Civil society theory, enlightenment and critique

Democratization

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 7-28

  Fine, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0007739853     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510349708403499     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Within civil society theory, Marxism is usually treated as an extreme form of scepticism. Ernest Gellner, for example, writes that 'the central intuition of Marxism is to say: Civil Society is a fraud' in Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994), p.1.
2. We find this usage still present in Kant: 'the first decision the individual is obliged to make, if he does not wish to renounce all concepts of right, will be to ... abandon the state of nature in which everyone follows his own desires... and enter into a state of civil society'. Kant then equates 'civil society' (societas civilis) and the 'civil state' (status civilis) as identical terms: Metaphysics of Morals, para.44, in Immanuel Kant, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp.137-8.
3. This argument has been developed by Manfred Riedel in '"State" and "Civil Society": Linguistic Context and Historical Origin', Between Tradition and Revolution: The Hegelian Transformation of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp.129-56.
4. John Keane, 'Remembering the Dead', in Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso, 1988), pp.31-68. For Keane, 'remembering the dead' also meant burying Marx. Tolerance has its limits.
5. David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990), p.vii..
6. Vaclav Havel, Power of the Powerless (London: Hutchinson, 1985).
7. Ibid., p.30.
8. 'Not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan ... as a record of the people's own failure as individuals', ibid., p.38.
9. Ibid., p.80.
10. Ibid., p.85.
11. See Aviezer Tucker, 'Vaclav Havel's Heideggerianism', Telos, Vol.85 (1990), pp.63-78. Havel follows Heidegger in his revolt against modern technology - 'that child of modern science which in turn is a child of modern metaphysics' which has become Out of humanity's control, has ceased to serve us, has enslaved us and compelled us to participate in the preparation of our own destruction'. His aim was to restore 'a relation between human beings and the order of Being', pp.71 and 75.
12. [George] Konrád, Antipolitics (London: Quartet, 1984), p.92. See also Havel, 'Anti-Political Polities', in Keane, op. cit., pp 381-98, where he wrote: I favour anti-political politics: that is, politics not as the technology of power and manipulation... but politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful lives ... I favour politics as practical morality, as service to truth, as esssentially huaman and humanly measured care for our fellow-humans. ... It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics ... Yes, anti-political politics is possible. Politics from below. Politics of the people, not the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not the thesis ... , pp.397-98.
13. [George] Konrád, Antipolitics (London: Quartet, 1984), p.92. See also Havel, 'Anti-Political Polities', in Keane, op. cit., pp 381-98, where he wrote: I favour anti-political politics: that is, politics not as the technology of power and manipulation... but politics as one of the ways of seeking and achieving meaningful lives ... I favour politics as practical morality, as service to truth, as esssentially huaman and humanly measured care for our fellow-humans. ... It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics ... Yes, anti-political politics is possible. Politics from below. Politics of the people, not the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not the thesis ... , pp.397-98.
14. Jürgen Habermas, 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: The Federal Republic's Orientation to the West', Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System, Vol.11 (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), pp. 249-67; Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate (edited by Shierry Weber Nicholsen) (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); Habermas, 'The Role of the Student Movement in Germany', in Autonomy and Solidarity (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 229-36.
15. Jürgen Habermas, 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: The Federal Republic's Orientation to the West', Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System, Vol.11 (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), pp. 249-67; Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate (edited by Shierry Weber Nicholsen) (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); Habermas, 'The Role of the Student Movement in Germany', in Autonomy and Solidarity (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 229-36.
16. Jürgen Habermas, 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: The Federal Republic's Orientation to the West', Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System, Vol.11 (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), pp. 249-67; Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate (edited by Shierry Weber Nicholsen) (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); Habermas, 'The Role of the Student Movement in Germany', in Autonomy and Solidarity (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 229-36.
17. See, for example, Mihaly Vajda, 'East-Central European Perspectives' and Jeno Szucs, 'Three Historical Regions of Europe', in Keane, op. cit.; pp.333-80 and 291-332 respectively.Vajda writes: 'political structure and society are more or less congruent in Eastern Europe ... In contrast to this, in the East-Central European region, a totalitarian state must continually coerce society in order that it should outwardly conform to the Eastern model', p.339.
18. Peter Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 186.
19. Habermas (1987), p.126.
20. Ibid., p. 119.
21. Ibid., p.173.
22. Compare with Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (London: Heinemann, 1972).
23. See Johann Amason, 'The Theory of Modernity and the Problematic of Democracy', Thesis Eleven, Vol.26 (1990), p.39.
24. Habermas (1990), p.40.
25. Michael Walzer, 'The Idea of Civil Society', Dissent (Spring 1991), pp.293-304.
26. Gellner, op. cit.
27. Ibid., p.99.
28. 'This led ... to the undignified habit of regularly renaming cities, squares, thoroughfares, bridges and railway stations. You might say that a real Civil Society is one which does not rechristen all its railway stations and boulevards and issue a new city plan each time the government changes', ibid., p.136.
29. Ibid., p.79.
30. A. Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), p. 364, quoted in Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 39.
31. A. Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), p. 364, quoted in Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 39.
32. Gellner, op. cit., p.80.
33. See Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State (London: Hutchinson, 1978), pp.79-85.
34. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Discourses (London: Dent and Sons, 1973), p. 113.
35. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: Penguin, 1974), p.117.
36. Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, 'Conceptual History and Theoretical Synthesis', Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp.83-116; and Andrew Arato, 'A Reconstruction of Hegel's Theory of Civil Society', in D. Cornell et al. (eds.), Hegel and Legal Theory (London: Routledge, 1991), pp.301-20.
37. Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, 'Conceptual History and Theoretical Synthesis', Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp.83-116; and Andrew Arato, 'A Reconstruction of Hegel's Theory of Civil Society', in D. Cornell et al. (eds.), Hegel and Legal Theory (London: Routledge, 1991), pp.301-20.
38. Habermas (1990), p.40.
39. Habermas (1990), p.43.
40. Arato (1991), p. 301. The idea of 'two Hegels' fighting an internal battle was developed by K.H. Ilting, who argued that with one voice Hegel treated the state as a secular deity whose claims upon its citizens are always 'unquestionable and irresistible'; and with another identified universality with a free body of citizens - the idea which civil society theory embraced. The 'unresolved antinomy' in Hegel's thought - in which the state appears at once as an 'immanent end' of individuals in civil society and as 'external necessity and their higher authority' - was addressed by Ilting in 'Hegel's Concept of the State and Marx's Early Critique', in Z.A. Pelczynski (ed.). The State and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp.93-113.
41. Arato (1991), p.318. A similar republican argument may be found in Fred Dallmayr's reading of Philosophy of Right, where he argued that Hegel initiated a new institutional format of the state: one which takes cognisance of the instrumentalization of existing state structures in the hands of bureaucratic and economic elites, and relocates the rational state in the associational life of civil society; particularly, in the new social movements which through rainbow coalitions constitute an Open-ended public space' and become the emblem of a 'democratic social bond'. Precisely how such an aggregate of passing particular interests in civil society could be transformed into the institutional embodiment of the universal, is not made clear: Fred Dallmayr, 'Reading the Hegelian State' in Cornell, op. cit., pp.321-46.
42. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.260A.
43. Ibid., p.245.
44. Ibid., p. 194.
45. Ibid., p. 185.
46. Thanks to Anastasia Ioannidou (this volume) and Margarita Kavkayanni-Doukidou for their discussions of the relation between Kant, Smith and Hegel's concepts of civil society.
47. Hegel, op. cit., p. 182.
48. Ibid., pp.243-44.
49. Ibid., pp. 184, 185.
50. Ibid., p.200.
51. Ibid., pp. 260, 260A.
52. Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche (Peterborough: Anchor, 1967), pp.240-41.
53. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (London: RKP, 1968), p.201.
54. Hegel, op. cit., Preface, p. 18.
55. Ibid., p.258.
56. Marcuse, op.cit., p.216.
57. See Gellner, op. cit., Ch.1.
58. Habermas (1990), pp.17-19.
59. See my own Democracy and the Rule of Law: Liberal Ideals and Marxist Critiques (London: Pluto, 1984) for a less polarized view of the relation between Marx and Enlightenment.