Enlightenment Civil Society

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Am erican Political Science Review Vol. 92, No. 2 Jun e 1998

Civility, Enlightenment, and Society:Conceptual Confusions and Kantian RemediesJAMES SCHMIDT Boston University

Critics of what is called the "En lightenm ent project" have argued tha t it has been responsible for anum ber of current social pathologies. A t the same time, the term "civil society" has been used to

designate thosepatterns of solidarity that the Enlig hten ment project allegedly disrupts. This article ( I )argues that characterizations of the E nlightenm ent project tend to be elusive and historically ques tionable,( 2 ) suggests that the conce pt of civil society is ambiguous in bo th its object and its intent, (3)explores howKan t provided a more rigorous account of the relationship between enlightenmen t and civil society, anaccount which rests on a contrast between civil and cosmopolitan society, and (4 ) considers some of thedificulties that plague a ttempts to define "civility" as a virtue.

riting in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1784,Immanuel Kant speculated that the "hiddenplan of nature" was to bring about justice in

civil society and peaceful relations between nations bymeans of the very antagonism that seemed to promise

only civil unrest and international conflict. He assuredhis readers tha t "though folly and caprice creep in at alltimes, enlightenment gradually arises," and thus the"chiliastic expectations" of philosophy for the triumphof justice were something more than an illusion (Kant[I7841 1923,27-8). As we close this millennium, Kant's"chiliastic expectations" regarding enlightenment andcivil society do not appe ar to b e generally shared.

Over the last several decades, a remarkably diversegroup of philosophers and social critics have traced theorigin of a number of social and cultural maladies tosomething they call the "Enlightenment project." Overthe same period, an equally diverse group of political

and social commentators have hailed the promise of,lamen ted th e dem ise of, or sought ways to reinvigoratewhat they call "civil society." The concerns at stake inthese discussions would ap pear to be related . As Kant'sessay shows, the nature,and promise of civil societywere important concerns in the Enlightenment. Yet,with a few exceptions, current debates over the viabilityof the Enlightenment project and discussions of theprospects for civil society are conducted in differentregisters. On those rare occasions when the relation-ship between the two notions is broached, some com-mentators tend to see greater difficulties than Kant.

Consider, for example, the explanation that Bergerand Neuh aus ([I9761 1996, 161) offer for the tendency

of liberalism to underestimate the role played by"mediating structures" in public policy:

Liberalism's blindness to mediating structures can betraced to its Enlightenment roots. Enlightenment thoughtis abstract, universalistic, addicted to what Burke called"geometry" in social policy. Th e concret e particularities ofmediating structures find an inhospitable soil in the liberal

garden. Th ere the g reat concern is for the individual ("therights of man") and fo r a just public ord er, but anything "inbetween" is viewed as irrelevant, or even an obstacle, tothe rational ordering of society. What lies in between isdismissed, to the extent it can be, as superstition, bigotry,or (more recently) cultural lag.'

This argument repeats a long-standing charge againstthe En lightenm ent: While it proved effective in tearingdown what tradition had wrought, it was unable tofoster those mediating structures which sustain civilsociety. This was the com mon theme of such otherwisedissimilar works as Burke's Reflections on the Revolu-tion in France ([I7901 1987) and Tocqueville's TheAncien Rdgime and the French Revolution ([I8561 1955).Such an argum ent also played a cen tral role in Hegel'saccount of the relationship between th e Enlightenm entand the Terror in the Phenomenology of Spirit ([I80611977). Som ething similar may be found in Nietzsche's

suggestion that the E nlightenm ent's critique of religionwas but the first step toward a critique of the idols ofscience, morality, and reason that carried with it theprospect of a collapse into nihilism.

This paper proposes that arguments of this sort reston confusions about what the Enlightenment involvedand what civil society implies. They invoke a charac-terization of the Enlightenment that is historicallyquestionab le and an un derstanding of civil society tha tis rarely clearly defined. To understan d w hat is amiss, itwill be necessary to (1) examine the radically differentways in which the Enlightenment is understood bysocial critics and by historians, (2) explore some of theambiguities that plague the concept of civil society, (3)

return to Kant, in order to consider an alternative wayof thinking about the relationship between Enlighten-ment and civil society, and (4) consider some of thedifficulties tha t plagu e a ccounts of the v irtue of civility.

CRITICIZING THE ENLIGHTENMENT

PROJECT

James Schmidt is Professor of Political Science, Boston University, In recent decades the notion that there is somethingBoston, MA 02215. short-sighted, narrow, and deficient abou t the Enlight-

This article is drawn from a paper presented at a UNESCOConference, "Future Ethics," held at the Institute of CulturalPluralism, Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro, July 2-4, For a discussion of the significance of Berger and Neuhaus's notion1997. I am indebted to Enriqu e La rreta, the executive director of the of "mediating structures" for current discussions of civil society, see

ICP, for inviting me to draw some connections. Dionn e 1997.



Civility, Enlightenment, and Society

enment has become so pervasive that many commen-tators, as Wilson (1987,53) observed, find it impossibleto resist the temptation to

take a punch at enlightenment thought. . . . It is difficult toget through an academic day without having to witnesssomebody jabbing away just to enjoy the pleasure ofgetting off o n the demystification of the func tioning of

humanist ideals or slapping the Enlightenment aroundwith the intention of knocking it out of its stupor andredeeming the hopes of mastery of nature by reason.

Wilson's quip highlights one of the more distinctivefeatures of recent criticisms of the Enlightenmentproject: Today, punches are thrown from the Left aswell as the Right, and the Enlightenment stands ac-cused not only of undermining tradition but also ofreinforcing patriarchy, fostering anti-Semitism, sustain-ing an ideology of white supremacy, emb racing a visionthat sees progress only in terms of th e ever-increasingsubjugation of nat ure , and-more generally-harbor-ing a hostility toward "otherness" in any of its forms

(Schmidt 1 99 6, l) . As a way of sorting out th e differentcharges that have been raised, it might be useful tooutline, briefly, three different versions of the critiqueof the Enlightenment project.

The first and perhaps most familiar line of criticismargues that the indifference of Enlightenment ration-ality to traditional norm s and practices destroys the tiesthat bind individuals together int o societies, paving theway for complete anarchy or the rule of brute force.The locus classicus for this interpretation is Burke'sReflections on the Revolution in France. CriticizingFrench "literary men and politicians" as having "norespect for the wisdom of others," Burke argues that

the fatal flaw of the Enlightenment lay in its habit of"exploding general prejudices" r ath er than seeking "todiscover the latent wisdom which prevails in them."Because "prejudice, with its reason," is capable ofmoving men to actiqn in a way that "naked reason"cannot, it is wiser " to con tinue th e prejudice, with thereason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudiceand leave nothing but the naked reaso n" (Burke [I79011987, 76-7). M ore re cen t versions of this line ofcriticism may be found in Oakeshott's ([I9621 1991)critique of political "rationalism" or G adam er's ([I96011989) critique of the Enlightenment's "prejudiceagainst prejudice." We also find it in passing swipes atthe Enlightenment by conservative and neoconserva-

tive commentators.A second line of criticism originates in Hegel's

discussion, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, of thetransformation of Enlightenmen t- into Ter ror . Whilemuch of Hegel's im agery bears a striking resemblanceto Burke, his argument differs in crucial ways. WhereBurke sought to defend the reason of tradition againstthe abstractions of philosophers, Hegel argues that thecentral failing of the Enlightenment was that it wasinsufficiently enlightened about the limitations of itsown conception of reason. The struggle between faithand Enlightenment turns out to be little more thanshadow boxing, since all that E nlightenment can offer

in place of religious faith is a faith of a different sort: a

June 1998

belief in the primacy of the category of utility. Enlight-enment proves to be "irresistible" in its struggle withfaith, but its victory is a bitter one, as is amplydemonstrated, in Hegel's view, by the collapse of theFrench Revolution into Terror. A politics guided byutility alone can produce nothing except "the coldest,shallowest of deaths, with no more significance thancleaving a cabbage head or swallowing a gulp of water"

(Heg el [I8061 1977, 360, transla tion m odified).' Amore recent version of this line of criticism can befound in the account of the self-destruction of Enlight-enment sketched by Horkheimer and Adorno ([I94711972).3

A third line of criticism originates in the work ofNietzsche, whose stance toward the Enlightenmentreflects a profound ambivalence. In some of his discus-sions of the Enlightenment he calls for the rescue ofwhat he characterizes as its original aristocratic idealsfrom the contaminating influences of democracy andegalitarianism that he associates with Rousseau andthe French Revolution (Nietzsche [I8781 1986, 169,

367; [I8821 1974, 293; [I8881 1968b, 101-2). On otheroccasions, however, he suggests that the Enlighten-ment's critique of religion was but the first falteringstep in the direction of a thoro ughgoing critique of theidols of science, morality, and reason, a nd this carriedwithin it both the danger of a collapse into nihilism andthe promise of a new Enlightenment in which the ideaof aesthetic self-fashioning would replace the searchfor universal v alues (Nietzsche [I8821 1974, 181; [1883-881 1968a, 56). Nietzsche's present-day heirs are amotley lot, encompassing both those who, like Gray(1995), share his conviction that the Enlightenmentpaves the way to nihilism but who reject his aestheti-cization of ethics and those who, like Foucault, aremo re concerned w ith exploring the workings of powerand knowledge than with meditating on the danger ofnihilism (Schmidt and Wartenberg 1994).

Each of these lines of criticism has a different senseof what ought to be done in the face of the damageallegedly wrought by the Enlightenment. The solutionof latter-day Burkeans is perhaps the most familiar:They counsel a defense of traditional norm s where theystill survive, a distrust f or any social policy that sm acksof rational "social engineering," and support for mea-sures that strengthen the damaged "mediating institu-tions" of civil society. Those who take Hegel's accountas their point of departure, in contrast, are concerned

to elaborate a conception of rationality that seeks totranscend the limits of instrumental reason (Habermas1987). An d Nietzsche's presen t-day disciples may, likeGray, embrace Heidegger's notion of Gelassenheit as ameans of avoiding the nihilism they see inher ent in theWill to Power (G ray 1996, 182-3) or seek, as Foucaultdid in his last writings, to redefine Enlightenm ent as anopen-ended project of self-creation (Foucault 1984,

For a discussion of the peculiar images Hegel employs, see Schmidt1998.

Horkheimer himself saw the work as an elaboration of Hegel'sbasic thesis. See his letter to Friedrich Pollock of May 7, 1943

(Horkheimer 1996, 446).



Am erican Political S cience Review

32-50). But if the proposed antidotes for the dam agedon e by the E nlightenm ent are remarkably diverse, thepicture of the Enlightenment that emerges from thesecritics is strikingly consistent. Let us review its mainfeatures.

First, the Enlightenment is routinely charactikizedas embracing a conception of reason th at is held to beinsufficiently sensitive to its own limits. So me tim es it iscriticized for underestimating the degree to whichnorms and values can be detached from traditions andconven tions of everyday life, resulting-as Mac Intyre(1981) has argued-in a situa tion in which mora ldiscourse has lost all meaning. O the r critics charge thatit embraces a restricted understan ding of reason, mod-eled on t he na tural sciences, which equ ates reason withthe successful manipulation of nature, resulting in therule of "instrum ental reason" (Horkh eimer 1947). Stillothers suggest that it naively underestimated the roleplayed by passions and sentiments in human conductand, as a result, leads to a wildly impractical politics,which Oa kesh ott ([I9621 1991, 27-31)characterized as

a "politics of the book" or an "abridgement of atradition." Whatever the particular form of the criti-cism, the central charge remains the same: The En-lightenment rep resents an uncritical rationalism tha t isdangerously unaware of the complexity of reality.

Closely related is the charge that, because the En-lightenment loses itself in abstract universality, it hasan ignorance of, or worse still, a contempt for theparticular, the local, the specific. According to Oake-sho tt ([I9621 1991, 9), the "political rationalism " t hat isthe bitter legacy of the Enlightenment combines a"politics of perfection" with a "politics of uniformity."Horkheimer and Adorno ([I9471 1972, 6) provide an

even mo re chilling image: Enlig htenm ent, in their view,is inherently "totalitarian." Critics from the Left havecharged that its talk of universal rights remainedoblivious to inequalities in gender, race, and class,while those on the Right argue that by reducing allsocial relations to a series of abstract and impersonalrights, it tears the fab ric of society to pieces. In all thesecases, the E nlightenm ent stan ds accused not simply ofbeing uncritically rationalist but of being insufficientlyconcerned with particularity.

It is further argued that the abstract, uncriticalconception of reason embraced by the Enlightenmentculminates in an obsession with domination and con-trol. Thus, in Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1979),the prisoners who have been freed from the darknessof the dungeon are captured all the more securely inthe light that floods through the Panopticon. InHorkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment([I9471 1972), the ultimate project of the Enlighten-ment is the domination of nature and of other humanbeings. And for Gray (1996, 166, 180), the Enlighten-ment project is yet anot her manifestation of tha t "Willto Power" which lies at the heart of the "Westernhumanist hubris."

Finally, the En lightenm ent's critics are united in theconviction that there is such a thing as an Enlighten-me nt project-that it is possible to attrib ute a com mo n

set of intentions to a rather diverse group of thinkers,

Vol. 92, No. 2

scattered across a number of different nations. Criticsmay differ on how exactly this project is to be defined,just as there is considerable difference, from critic tocritic, as to who counts as a representative of it. Butcentral to all these criticisms is the conviction that itmakes sense to speak of a single, coherent Enlighten-ment project. While such a possibility is taken asunproblematic by the critics, their confidence is hardlyreflected in historical accounts of the period.

In a recent overview, Outram (1995) observed thatas historians of the E nlightenm ent have moved from anexamination of a limited canon of works by a fewfamous (and typically French) authors to a consider-ation of the Enlightenment as a social, political, andcultural transformation exhibiting a remarkable rangeof national an d confessional variations, it has becomemore difficult to speak of the Enlightenment as "aunitary phenomenon." "It might . . . seem that as ourpicture of the Enlighten men t became more complex, aswe have begun to study ideas not as autonomous,discrete objects, but as deeply em bed ded in society, so

the term Enlightenment itself might have becomeincreasingly obscure or even meaningless" (Outram1995, 12).

To the extent that it is still possible to impute anidentity to the Enlightenment, Outram (1995, 12)suggests that it must be viewed "as a capsule containingsets of debates , stresses and concerns, which howeverdifferently formulated or responded to, do ap pear t o becharacteristic of the way in which ideas, opinions andsocial and political structures interacted and changedin the eighteenth century." This diversity is preciselywhat the critics tend t o overlook when they spe ak as ifthere were a single, unitary Enlightenment project.

Gray's Enlightenment's Wake (1995) exemplifies howfar afield a critic can go when trying to define theEnlightenment project. Turning first to MacIntyre'sAfrer Virtue (1981), he argues that while Enlightenm entthinkers may have held differing views on other topics,they were at o ne in calling for "an indepen dent rationaljustification of morality" (G ray 1995, 147). R at he rquickly, he extends the Enlightenment project to em-brace t he "refounding" of "society" as well as "moral-ity" on "universal, tradition-indep endent rational prin-ciples," a project to which "liberalism as a doctrin e was,in all of its varieties, unreservedly committed" (pp.149-50). A few pages later, the "E nlightenm ent projectof human self-emancipation" is characterized as the

"naturalistic form" of the "most fundamental Westerncommitment, the humanist conception of humankindas a privileged site of truth," a commitment that hadbeen expressed in both "Socratic inquiry and in Chris-tian revelation" (p. 155). Having equated the Enlight-enment project with liberalism and humanism, Graynext characterizes it as also embracing the "modernistworld-view," with its "conception of science as thesupremely privileged form of knowledge," a supremacytha t is, in turn, defined in te rm s of a view of the n atura lworld as "an object of human exploitation" (p. 158).Within a few more pages, a "commitment to ration-alism" becomes one of the "defining elements of the

modernist world-view of which the Enlightenment



Civility, Enlightenment, and Society

project is the most powerful expression" (p. 160).Several paragraphs later, the Enlightenment is charac-terized as "foundationalist," "representationalist," an d"logocentric" (p. 160).

In Gray's account, the definition has so many differ-ing characteristics that it is uncertain whether4 makessense to speak of a single, all-encompassing project.Th e attempt to provide "an indepen dent rational jus-

tification of morality" (the characterization of theEnlightenment project that Gray takes from MacIn-tyre) does not require or even imply a view of thenatural world as "an object of human exploitation" (acharacterization Gray takes from Heidegger and fromHorkheimer and Ado rno). While the primacy accordedto the natural sciences merges rather easily into theproject of the domination of nature, it is not entirelyobvious that an "inde pend ent ration al justification ofmorality" must ultimately be grounded in the naturalsciences: For a thinker such as Kant, it obviously wasnot. It is also less than clear that "liberalism" isnecessarily part of the Enlightenment project: Not all

advocates of Enlightenment embraced liberalism, andthere were eloquent defenders of liberalism who werealso vigorous critics of the Enlightenment.4 It is easyenough to make the "foundationalist," "representa-tionalist," and "logocentric" characterization (after all,is not everything since the pre-Socratics "representa-tionalist" and "logocentrist"?), but the price is toobscure a good deal of difference bebeen a founda-tionalist procedure which, following Descartes, seeksto find a ground for reason and Kant's attempt toprovide what O'N eill (1989, 3-27) has describe d as a"constructivist" vindication of reason.5

Accounts of the failure of the Enlightenm ent p rojectsuch as Gray's typically tend to rest on criticisms of anum ber of separat e and detachable claims. Thus, whencritics take aim at the project's "rationalism," they areraising questions a bout the ability of reason to providea grounding for law ?r morality. When they criticize its"scientism," they are questioning the adequacy of acriterion of rationality that is measured in terms ofinstrumental efficacy. When they point to its naivecommitment to "progress," they are questioning thepossibility of evaluating all societies and cultures interms of a single measur e of "developm ent." Cobblingdistinguishable claims such as these into somethingcalled the Enlightenment project misses an essentialpoint: Criticisms of these very same claims were ad-

vanced by thinkers typically associated with the En-lightenment. Hum e, for example, had doubts about theprospect of constructing a moral philosophy groundedon reason alone, Kant's entire critical philosophy canbe viewed as an attempt to defin eieaso n in somethingother than instrumentalist terms, and both Voltaireand Diderot offered extensive criticisms of the idea ofprogress. What is bravely called the Enlightenment

For one example, see Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, "SomethingLessing Said" (Sch midt 1996, 191-211).

"Post-modernist" critics almost habitually equate Descartes andKant. See, for example, Cornel W est's c omments o n what h e calls the

"Cartesian-Kan tian picture" (We st 1979, 68).

June 1998

project thus turns out to be a pastiche of arguments,eac h of which-when viewed separately-would findcritics within the Enlightenment itself.

Thus, current discussions of the Enlightenment aremarked by a paradox. Those who speak most confi-dently of it as a single, coherent project have littleconfidence in the alleged project's viability. Those whospeak with most competence about the historical real-

ity of the Enlightenment have little confidence inoffering a general c haracterization of what th e Enlight-enment was attempting to achieve. Thus, the Enlight-enment project is coherent only for those who are inthe process of rejecting it, while those who examine itmore closely find the object of their concern dissolvinginto a host of particulars.

INVOKING CIVIL SOCIETY

In the writings of scholars, social critics, and politicalactivists, the invocation of civil society is even morepervasive than criticisms of the Enlightenment project.

During the 1970s and 1980s, critics of authoritarianregimes in both Eastern Europe and Latin Americaused the notion as a rallying point (Arato and Cohen1992, 29-36, 48-69). Since then, it has played a maj orrole in discussions of the pro spects for dem ocratization(Gellner 1996, 1-12). Over the last decade, socialscientists have looked for signs of its emergence insocieties where conventional wisdom assumed it didnot exist (Hann and Dunn 1996; Schwedler 1995) andhave sought to explain its apparent demise in theUnited States (Putnam 1995). Over the last few yearsits "renewal" has been the object both of foundationsup por t and of propo sed legislation-witness th eProject for American Renewal drafted by Senator DanCoa ts (R-I ndian a), which consists of a series of mea-sures d esigned to ha lt "th e decline of civil society7' byproviding support for "families, churches, neighbor-hoods, voluntary associations" (Coa ts 1996).

Like the Enlightenment project, the meaning of"civil society" tends to be rather elusive. Shils's (1992,3) often-quoted definition reads like a sketchy set ofdirections: "Civil society lies beyond the boundaries ofthe family and clan a nd beyond the locality; it lies shortof the state." There is, however, a good deal to befound beyond t he family but short of the state: markets,voluntary associations, churches, interest groups, laborunions, nongovernmental organizations, and Robert

Putnam's (1995) steadily dwindling bowling leagues. Itremains an open question whether much is gained bygathering these different forms of association tog etherunder a single label (Kum ar 1993). Furth ermo re, rivalsets of directions explain where civil society may befound: Ara to and Cohen (1992, ix) differ from Shils byplacing civil society "between economy and state" andarguing that it is "composed above all by the intimatesph ere (especially the family), the sphe re of association(especially voluntary associations), social movements,and forms of public comm unication." T he possibilitiesfor dispu te abo ut just what-and where-civil societyis would ap pear to be endless.

Invocations of civil society rese mb le criticisms of t he



American Political Science Review

Enlightenm ent project in a second respect: They comefrom across the ideological spectrum (Walzer 1991).Opponents of authoritarian regimes employ the termto denote something like the rights and liberties longassociated with liberal democracies. Radical dem ocratsuse it to de not e the ideal of an engaged, ,activecitizenry, directly involved in public deliberation. Forlibertarians, it designates a market society, free from

political coercion. For communitarians, i t evokes thenetwork of voluntary associations and the civic virtuesthey engende r. If the Enlightenm ent project serves as acatch-all category that designates whatever particularaspect of the modern world aggravates the critic whomarshals it, so "civil society" appears to be an equallyelastic category, designating whatever the social criticfinds central to the particular vision of society that isbeing articulated.

Th e looseness of the t erm may be attrib uted partly tothe fact that, unlike "the Enlightenment," "civil soci-ety" has generally served as a theoretical concept usedto designate a certain form of association rather than

as a way of denoting a particular p e r i ~ d . ~heorists arethus at liberty to propose new definitions, often withonly the slightest familiarity with earlier formulations.T he ter m first entered the world as a way of translatingkoinonia politike, coined by Aristotle to describe theform of association more commonly termed a polis(Schmidt 1986). Until t he close of the eightee nthcentury, "civil society" was employed, following theparadigm laid down by Aristotle, to designate that formof political association conventionally referred to as a"state" or civitas. This pattern of usage was taken overwithout alteration by natural law theorists. But by theearly nineteenth century, it had been called into ques-tion (Schm idt 19 95). Hegel's Philosophy of Right madeuse of a distinction between state and civil society thatwas unconventional en ough to confuse his first review-ers (Schmidt 1982), and Tocqueville's drafts for De-mocracy in America proposed a tripartite division into"religious," "civil," and "political" societies (Schleifer1980, 7). To speak, then, of civil society (followingHegel) as something distinct from both the family andthe state, or (as in Tocqueville's initial drafts) fromboth religious and political forms of association is tosuggest that there are patterns of association notadequately grasped by eighteen th-century political andlegal theory. This altered use of "civil society" set thestage for the eme rgenc e of the various social sciences

that went on to explore the domain carved out by theterm.

There was also considerable ambiguity as to justwhat the proper focus of the newly emerging socialsciences might be. Recasting Hegers distinction be-

6 The re are notable exceptions. The Ge rma n term burgerlichr Gesell-

schaft can also be employed as a way of designating a particularhistorical form of social life, "bourgeois society." Marx made the

most of the ambiguity in The German Ideology ([I8451 1975, 89):"Civil society as such only develops with the bourgeoisie; the social

organization evolving directly out of production and commerce,which in all ages forms the basis of the state and of the rest of the

idealistic supers truct ure, has, however, always been designated by the

same name."

Vol. 92, No. 2

tween family, civil society, and the state into a dichot-omy between state and society, Stein ([I8501 1964, 50)saw sciences of society-as oppo sed to sciences of thestate-as including th e "sciences of econ om ics, oflabor, of householding economy and of national econ-omy, of the family and of law." Tocqueville, in contra st,turned from th e consideration of the legal structu re ofthe new American democracy to probe the patterns ofassociation, the customs, manners, and mores, the"habits of the heart" that defined its mode of existence.And M a n ([I8591 1970 ,20), interpreting civil society asthe "sum total" of the "material conditions of life,"

argued that the "anatomy" of civil society was to befound in political economy. The nineteenth century'suncertainty about the boundaries of civil society con-tinues to be played ou t today in disputes over whetherto include the intimate sphere of the family, whethercivil society is reducible ultimately to the market, andwhether it is opposed to o r requires the existence of thestate.

The term "civil society" is unclear in one finalrespect. It can function either as a normative ideal used

to designate the attributes that a political communityought to possess o r as an analytic category that is used,within an empirical analysis, to designate a set of"ostensibly 'private' yet potentially autonomous publicarenas distinct from the state" that prevent societyfrom "degenerating into a shapeless mass" (Eisenstadt1992, ix). Locke used the term in the first of thesesenses when he argued that absolute monarchies ar enot "civil" societies, since their rulers are not re-

strained by the terms of the social contract. Socialscientists use the term in the latter sense when, for

example, they explore the informal networks of asso-ciation that provide the basis on which political struc-tures arise. Thus, when the term "civil society" isinvoked, it is not only often unclear what exactly itencompasses-markets? informal organizations? thedomestic sphere?-but also sometim es less than clearwhether the author is offering an empirical analysis of

an existing social order or postulating a vision of whata good society would look like (Seligm an 1992, 201-6).

As a result of the considerable elasticity of both theidea of civil society and the no tion of an En lighten men tproject, accounts of how the latter affected th e form erwill diverge markedly, depending on the particular

choices of the commentator. For example, whileBerger and Neuhaus (who see mediating structures asrooted in particular, local circumstances) regard theEnlightenment project as undermining mediatingstructures (Berger and Neuhaus [I9761 1996, 161-2),Hab erma s (who und erstan ds civil society in terms of apublic sphere of citizens engaged in free and opendiscussions) sees the development of civil society as afulfillment of the incipient promise of the Enlighten-men t project (Habe rma s 1996, 329-87). Hen ce, any

attempt to address the relationship between the En-lightenment project and civil society must first answer:

Whose Enlightenment? Which civil society?



Civility, Enligh tenme nt, and Society Jun e 1998

KANT ON ENLIGHTENMENT AND CIVILITY Kant (I17811 1929,59 3) insisted in the Critique of pu re

Those who have sought to revive the concept of civil~ e a s o n , has no dictatorial authority; its-verdict is

society have generally taken their departure fromalways simply the agreement of free citizens." O'Neill

either Hegel or Tocqueville. They have thus tended toargues that the much-criticized tendency toward uni-versalization and abstraction in Kantian ethics follows

overlook the contribution of a thinker who framed thefrom Kant's requirement that practical reasoning must

relationship among civility, enlightenment, and societybe "followable by those for whom it is to count as

in a particularly suggestive fashion: Immanuel Kant.reasoning " (O'N eill 199 6, 51-59).

La te in 1784, Ka nt published two essays in successiveissues of the ~erlinische~on a tssch r i f t : Idea fo r a Nothing will count as a principle of reason if it demands

Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" and submission to some unvindicated authority; anything thatdoes count as a principle of reason must be one that all can

u h to the ~ ~ 'w h a t ~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ :swer ~ ~ l i ~ h ~ ~ ~ -men t?n ' On first glance, they seem to be pursuingrather different concerns. The "Universal History"essay, Kan t was written in a~ u b li s he d n th e G othaische G elehrte Zeitung, whichmentioned a conversation in which Kant had outlinedhis ideas on the philosophy of history to a passingscholar. Th e secoid essay was prompted by an-earlierarticle in t he Berlinische Monatsschrift, which ha d n otedthat the term "enlightenment" was frequently invoked

in the journal but and had asked for a

definition.' Ye t, notwith standing the ir diverging sub-ject matter and almost casual character, when readtogether th e two essays provide a for at leastsome of the confusions that plague curr ent discussionsof the Enligh tenme nt and civil society. They (1) of fer adefinition of the Enlightenment that rests on a novelconception of the "public use of reason," (2) employthe distinction between public and private uses ofreas on to d istinguish civil society [biirgerliche Gesell-schaft] fro m c osmo politan society [weltbiirgerliche Ge-sellschaft], an d (3) use the perspective of a hypotheticalcosmopolitan society as a critical vantage point fromwhich to scrutinize civil society.

Kant's "What Is Enlightenment?" is by now sofamiliar that it is easy to overlook how novel it was andhow theoretically fecund it remains. He defined en-lightenment not in terms of what it achieves but bywhat it escapes: "Enlightenment," the famou s openingline proclaims, is "mankind's exit from its self-incurred

[17841 35)' Moses9237

Mendelssohn's response, published a few months ear-lier but not se en by Kan t, had defined enlightenm ent asone of the "modifications of social life" that bring a

people with the of man." Kantmeasu red the advance of enlightenm ent in terms of theelimination of constraints on the "public use of rea-

son."8In a number of impor tant hasstressed the significance of It takespractical reasoning as fundame ntal and invokes neitherperfectionist presuppositions a bo ut th e proper ends ofhuman action no r presuppositions aboutthe validity of huma n reasoning (O'Neill 1989, 28-50:1990; 1996) The grounding for practical reasoningmust be constructed rath er than discovered: Reaso n, as

For a discussion of the background to Kant 's essay, see Schmidt1989.

Compare Mendelssohn, "On the Question: What Is Enlighten-men t?n in schmid t 1996 ,53 with K ~ ~hswer,to t h e ~ ~

'What Is Enligh tenment?' in Schmidt 1996, 59-60.

follow. Th e principles of reason are those th at can secu rethe possibility of intersubjectivity. Kant does not groundreason in actual consensus, or in the agreement andstandards of any historical comm unity; he groun ds it in the

repudiation of principles that preclude the possibility ofopen-end ed interaction and communication (O'Neill 1990,194).

Thus, what "communitarian" critics see as the centralvice of the abstraction from partic-ular, local norm s and circumstances-is, for O'N eill, its

cent ral virtue. Insufficiently generalized explanatio ns ofpractical reasoning, which require the acceptance ofspecific presuppositions or disputable ends, will be lesslikely to win intersubjective agreement than moreabstract accounts of practical reasoning. "There are nogeneral reasons for thinking,., O,Neill argues, . .thatthick act descriptions are more comprehensible thanthin ones" (O'Neill 1996, 6811).

Kant,s distinction between private and public uses ofreason plays an important role in his account of civilsociety. In Is Enlightenment?., he argues tha twhen individuals are engaged in a "private" use ofreason-a use constraine d by the dem ands of thepositions they hold and the associated duties andresponsibilities-they function as "passive" part s of the

of civil society. But individuals are neversimply mem bers of civil society. At moment theyare also (if only potentially) me mbers of a "cosmopol-itan society," and as members of this community theyenjoy a right to the f ree an d unrestricted public use oftheir reason. A s participants in this cosmopolitan soci-ety of writers and readers, individuals retain the rightto criticize th e demands made upon them as membersof the civil society in which they reside.

private uses of reason are limited by presuppositions

that must simply be accepted as a condition for occu-pying a particular p o s t Kant ([17841 1923, 38) argues,

for example, that a clergyman assigned the task ofinstructing students in the central beliefs of the faithdoes not have the right to instruct stude nts in his owndiverging interpretation of the church doctrine. Simplybecause private uses of reason are embedded in ongo-ing practices and institutions, they will often bedifficultfo r outsiders to follow than public uses. Thelatter , sim ply because they ta ke less as ,given, will ofnecessitv be framed in a more abstract and universalvoice. AS a result, civil society confronts its memberswith a host of local rules and restrictions that simplymust be accepted as given. Only when these same

~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ :ndividuals conceive of themselves as citizens of a

cosmopolitan society will they be in a position to



Am erican Political Science Review

examine the rationality of the practices in which theyare engaged in their role as members of civil society.The opposition between civil and cosmopolitan view-points is thus central to Kant's understanding of thenature of enlightenment.

T he oppo sition of civil and co smopolitan society hadalready been de ployed, for different purposes, in Kant's"Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan

Purpose," which appeared one m onth before "What IsEnlightenm ent?" In the earlier essay, Kan t argued that"the greatest problem for the human species, thesolution of which nature compels it to seek, is that ofattaining a civil society which can administer justiceuniversally" (Kant [I7841 1923, 22). The solution,however, turns out to be "subordinate t o the problemof a law-governed external relationship with otherstates" (p. 24). Justice within civil society cannot beachieved as long as states are engaged in constantprepa ration s for conflict with on e ano the r, but-in th efam ous paradox on which the essay turns-it is pre-cisely the considerable costs of war and the prepara-

tions for war that provide the external impetus forstates to reform th eir own constitutions in the directionof republican forms of rule. The driving mechanismbehind the entire process is the equally paradoxicalnotion of "unsocial sociability": the tension, endemic tothe human race, of desiring both to live in society withothers a nd to live as an individual (pp. 20-1). Civilsociety appears in this essay as a domain racked withantagonisms and tensions that provide the impetus forcreating a cosmopolitan order, which in turn providesthe background conditions needed for attainment of ajust civil order. O nce again, Kant provides an accountof civil society which refuses to downplay the particu-larity a nd individuality that rules in civil society, but healso refuses to grant it the last word.

It is difficult to sq uar e much in Kant's accou nt of civilsociety with recent discussions. The imagery he em-ploys in the descriptio? of civil society in "What IsEnlightenment?" is hardly appealing: He likens it to amachine, and individuals are but passive cogs in itsgearwork. The "Universal History" account of "unso-cial sociability" is far removed from the cozy assurancethat when "civil society is strong, it infuses a commu-nity with its warm th" (Coa ts 1996, 25). Both accou ntsalso depart from recent discussions by remaining trueto th e conventions of natur al law theory an d using stateand civil society as equivalent terms.9 While thos e who

have taken H egel, Marx, or Tocqueville as their modelhave sought to explain changes in political society by

W e e Kant's equation o f "civil condition (status civilis)" with the"state (civitas)" in Rechtslehre 943 (Kant [I7971 1907, 311) and hiscontrast o f "juridical-civilsociety [rechtltche biirgerliche Gesellsch aft]"to "ethical-civil society [ethische biirgerliche Gesellsch aft]" in Religionwithin the Limits ofR easo nAlo ne (Kant [I7931 1960,86-8,90-1 ,93) .

Seligman (1992,43) ,neve rtheles s, argues that Kant does not view thestate as "cotermin us" with civil society, since "t he publicness o frational debate and critique is seen (a nd indeed em ph asi zed ) as theprovince o f civil society in its distinction fro m the State." Th is isdifficult o square with Kant's own writings, which consistently equ atestate and civil society and which see public debate and discussion asevolving within a "cosmopolitan" (weltbiirgerlich), rather than a

"civil" (biirgerlich) society.

Vol. 92, No. 2

examining the economic and social forces that operatewithin the domain they designate as "civil society," it isthe opposition between civil and cosmopolitan societythat is central to Kant's argument. The impetus forchanges in the nature of public life comes from indi-viduals learning to think of themselves as members ofa society which transcends the individual state, notfrom individuals framing their actions in response to

forces that originate so mew here beyond th e family yetshort of the state.

The weaknesses of Kant's argument should not beminim ized. His example of a m ilitary officer criticizingin scholarly journals the policies that he executes onthe battlefield (K ant [I7841 1923, 37-8) seem s terriblynaive after the ou trages of the last two centuries. An dwhile he grants (in his discussion of the clergymanwhose criticisms of his faith leave him unable to carryout in good conscience the duties demanded by the"private use" of his reason) that individuals may cometo a point at which their "public" misgivings necessitatetheir resignation from their "private" position (p. 38), it

is not at all clear how this can be applied t o the case ofthe taxpayer who disagrees with the policies of thegovernment that her taxes support. Must she remaincontent with letters to newspapers and articles injournals? Doe s her public use of reason have no meansof expression other than the written page? Could it notalso take the form of a refusal to pay taxes as an act ofcivil disobedience in concert with others dissentingfrom such policies?

But neither should the abiding strengths of Kant'sposition be u nderestimated. Nowhere d o they becomemor e a ppare nt t han in the difficulties faced by theoristswho have attempted to derive ethical and legal normsfrom curren t concep tions of civil society.

CIVILITYAS A VIRTUE?

For Kant, civil society denotes th at for m of associationproper to a state or civitas,a society ruled by laws thatpass a universalization test, which requires them torespect th e attrib utes of "lawful freedom," "civil equal-ity," and "civil independence" that citizens possess ashypothetical contractants who agree to subject them-selves to civil order (Kant [I7971 1907, 311-6).1° Assuch, Kant views civil society as a norm against whichstates are to be evaluated. By transforming the terminto a set of institutions located somewhere between

the individual and the state, those thinkers who havesought to define norms of "civility" have typicallyrejected the sorts of universalization tests to whichKant a ppea led. A brief consideration of Shils's attemp tto describe the virtue of "substantive civility" suggestssome of the difficulties encountered by such ap-proaches.

Substantive civility is the virtue o f civil society. It is thereadiness to moderate particular, individual or parochialinterests and to give precedence to the common good.. . . Whenever two antagonistic advocates arrive at a com-promise through recognition o f a common interest,

InTh is is Kant's re formulation o f the idea o f the social contract.



Civility, Enlightenm ent, and Society June 1998

they redefine themselves as members of a collectivity, thegood of which has precedenc e over their particular objec-tives. The good which is accorded precedence by thatdecision might be no m ore t han th e continued existence ofthe collectivity in which they both participate. The com-mon good is acknowledged wherever a more inclusivecollectivity is ack nowledg ed.

Every action in which thinking of and attempting toreduce the prospective loss inflicted on one section of a

society when ano ther section would benefit from a partic-ular event of policy is an act of substantive civility. It isalways possible to consider the consequences of any par-ticular action in the light of its effect on the wider circlewithin which a decision is mad e. Every action which bearsin min d the well-being of a m ore inclusive collectivity is anaction on behalf of th e comm on good (Shils 1992, 16-7).

There are three immediate problems with Shils's for-mulation. First, the blanket a ssertion of the primacy ofthe good of the "more inclusive collectivity" over"particular, individual, or parochial interests" isfraught with difficulties. Is Shils seriously proposingthat any assertion of individual rights against the

greater good of the collectivity is an affront to thevirtue of civil society? Does the good of a "moreinclusive collectivity" always trump the rights of indi-viduals? Second, what sort of metric are agents sup-posed to apply when they reflect on whether theconsequences of the ir actions will advance the good ofthe collectivity? W hat de gree of uncertainty ab out th ecomplex chain of causes that link actions to conse-quences is tolerable? Finally, Shils's statem ent th at it is"always possible to consider the consequences of anyparticular action in the light of its effect on th e widercircle" raises an obvious question: What falls within"the wider circle"? Should the effect on fu ture gener-

ations be considered part of our "common good"? And

what of present and futur e members of other societies?Wh en contrasted with Shils's attemDt to articulate a

set of virtues specific to civil society, many of theconventional criticisms of Kant's views on enlighten-ment and civil society lose their force. Complaintsabout the Enlightenment's "excessive" concern with individual rights pale in comparison to a concept ofcivic virtue which, in its embra ce of "com munitarian"goods, would open the way to state intervention indomains that it long ago vacated, so long as we haveassurances that the "public good" is being served. Itmay be the case, for example, that the enforcement ofreligious conformity would advance the "common

good" of societies wi th a fair me asure of religioushomogeneity. But this hardly is a compelling reason forrejecting well-established principles of religious liberty.Likewise, it is by no means clear that an attempt toassess the conseauences of actions on a less thanclearly defined community giyes us any greater guid-ance than Kant's attempt to construct an accountwhich, by focusing on the intelligibility of practicalreasoning, frees us from the necessity of calculatingelusive chains of causal connections. Finally, whereasShils can provide no reason for limiting the scope ofethical concern to a particular civil society, Kant ex-plicitly recognizes that any account of the moral im-provement of individual states must of necessity con-

sider the relationship between actions within stateborders and those involving the international commu-nity.

There are thus good reasons for being suspicious ofthe well-worn arguments against Enlightenment uni-versalism and t he new-found enthusiasm fo r the virtueof civil society. The E nlightenment project rema ins tooill-defined a notion to serve as an object either of

allegiance or con demnation. What is needed instead isa careful weighing of the variety of different commit-men ts and intentions-not all of the m reconcilable-carelessly lum ped to gethe r unde r that label. But as hasbeen suggested above, to unde rtake a critical examina-tion of these different claims is to take up a task which,with less violence to history than oth er accounts, mightwell be characterized as the Enlightenment project.

With regard t o the current enthusiasm for the virtuesof civility, vigilance of a different sor t is requ ired . In sofar as "civil society" is a category of analysis in thesocial sciences, the question is whether this new use ofan historical term advances our knowledge of th e social

factors that promote the emergence of democraticinstitutions. T he answer will be decided by th e qualityof empirical research that the concept fosters." Withregard to the normative use of the concept, evengreater skepticism may be justified. A rich traditionwithin political philosophy has sought to define civilsociety-understood as the most general term avail-able for designating that form of association in whichpublic life transpires-in term s of th e nor ms of liberty,equality, and justice. Until we see a more compellingreason for giving preference to the alleged virtues ofcivility over the stricter demands of justice, we may beforced to second the advice that the Evangelist gives tothe Pilgrim in John Bunyan's great allegory: "Mr.

Legality is a cheat; and as for his son Civility, notwith-standing his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite a ndcannot help thee." And just as the Evangelist advisesthat "there is nothing in all this noise, that thou hasthea rd of sottish men, but a design to beguile the e of thysalvation," so, too, we may do well to ask whether allthis noise about civility is anything more than a designto turn us away from that concern with justice whichlies at the heart of any "Enlightenment project" worthdefending.

l 1 For dissenting views on the analytic usefulness of the category, see

Kumar 1993 and Seligman 1992.

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