INTRODUCTION

            There can be little doubt that this transition of the millennia is a time of deep change, so deep indeed that the greatest danger may lie in not appreciating its depth and hence in not responding creatively.

            For the 400 hundred years since the Enlightenment we have attempted to achieve its ideals of personal and social freedom by means of technical reason focused upon gaining control of the forces of the universe. Indeed, we have made amazing progress in ameliorating the external conditions of life and the practice of internal medicine. Moreover, this has been extrapolated as well to the social order as many facets of human life and interaction have been addressed.

            However, like atomic energy, technical reason is a powerful tool fully capable of dominating those who would employ it, especially when they do so without the necessary critical reserve. This can be seen in the history of philosophy in modern times. Repeatedly, calls for attention to the more personal dimensions of human life, such as those made by Pascal and Kierkegaard, have been overridden by even more rigorously articulated rational systems. These took two major directions: one, based exclusively upon sense data and leading through the Anglo-Saxon tradition to recent positivism and analytic reason, emphasized the individual; the other, following the path of the intellect from Descartes through Kant to Hegel and Marx, emphasized the social unit. Both were characterized by a search for clarity which turned attention away from the uniqueness of the creative exercise of human freedom and toward social manipulation and engineering.

            In their ultimate denouement, these two ideologies came into direct conflict in the Cold War between individualist capitalism and socialist communism. The collapse of the latter brings us, if not to the end of history, at least to the end of the period of rationalist Enlightenment. In the face of the present deep and pervasive changes in the very way we understand, it can rightly be feared that the extent of the change will not be appreciated, and that human effort will focus upon an even more radical attempt to reinforce individualism. This would result, on the one hand, in a renewed assault upon the exercise of the social character of the person, and on the other hand, in an increasing polarization between an ever more pervasive and absolute state, on the one hand, and an increasingly disenfranchised individual.

            In this situation there is need to rediscover and newly articulate what in times past has been termed "civil society". Like all things in an ideology, however, this was understood too superficially. Hence, it was conceived differently, on the one hand, by Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson in the more individualist terms of the Scottish tradition and, on the other hand, by Hegel and Marx in the intellectualist and integrative continental tradition. In present times marked by the collapse of Communism, some in the individualist-capitalist regions see the realization of civil society as a way of building a bourgeois society. In other circles, shaped by neo-Marxism, the effort is seen to be basically that of grafting a new individualism upon the socialist trunk: enriching Habermas by Rawls, in the concluding formula of Cohen and Arato’s.

            If, however, the present changes are deeper and more pervasive, this will not suffice. If what is being questioned is not only the totalitarian offshoots of a lopsided emphasis upon either the social or the individual, but the technical, enlightenment rationality which had polarized each of these for exclusive attention, then what is at stake is not the validity, but the sufficiency of technical reason developed in the Enlightenment and applied in an exclusionary and reductivist manner throughout the whole modern period.

            The incisive paper of Lu Xiaohe on Vico makes this clear. She notes how at the same point in time Bacon smashed all the "idols", Descartes subjected all to doubt, and Locke suggested erasing the entire content of the mind in order to obtain a hypothetical blank tablet. All this was done with a view to establishing a method for generating an aseptic laboratory for clear, distinct and fully manipulable ideas based exclusively on either sense experience or on the isolated self.

            Jean-Baptiste Vico wrote clearly about the threats to humanity which this entailed. Whereas the resulting overriding concern of modern times has been to submit all to a controlling objective reason, Vico pointed out what could not be attended to in these terms. Objectivity held one to the surface of things closing off their interior nature; in human affairs it closed off the subjectivity in terms of which freedom is lived and hence subjected all to manipulation from without. This constitutes a new barbarism of the intellect which first ignores and then trammels upon imagination and emotion, common sense and prudence, and the traditions of rhetoric in founding and maintaining social life. In this light one can understand much more penetratingly the character of the present crisis and the direction in which it points.

            This is not to abandon the great achievements of modern times. The sense of the individual person as an end rather than as a means, the recognition of the human dignity and rights of the person in every society and its proclamation in comprehensive world treaties, the understanding of the way in which labor is not only a service to the material order but a mode of building human dignity, the improvement of agriculture, the construction of cities and industries--all these are brilliant achievements which must be promoted.

            But there is need to look again to our own humanity and its place in the world in which we live. If done only in the same Enlightenment terms, this, of course, will not render new insight though rationalism made important contributions which must be retained, it did so in a manner that created deep problems which cannot be addressed in its terms alone. This was dramatically illustrated by the collapse of Marxism not only as a political theory for the vast Soviet Empire, but also as a project of world revolution for both hemispheres.. There is need to follow the suggestion of Vico to broaden our sense of the human person in order to take new account of reason and imagination, of body and spirit, of will and affectivity, and of the person as both individual and social. All of this opens the way to a life truly liberated from servitude not only to dictatorial powers from without, but to reductionist self-understanding from within.

            This profound questioning of social life at this change of millennia could be expressed by the term "postmodern", provided this be taken not as the more skeptical program of some philosophers still preoccupied with power. What is really needed is a move beyond the narrow confines of the rationalism which has characterized modern times, to what increasingly is expressed as a "global" vision.

            The challenge of profound social transformation at this turn of the millennia is truly global in scope for it goes to the root of what human beings properly and distinctively are as free beings and of how this can be lived distinctively in society by each people according to its culture.

            It is then with freedom that we must begin. Hence chapter I begins with a phenomenology of civil society as encountered in ancient Greece. There early philosophical reflection on social life uncovered its basic element to be governance expressed as arché. This pointed to what is proper to the exercise of freedom, namely, that of being the source of determination which is not necessitated by anything prior or external.

            Freedom, moreover, is itself a multi-leveled notion, moving upward from the ability to choose between and to possess external objects, to the ability to will as one ought, and finally to the ability to construct one’s personal andcommunity life. The three are not mutually exclusive, but ought to be cumulative. To impede this unfolding generates a major crisis; this would appear to be the root cause of the present challenge and to indicate what is needed in response. As modern rationalism undermined the third level of freedom, society was left either to the unbridled quest for possession (freedom at the first level), or to the determination of freedom by a "scientific" view of history (freedom at the second level).

            It is necessary then to develop a more adequate sense of human freedom and creativity as it unfolds into social life. Chapter I looks to aesthetic reason for this and develops in those terms the meaning of culture and its normative force.

            The chapter of Professor Que on the thought of Hannah Arendt focuses incisively upon freedom as foundational to civil society. Her analysis of revolutions and their frustrations manifests the need not to focus merely upon liberation from oppression, which could be accomplished simply by a change of regimes. Nor should the focus be upon resolving the social problem which concerns irresolvable physical human imperatives where freedom is not at play, nor upon individual human rights which constitute only minimal standards for social relations.

            Rather the efforts of revolutions should concentrate upon the realization and exercise of freedom by establishing the conditions and structures for responsible participation in determining the direction of social life. Thus, Arendt looks upon the writing of the American constitution not as an exercise in delimiting what citizens and society can and cannot do, but rather as an act of voluntary association binding people not to the state, but to each other. This constitutes the public space in which one finds not liberation, but the exercise of freedom as participation in public affairs.

            Her critique of the French revolution was that it soon substituted social and economic projects for the major project of constituting a free society. Her critique of the American revolution was that it substituted issues of representation and the protection of individual rights for concern with realizing freedom. In this way America has continued to react against archaic feudal oppression rather than paying sufficient attention to the challenge of constructing the new participatory realm of active freedom. It began, but it did not follow through; it seized the initiative (archein), but did not manage its continued exercise (prattein).

            In this context, Que describes Arendt’s notion of the system of councils which emerged spontaneously in the midst of various revolutions. These were organized locally as occupational or other groups and took active responsibility for social life in their area. Some sent representatives to higher councils where broader issues were treated. This formed a pyramid whose genius was to engage people with their peers so that responsibility and governance emerged from below, rather descending from above.

            Que shows the contradictions and impracticalities which can emerge, but these, it would seem, result from placing political responsibility upon the councils. As described, the councils constitute not a political structure responsible for the accumulation and exercise of power, but a pattern of the proximate and diversified exercise of social responsibility tailored precisely according to the pattern of solidarities emerging from engagement in life. In other words, what is needed is a distinction between the sphere of civil society and the political sphere.

            This done, Arendt’s incisive description of the council system constitutes a major contribution to the theory of civil society and illustrates the way in which this transforms a democratic society from being one of rule over people into being action in concert by a people exercising its freedom as a process of self responsibility. In this consists the real transformation from a feudal to a democratic society.

            In the life of a community of free persons this provides the true components of civil society, namely, governance of, by and for the community. Communities, however, are complex in form; the ways in which people unite in view of shared goals assume myriad forms from ecology to religion, from a neighborhood to a global horizon, from labor unions to educational associations--all are forms of association in the exercise of human freedom.

            The chapter of Angelli Tugado takes up the crucial issue of how the individuality of persons and the distinctiveness of groups is founded and can be recognized. Professor Antonette Palma-Angeles expands this vision beyond the distinctiveness of the person and group to cultures as creations of the community, thereby introducing not only a synchronic, but a diachronic dimension. In these terms she shows how the hermeneutics of H.-G. Gadamer enriches the abstract and objective method of modern science with attention to human subjectivity. This creates not only an integrated culture, but a cultural tradition. It is into this that we are born and by this that we are borne along, like the wind in one’s sails, without whose force and direction all is lifeless and devoid of meaning.

            This is particularly significant for the cooperative construction of human social structures which reflect and promote human meaning and dignity, and for its history in our times. It appears especially in the realization of civil society, which is constituted precisely by the cooperative action of people in their various solidarities. While each person enters and/or acts freely, it is their shared understanding and values which provide among the members of a particular group the basis for the development of a shared response to shared goals and a way to enter into subsidiary relations with yet other groups in a way that constitutes a cohesive society.

            The chapter of Professor Zhou Changzhong searches the history of the philosophy of science for clues to the place of civil society in Chinese cultural history. If civil society gives new attention to subjectivity, this suggests that in the pattern of Chinese cultural history its roots are not in modernization as a search for scientific objectivity, but rather both in the more recent emphasis upon personal initiative in the market and other facets of life and in a deeper sounding of the potential resources of Chinese classical roots, for example, for the pervasive Confucian sense of harmony.

            Part II is a search for the principles by which a civil society can develop and live. Professor Wang situates this issue especially in the urban environment. He sees the traditional values and structures as more operative in the countryside, whereas in the burgeoning urban context there is special need for new structures and value patterns to guide the flow of life.

            Professor Wang deftly distinguishes two levels of morality and even of civilization, one material and the other spiritual; he inspects both carefully and impartially. In the former he locates the development of market dynamisms which he examines for their implications for the (moral) quality of human life. Beyond a simple provision of goods, he sees the market as generating or promoting many important human qualities such as initiative and creativity. Nor is he willing to trace the fact of corruption simply to this new economic form, noting that corruption was found equally or even more strongly in earlier, feudal patterns of ife.

            What would appear to concern him especially, however, is not the unjustified amassing of goods, which was the topic of the 1994 colloquium on "Philosophy and the Economic Order". Rather, Professor Wang’s central concern is the loss of the ability to look beyond material civilization to a spiritual civilization with its social and political interests. This should have an absolute base either in a Kantian or a religious sense, and is able to inspire the altruism called for by Chairman Mao. Spiritual civilization is the advance to a moral tenor of life. It may, however, be achieved only by the saint or the sage, who are therefore essential for providing the moral leadership for a tradition to contemporary civil life.

            These ideals may not be realistic goals for the masses of people . Nevertheless a public social moral is required and possible. This points to the theory of stages in moral development developed by Piaget and Kohlberg. These point toward the higher levels, but find the larger number of a people at mid-route. What is true of a journey, however, is true as well for the life in society, namely, that it is the goal which gives meaning to the steps. In this sense, it is the high ideals of spiritual civilization as carried by the tradition (see chapter IV "Gadamer, Tradition, Dialogue" by A. Palma-Angeles) that gives meaning to the lives and struggles of all who are on the way.

            Another principle which must be operative in a healthy and effective civil society is tolerance. Professor Dy in chapter VII studies the thought of Marcel on this issue. This has proven to be a major stumbling block with the most tragic results in such diverse areas as Ireland, the ex-Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia. But it is not merely such limit cases which are at stake here. The issue, as Professor T. Imanichi has pointed out, is pervasive and becomes increasingly so as ever more areas of life come to depend upon group decisions, that is, the greater the advance of solidarity and subsidiarity of which civil society consists. This, indeed, frames the issue. It is not the degree to which we can discount the significance of the positions and actions of others. Rather, to the degree to which we appreciate their importance they must be recognized, protected and even promoted.

            Here, there is need to be able to see the absolute content, and yet relative manner, character of human actions. Their absolute content requires that they be seen in their religious roots as expressions of the reality, love or of a Transcendent. lTheir relative character comes from the recognition that the Transcendent can be expressed in multiple human modes. None of these can be made into the absolute itself without thereby becoming an idol; yet each mode is a unique manifestation of the divine of which together they constitute an increasingly rich affirmation, manifestation and affirmation.

            This is the basis for the complementarity in principle of our free acts as multiple expressions of the good, the true or the sublime. It is not that they are absolute of themselves or as expressions of our freedom, for we are not gods. Yet because all, no matter how slight, are expressions of the divine creative power, there is a sacredness to nature, to a child, or even to a hope which deserves to be recognized and welcomed and which complements and enriches all else.

            This is the underlying principle which makes possible that solidarity which is the first principle of civil society. Even more, it is the basis of subsidiarity as its second component principle. Indeed, subsidiarity is tolerance when this is taken not as a passive, but as an active virtue and when it is applied to relations between groups in the social order.

            The chapter of Professor Ibana focuses upon solidarity as the foundation of civil society. He makes an important case for considering this not as a third sphere of public life along with the economic and the political, but as the key for the whole of social life. This has solid foundation in the way in which civil society expresses the basic freedom of the people in their patterns of solidarity and subsidiarity. However, it may be more proper to recognize the proper validity of each sphere and to concentrate on their proper interrelation in order to enable the full creativity and genius of each.

            These themes are applied by Professor Heinz Holley on a macro level to global development and on the micro level in the concluding chapter of Professor Georges Enderle to corporate ethics in relation to civil society.

George F. McLean