TY - CHAP
T1 - The Modern Conceptual History of Civil Society
AU - Mossin, Christiane
N1 - Published November 30, 2020.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The purpose of the chapter is to point to the complex heritage of the concept “civil society”—a heritage that still determines the ways in which we envision present and future roles, possibilities, and impossibilities of civil society. The chapter grasps “civil society” as a political, legal, economic, and cultural conceptual battlefield. On this basis, the goal is to trace some of the most crucial conceptual tensions through which “civil society” has been historically manifested, as well as the institutional dilemmas that they imply. More specifically, the chapter engages with two significant conceptual tensions: “premodern-modern” and “public-private”—the former capturing the civilizational logic at play throughout modern discourses and practices, and the latter the dominating logic of institutionalization. It is argued that dilemmas inherent in these logics are haunting us still today. Furthermore, they are related to the ambiguous survival of natural law throughout modernity: On the one hand, modern civil society emerges on the basis of a break from natural law, and on the other, natural law survives to this day, in various disguises. This chapter offers a discussion of consequences of the dilemma-haunted ideals through which we approach “civil society” today, and of possibilities of reconfigurations in the future.
AB - The purpose of the chapter is to point to the complex heritage of the concept “civil society”—a heritage that still determines the ways in which we envision present and future roles, possibilities, and impossibilities of civil society. The chapter grasps “civil society” as a political, legal, economic, and cultural conceptual battlefield. On this basis, the goal is to trace some of the most crucial conceptual tensions through which “civil society” has been historically manifested, as well as the institutional dilemmas that they imply. More specifically, the chapter engages with two significant conceptual tensions: “premodern-modern” and “public-private”—the former capturing the civilizational logic at play throughout modern discourses and practices, and the latter the dominating logic of institutionalization. It is argued that dilemmas inherent in these logics are haunting us still today. Furthermore, they are related to the ambiguous survival of natural law throughout modernity: On the one hand, modern civil society emerges on the basis of a break from natural law, and on the other, natural law survives to this day, in various disguises. This chapter offers a discussion of consequences of the dilemma-haunted ideals through which we approach “civil society” today, and of possibilities of reconfigurations in the future.
UR - https://primo.kb.dk/permalink/f/vdasju/CBS01000983487
U2 - 10.4324/9780429323881-2
DO - 10.4324/9780429323881-2
M3 - Book chapter
SN - 9780367340957
T3 - Routledge Advances in Sociology
SP - 31
EP - 47
BT - Civil Society
A2 - Egholm, Liv
A2 - Kaspersen, Lars Bo
PB - Routledge
CY - Abingdon
ER -