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The Necessity of Politics

Reclaiming American Public Life

Even in the midst of an economic boom, most Americans would agree that our civic institutions are hard pressed and that we are growing ever more cynical and disconnected from one another.

In response to this bleak assessment, advocates of "civil society" argue that rejuvenating our neighborhoods, churches, and community associations will lead to a more moral, civic-minded polity. Christopher Beem argues that while the movement’s goals are laudable, simply restoring local institutions will not solve the problem; a civil society also needs politics and government to provide a sense of shared values and ideas. Tracing the concept back to Tocqueville and Hegel, Beem shows that both thinkers faced similar problems and both rejected civil society as the sole solution. He then shows how, in the case of the Civil Rights movement, both political groups and the federal government were necessary to effect a new consensus on race.

Taking up the arguments of Robert Putnam, Michael Sandel, and others, this timely book calls for a more developed sense of what the state is for and what our politics ought to be about.

"This book is bound to incite controversy and to contribute to our ongoing grappling with where our own democratic political culture is going. . . . Beem helps us to get things right by offering a corrective to any and all visions of civil society sanitized from politics."—Jean Bethke Elshtain, from the Foreword

"[Beem] makes an impressive case. At the end of the day, there really is no substitute for governmental authority in fostering the moral identity of the body politic."—Robert P. George, Times Literary Supplement

322 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1999

Morality and Society Series

Philosophy: Philosophy of Society

Political Science: Political and Social Theory

Table of Contents

Foreword
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: The Concept of Civil Society
1. The Concept of Civil Society and the Contemporary Predicament
2. The Concept of Civil Society and the Modern Problematic
Part 2: The Progenitors of Civil Society
3. The Tocquevillian Tradition
4. The Tocquevillian Legacy
5. Hegelian Tradition
6. Civil Society in the Polish Solidarity Movement
7. The Product of Two Traditions
Part 3: The Insufficiency of Civil Society
8. Tocqueville, Hegel, and the Sufficiency of Civil Society
9. The Contemporary Concept and the Question of Sufficiency
Part 4: The Necessity of Politics
10. Medium Party Political Associations
11. Government and the Construction of the Moral Society
12. The American State as a Moral Actor
Notes
Index

Awards

North American Society for Social Philosophy: NASSP Book Prize
Shortlist

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