The Dialectic of Civil and Uncivil Society—Fragility, Fault Lines, and Countervailing Forces

In light of the experience of the past three decades—1989 to 2020—the civil society appears as a fragile institution that seems capable of giving rise to the overthrow of dictators as well as to their ready installation; to engender movements of solidarity and inclusion as well as of hatred and violence. To understand what allows these different tendencies to arise from within the civil society requires that we move past a pre-occupation with the structural and socio-economic dimension of the civil society and recover a conception of the civil society as an inherently moral institution. In this regard, the tradition of social analysis pioneered by Alexis de Tocqueville remains singularly instructive. The cultivation of civility, we can learn, is not an automatic by-product of tamed markets, limited government, and vibrant associational life—necessary and important though these are. The dispositions needed to maintain the civil society do not arise with causal necessity even where associations flourish, markets are tamed, and institutions are well-designed. By facing more squarely the deep moral fault-lines of the civil society we can develop a keener sense of the countervailing forces needed to keep the project of the civil society on track.