Blackwell Reference Online

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Both the concepts of civil society and the public sphere are fluid, problematic, and open to various, sometimes-conflicting interpretations. Although the concepts are closely related in contemporary debates, especially among writers drawing on Habermas, they have different origins and connotations (Seligman 1995). The notion of an active public sphere in which citizens engage in reasoned argument over affairs of state and morality derives from (idealized) notions of the ancient Greek polis in a political tradition running through Machievelli, Rousseau to twentieth-century theorists such as Arendt and Habermas. Central concepts are virtue , the moral requirement to be a good citizen, and rational debate. Ideas of public disputation, activity and ideally (if not necessarily) face-to-face contact imply a small-scale relatively homogeneous society. This was the kind of city-state republic, participatory rather than procedural, envisaged by Rousseau (Patomáki and Pursianen 1999). Civil society by contrast, refers to more complex, organic and differentiated orders. Certainly, “civil society” like “public sphere” originates in Greek and Roman political philosophy (Aristotle's politike koimonia and Cicero's ius civile ) but is more closely identified with eighteenth-century political philosophy. The emphasis here was on the importance of a realm of privacy, economic exchange and association, ... log in or subscribe to read full text