Civil Society

The notion of “civil society” has had a long history in Western political thought, but it has been revived in modern discourse because it is seen to be the panacea for many problems in contemporary society, such as the growth of individualism, anomie, and the fragmentation of society. In the past, the idea of civil society was seen to be a key aspect of any successful nation-state with a democratic polity, but in contemporary debates, the idea has been extended to analyze the possible development of transnational communities and the emergence of a world civil society. Having been once the preferred solution for the problems of the nation-state, civil society is now promoted as the answer to the extensive and negative issues facing the global order. This entry proposes that we call the early development of the concept—namely, the emergence of civil society and the nation state from the late 18th century onward—Stage 1. We can then refer to civil society in relation to the process of globalization, the emergence of transnational capitalism, and the development of the Internet and network society from the second half of the 20th century as Stage 2.

Religion has played an important part in both Stage 1 and Stage 2. To some extent, as we shall see, the notion of civil society is the product of the Enlightenment and its secular legacies—Marxism, [Page 227]positivism, and liberalism. Perhaps Immanuel Kant's essay that appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1784 on the ideas of “a universal civil society” and of world peace is the first manifestation of the idea that democratic societies are unlikely to engage in mutually destructive warfare, and hence, the spread of Enlightenment ideas might also result in world peace. Kant argued that when people unite in a nation-state, they still have obligations to the rest of humanity. There would therefore be a two-tiered system of law relating to the nation-state and to the world or a “law of world citizenship” (ius cosmopoliticum) binding people into a commonwealth of nations. This union would not be simply a peace treaty but a league of peace (foedus pacificum). Kant's moral philosophy no longer required any transcendental justification from an almighty God but rested on a moral imperative to treat neighbors as we treat ourselves. It was therefore a secular theory of peace. This secular framework of the early theory of civil society suggests that religion would not play a large part in its subsequent history. But this was not the case. As we shall see, it was JeanJacques Rousseau who developed the idea that a civil religion would be fundamental to a successful society, and in subsequent debates, the Christian denominations came to be regarded as essential components of such a society. Finally, in contemporary philosophy, the idea of a postsecular society in the work of Jürgen Habermas has brought religion back into focus in both the national and the transational contexts.

The present entry outlines this historical development and considers several theories that have argued that religion is a vital ingredient of any robust and effective set of civil society institutions. For various reasons, however, it is questionable whether this optimistic view of civil society as an institutional panacea of globalization and its problems can be sustained. The entry concludes by examining the limitations of the notion of civil society as a political solution to questions of identity, membership, and commitment. Global civil society is fragile and unstable, and there are powerful forces that will constrain its development. Any normative view of civil society, whether national or global, will have to address the empirical limitations of all actually existing forms of civil society.

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