywhile balancing together the autonomy and dependencyofits institutions

Civil Soc:iety

NOTES

37

·The author thanks the anonymous reviewers and the editors ofthisjournal, and especially Thomas E. Flanagan, for their helpfulcomments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council ofCanada for funding.I John Keane, Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso, 1988).ZJean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society andPolitical Theory(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).) Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Fonns ofEconomic andSocial Governance (Amherst: U. of Massachusetts Press, 1994).4 Charles Taylor, "Modes of Civil Society," Public Culture 3 (Fall1990): 95-118.S For an example of Asian writers, see X.L. Ding, "InstitutionalAmphibiousness and the Transition from Communism: The CaseofChina," British Journal ofPolitical Science 24 (July 1994): 293­318. Ding wants to substitute the unlikely phrase in his title for theidea ofcivil society. His account is useful in showing the relevanceof cultural differences between the East and West. For a survey ofMiddle Eastern work, see Salwa Ismail, "The Civil Society Conceptand the Middle East: Questions ofMeaning and Relevance." (Paperpresented at the Canadian Political Science Association AnnualMeeting, Calgary, Alberta, June 13, 1994). She finds no single trendin the writers she surveys. A good sample of European writers ispresented in John Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State (London:Verso, 1988).6 Seymour Martin Lipset. "The Social Requisites ofDemocracy Re­visited," American Sociological Review 59 (Feb. 1994): 1-22.7 Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions inModern Italy (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1993).8 Adam B. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: FreePress, 1992).9 Seligman's concerns may be partly answered by Putnam, for whomreligion was a control variable. More generally, Seligman may bemaking the mistake identified by Richard Rorty, who argues againstthe view that our "political institutions [are] no better than theirphilosophical foundations. to Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth(Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1991),178.10 Edward Shils, "The VIrtUe of Civil Society," Government andOpposition 26 (Winter 1991): 3-20.11 John Rawls, '"The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus," OxfordJournal ofLegal Studies 7:1 (1987): 1-25.12 John Keane, "Despotism and Democracy," in Civil Society and

38 Past Imper/ect

the State, ed. John Keane, (London: Verso, 1988).

13 "The case for religious toleration was central to ... the crucialbut complex thought that civil society is an arena ofconflicts, whichshould be coordinated and regulated by the constitutional state."Steven Lukes, "Making Sense of Moral Conflict," in Liberalismand the Moral Life, ed Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard, 1989), 139.

14 Peter Laslett, Encyclopedia o/Philosophy (New York: Macmi1lan,1967), s.v. "Political Philosophy, History of; Introduction throughKant," 6:371.

15 Ibid., 372.

16 G.B. Kerferd, Encyclopedia o/Philosophy (New York: Macmillan,

1967), s.v. "Sophists," 7:496.

17 Ibid.

18 Ernest Barker, trans., The Politics 0/Aristotle (London: Oxford

U. Press, 1958), 1.

19 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexi­

con (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), s.v. "koinonia."

20 Manfred Riedel, Between Tradition and Revolution, trans. Walter

Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1984), 131.

21 Barker, "Introduction" to The Politics ofAristotle, lxv.

22 Ibid., lxvi.

21 Benjamin Jowett, trans" The Politics ofAristotle, rev. ed. (New

York: Colonial, 1900), 1.

24 Barker, trans., The Politics ofAristotle, 7,

25 This shows that Aristotle did not distinguish positive from natu­rallaw-a distinction he would have called sophistry-because man­made law should promote man's highest natural ends. "But it is thecardinal issue of goodness or badness in the life of the polis whichalways engages the attention of any state that concerns itself to se­cure a system of good laws well obeyed" Politics, Barker trans.,

118-19.26 A deme is an administrative district, and a tribe is a group ofdemes. In Aristotle's time, Athens had about 150 demes and tentribes. See Barker, trans., The Politics ofAristotle, 382, n. 1.

27 David Ross, trans., Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford:Oxford U. Press, 1980),208. Translator's note: "It seems best totreat [the bracketed Hnes] as an insertion from an alternative version."

Civil Society 3928 Ibid., 212.29 Antony Flew, cons. ed., A Dictionary ofPhilosophy, rev. ed., s.v."Social Contract:'30 Rawls, "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus," 4.31 Laslett, "Political Philosophy," 375.32 ibid., 373,33 Taylor, "ModesofCivil Society," 114.34 For an account of both senses of "society" in its early meaning,see John Bossy, "Some Early Fonns ofDurkheim," Past andPresent95 (May 1982): 8-11.35 See Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary ofCulture andSociety (London: Fontana, 1976), 76-82.36 The prologue begins,

Two households. both alike in dignity,(In fair Verona. where we lay our scene.)

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

37 Hooker, Ofthe Laws ofEcclesiastical Polity, (1593 or 1594; re­print, London: Dent, 1907), Vol. I, 198.38 Ibid., 187-88.39 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (165 I; reprint, Harmondsworth, Mid­dlesex: Penguin, 1968), 186.40 John Locke, Of Civil Government, 1Wo Treatises (1689; reprint,London: Dent, 1924), 14.41 Ibid., 154-55.42 Ibid., 159-60.43 Jacob Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western IntellectualTradition (New York: Harper, 1960), 209.44 Locke, Of Civil Government, 161-61.45 ''The idea ofcivil society is the idea ofa part ofsociety which hasa life of its own, which is distinctly different from the state, andwhich is largely in autonomy from it." Shils, "Virtue of Civil Soci­ety," 3.46 Tylor, Primitive Society, Vol. VII (London: Murray, 1871),7.47 Gerald Broce, "Herder and Ethnography," Journal ofthe Historyofthe Behavioral Sciences 22 (April 1986): ISO.48 Bronowski and Mazlish, Western Intellectual Tradition, 268.49 Ibid., 271.so Flew, Dictionary ofPhilosophy, 298-99.

51 See Isaiah Berlin, "The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West," inThe Crooked limber ofHumanity (London: Fontana, 1990).52 See George H. Sabine, "The 1\\'0 Democratic Traditions," Philo­sophical Review 61 (Oct. 1952): 451-74.

40 Past Imperfect

53 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790;reprint, New York: Libeml Arts, 1955), 24.54 Berlin, "Decline of Utopian Ideas," 36-37.55 Ibid.56 Isaiah Berlin, "The Pursuit of the Ideal," in The Crooked nmberofHumanity (London: Fontana, 1990).57 Williams, Keywords, 78-79.58 Berlin, "Decline of Utopian Ideas:' 39.59 Fmnk N. Pagano, "Burke's View ofthe Evils ofPolitical Theory,"Polity 17:3 (1985): 446-62.60 Burke, Reflections. 122.61 Ibid., 8.62 Ibid., 97 and 102.63 Ibid., 108.64 Ibid., 95. Emphasis in original.65 Daniel N. Robinson, "The Scottish Enlightenment and its MixedBequest,"Journal ofthe History ofthe Behavioral Sciences 22 (April1986), 172.66 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 11th ed, vol. 2(Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute, 1808),103; Burke, Reflections, 171;Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776; reprint, New York:Modem Libmry, 1937),423. See also Donald Winch, "The Burke­Smith Problem and Late Eighteenth-Century Political and EconomicThought," Historical Journal 28: I (1985): 231-47.67 For example, "The third and last duty of the sovereign or com­monwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institu­tions and those public works ... advantageous to a great society."Ibid., 681. The other two duties are national defence and the admin­istmtion ofjustice.68 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, fac­simile ed. (1767; reprint, New York: Garland, 1971).69 Ibid., 98 ff.70 Ibid., 51.71 Ibid., 45.72 Ibid., 208.73 Ibid., 89.74 Ibid., 4.75 Ibid., 3.76 Ibid., 281.77 Ibid., 423.78 Shils, "Virtue of Civil Society," 5.79 Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel sAccountof 'Civil Society' (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988).

Civil Society 41

80 Shils, "Virtue of Civil Society:' 6.81 G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia ofthe Philosophical Sciences in Out­line (1827; reprint, New York: Continuum, 1990).U T.M. Knox, trans., Hegel:r Philosophy ofRight (London: OxfordU. Press, 1967), 110.8J Ibid., Ill.84 Ibid., 126-155.85 Shils, "Virtue of Civil Society," 4.86 Taylor, "Modes ofCivil Society," 114.87 Seligman discusses challenges from Kant and Hume to Lockeannatural law. See Seligman, Idea ofCivil Society, 36-44.88 Ibid., 51-52.89 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (1840; re­print, New York: Mentor, 1956), 198.90 Ibid., 205.91 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. I (1835; re­print, New York: Mentor, 1956), 98.91 Ibid.93 Ibid.

94 Karl Marx, "Preface to A Contribution to the Critique ofPoliticalEconomy:' in Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics andPhilosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959),84.95 Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," in Marx and Engels, Col­lected Works, vol. 3 (New York: International, 1975), 154.96 "Transferring the words to specific German relationships, Hegelnotes in the margin: 'Townsman and national subject......' Riedel,Between 1radition and Revolution, 142.97 Seligman, Idea of Civil Society, 59-60.98 Marx, "On the Jewish Question," 162.99 Ibid., 168. Emphasis in original.100 V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York: International Pub­lishers, 1932). For the importance Lenin himself put on this work,see Leonard Shapiro, The Origin ofthe Communist Autocracy, 2nded. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1977),56 and 350-51.101 Lenin, State and Revolution, 73-74. Emphases in original.102 Ibid., 84. Emphasis in original.103 Ibid., 85.11M See Shapiro, Origin ofthe Communist Autocracy.105 Paul Johnson, Modern 1imes: The Worldfrom the 'lWenties to theNineties, rev. ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1991),270.106 A useful survey of this trend is Keane, Democracy and Civil

42 Past Imperfect

Society. See also the companion volume edited by Keane, Civil So­ciety and the State.107 For example, Krishan Kumar, "Civil Society: An Inquiry into theUsefulness of An Historical Tenn," British Journal ofSociology 44(Sept. 1994): 375-95.IGlI See for example, Norberto Bobbio, "Gramsci and the Concept ofCivil Society," in Civil Society and the Stale, ed. John Keane (Lon­don: Verso, 1988).109 Gramsci, quoted in Bobbio, "Gramsci and the Concept of CivilSociety," 86.110 Ibid., 82.85.III John Keane, "Introduction," in Keane, ed., Civil Society and theSlate, 21-25.112 The best defence of pluralism by a historian of ideas is that ofIsaiah Berlin. For a concise example, see Berlin, "The Pursuit oftheIdeal." A good summary by a political philosopher is Steven Lukes,"Making Sense of Moral Conflict," in Liberalism and the MoralLife, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1989).For a discussion ofthe political implications ofpluralism, see BorisDeWiel, "The Politics of Ideological Diversity," in Roger Gibbins,el ai, Mindscapes: Political Ideologies Towards the 21st Century(Toronto: McGraw-Hili Ryerson, 1996).II) For a good discussion ofthe connection between the value plural­ism and multiculturalism in modem democracies, see Joseph Raz,"Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective," Dissent41 (Winter 1994):67-79.