Political Thinking, Political Theory, and Civil Society

Steven M. DeLue is Professor Emeritus at Miami University of Ohio. Timothy M. Dale is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin--La Crosse.

Introduction 1. The Importance of a Civil Society Part 1: Civil Society in the Classical and Religious Traditions 2. Plato: Civic Virtue and the Just Society 3. Aristotle’s Response to Plato: The Importance of Friendship 43 4. Christian Conceptions of Civic Virtue 5. Elements of Islamic and Jewish Medieval Political Thought Part 2: Early Modern Approaches to Civil Society 6. Niccolò Machiavelli: Civic Virtue and Civil Society 7. Thomas Hobbes and Modern Civil Society 8. Benedict Spinoza and Liberal Democracy 9. John Locke, Civil Society, and the Constrained Majority 10. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Community and Civil Society Part 3: Late Modern and Contemporary Approaches to Civil Society 11. Immanuel Kant: Civil Society and International Order 12. G. W. F. Hegel: Civil Society and the State 13. Karl Marx and the Economic Argument about Civil Society 14. John Stuart Mill: Civil Society as a Higher Calling 15. John Rawls: The Just and Fair Civil Society 16. The Conservative View: Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Michael Oakeshott Part 4: Critiques of Civil Society 17. The Critique of Power in Civil Society: Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault 18. Feminism, Gender Equality, and Civil Society 19. 21st Century Challenges for Civil Society: Culture, Religion, and Climate Change 20. Civil Society, Liberal Democracy, and Racial Injustice: A Political Theory Informed by the Black Experience in America