Civil Society/Public Sphere: History of the Concept

Ciil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept Neocleous M 1996 Administering Ciil Society: Towards a The Greek conception of the polis, for example, Theory of State Power. MacMillan, London usually referred to both, but when a distinction was Offe C 1987 Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics: made, it clearly favored the state. Social movements since the 1960s. In: Maier C (ed.) Changing Roman law contributed the idea of ciitas and a Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the Eoling Balance Between State and Society, Public and Priate in Europe. stronger sense of relations among persons that were Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK neither narrowly familial nor specifically about consti- Pasquino P 1981 Introduction to Lorenz von Stein. Economy and tuting the political society through the state. Medieval Society 10(1): 1–6 political and legal theory developed this theme, es- Reidel M 1984 Between Tradition and Eolution: The Hegelian pecially in relation to the freedoms claimed by medi- Transformation of Political Philosophy. Cambridge University eval cities but also in relation to the Church. Some Press, Cambridge, UK strands juxtaposed the notion of legitimacy ascending Richter M 1998 Montesquieu and the concept of civil society. from ‘the people’ to the eventually dominant idea of The European Legacy 3(66): 33–41 divine right of kings, with its notion of legitimacy Rosanvallon P 1988 The decline of social visibility. In: Keane J (ed.) Ciil Society and the State: New European Perspecties. descending from God. Also influential was the dis- Verso, London tinction of civil from criminal law (in which the former Smith A 1974 The Wealth of Nations. Penguin, Harmondsworth, governs relations formed voluntarily among indivi- UK duals and the latter the claims of the whole society Trentmann F (ed.) 2000 Paradoxes of Ciil Society: New against malefactors). Nonetheless, it was only in the Perspecties on Modern German and British History. Bergham, course of early modern reflection on the sources of New York social order that civil society came to be seen as a Tribe K 1988 Goerning Economy: The Reformation of German distinct sphere. Economic Discourse, 1750–1840. Cambridge University Press, A crucial step in this process was the ‘affirmation of Cambridge, UK ordinary life’ (Taylor 1989). Whereas the Greek H. Islamoglu philosophers had treated the private realm—including economic activity—as clearly inferior to the public realm associated with affairs of state, many moderns placed a new positive value on family and economic Civil Society/Public Sphere: History of the pursuits. They argued that both privacy and civil society needed to be defended against encroachments Concept by the state. In this context, it was also possible to conceive of a public sphere that was not coterminous The closely related concepts of civil society and public with the state but rather located in civil society and sphere developed in the early modern era to refer to based on its voluntary relations. In this communicative capacities for social self-organization and influence space citizens could address each other openly, and in over the state. Civil society usually refers to the ways that both established common notions of the institutions and relationships that organize social life public good and influenced the state. at a level between the state and the family. Public Social contract and natural law theories—especially sphere is one of several linked terms (including ‘public as joined in the work of John Locke—contributed to q space,’ simply ‘public,’ and the German Offentlichkeit, this shift by suggesting ways in which the creation of or publicness) that denote an institutional setting society conceptually preceded the creation of govern- distinguished by openness of communication and a ment. From this it was only a short step to say that the focus on the public good rather than simply compro- legitimacy of government depended on its serving the mises among private goods. Located in civil society, needs of civil society (or of ‘the people’). Thomas communication in the public sphere may address the Paine and other advocates of freedom from unjust rule state or may seek to influence civil society and even advanced an image of the freedoms of Englishmen private life directly. Key questions concern the extent which was influential not only in England and Ameri- to which it will be guided by critical reason, and how ca, but in France, notably in Montesqueiu’s account boundaries between public and private are mediated. of the ‘spirit’ of laws which combined an appreciation of English division of powers with an older tradition of 1. Ciil Society and Self-organization republican (and aristocratic) virtue. From Rousseau through Tocqueville, Comte, and Durkheim, this The distinction of ‘civil society’ from the state took its French tradition developed an ever-stronger account modern form in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- of the autonomy of the social (resisting not only the turies. Prior to this separation, political and social claims of the state but the Cartesian postulate of the realms were seldom clearly distinguished. When they primacy of the individual subject). were, the social was exemplified by the family and A crucial innovation was to understand society as at often subordinated as the realm of necessity or mere least potentially self-organizing rather than organized reproduction to the broader public character and only by rulers. If there was a single pivotal intellectual possibilities for active creation that lay in the state. source for this, it lay with the Scottish moralists. In 1897 Ciil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept Adam Smith’s (1776) notion of the invisible hand, the Kant, like many eighteenth-century philosophers, market exemplified this self-organizing capacity but lacked a strong notion of the social. This Hegel (1821) did not exhaust it. In his Essay on the History of Ciil supplied, rejecting social contract theory because even Society (1767), Adam Ferguson presented human in Rousseau’s notion of a general will it suggested that history as a series of social transformations leading to the union achieved in the state depended not on its modern society. This prompted Hegel (1821) to treat own absolute universality but on a development out of civil society as a field in which the universal and individual wills. Nationalism also shaped ideas of particular contended; their reconciliation depended society and political community in holistic ways well on the state. The idea of civil society also shaped matched to unitary states (Calhoun 1999). Marx’s classical political economy and ideas of social evol- (1843, 1927) critique of politics based on bourgeois ution, and informed Marx’s account of the stages of individual rights further challenged the adequacy of historical development as combinations of productive civil society as a realm of freedom and unity. Where capacity and (conflict-ridden) social relations. Marx Hegel thought that the state in itself might overcome also challenged the notion that markets were neutrally the tension between necessity and freedom and the self-organizing, emphasizing the role of historical clash of particular wills, Marx held that only a accumulations of power. transformation of material conditions including the Though the actual analyses differed, what had been abolition of private property could make this possible. established was the notion of society as a distinct As a result, theories stressing stronger ideas of the object of analysis, not reducible to either state or social were apt to offer weaker notions of public life. individual. People formed society impersonally as The Marxist tradition denigrated ‘mere democracy’ as actors in markets, more personally as parties to an inadequate means of achieving either freedom or contracts. The idea of civil society hearkened back to unity. the sort of social life that emerged among the free The ideas of public sphere and civil society de- citizens of medieval cities because this was largely self- veloped primarily in liberal theory. These were not regulated—as distinct from direct rule by ecclesiastical always seen in the manner of Hegel as merely ‘edu- or military authorities. It also suggested ‘civility’ in cative’ on the way to a more perfect latter unity. Nor interpersonal relations. This meant not just good was political unity necessarily left to the workings of manners, but a normative order facilitating amicable an invisible hand or other unchosen system, but or at least reliable and nonthreatening relationships freedom was treated commonly as a matter of in- among strangers and in general all those who were not dividual rather than collective action. This accom- bound together by deep private relations like kinship. panied the rise of relatively asocial understandings of Equally important, the idea of civil society included— the market (Polanyi 1944). In addition, the emerging in some versions—the notion that communication notion of the public sphere was not clearly distinct among members might be the basis for self-conscious from other usages of ‘public.’ State activity, for decisions about how to pursue the common good. This example, was sometimes described as public without notion is basic to the modern idea of public sphere. regard to its relationship to democracy or its openness to the gaze or participation of citizens. This usage 2. The Idea of a Public Sphere survives in reference to state-owned firms as ‘public’ regardless of the kind of state or the specifics of their Rousseau (1762) famously sought to understand how operation. social unity could result from free will rather than More important was the overlapping concept of external constraint. This depended, he argued, on ‘public opinion’ (see Public Opinion: Political Aspects). transcending the particular wills of many people with The dominant eighteenth-century usage emphasized a general will that was universal. Kant admired open expression and debate, contrasting free public Rousseau’s pursuit of unity in freedom as distinct opinion to absolutist repression.

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