Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Penguin History) [Mass Market Paperback]

Ernest Gellner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996 | Series: Penguin History

Western democracies are "open societies" in which neither the state nor religion try to achieve a monopoly of power or the exclusive claim on people's hearts. In between the state and the family are countless other institutions from Trade Unions to stamp collecting clubs, from student organisations to churches and protest movements. This is the civil society. Before the fall of communism in 1989 all this was prescribed. The state controlled everything and in the Middle East this remains the case. In eastern Europe there is a burgeoning civil society but in fundamentalist Islamic society there is none. This book examines the part played by the civil society in a post-communist world. Examining Islam in its unique fundamentalism, the book asks what we can learn by a comparison between such a society and one in which civil society is often overwhelming.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Will Islam fill the void left by the recently-collapsed Communism? What are the current rivals to civil society? Gellner provides a fine discourse on various political doctrines and their applications in today's changing Europe, surveying the pros and cons of various institutions and their challenge to democracy. -- Midwest Book Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140236058
• ISBN-13: 978-0140236057
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,152,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Endlessly Fascinating Study of Western Liberal Democracies, August 20, 1999

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Stefan Herpel - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Penguin History) (Mass Market Paperback)

Ernest Gellner was one of the great interdisciplinary thinkers of this Century. He was equally at home in anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. He was a fiercely independent thinker, full of original ideas and a healthy scepticism for the prevailing orthodoxies in all of these fields. His prose style was refreshingly free of cant, and he eschewed the desiccated prose style of the typical academic. Gellner was witty, irreverent, and more likely to use an apt colloquialism than technical jargon. The intellectual world suffered a great loss with his passing in 1995.

Gellner's "Conditions of Liberty" first attempts to define the essential features of civil society -- that is, Western-style liberal democracies -- and then attempts to explain its origins. (Gellner's use of the term "civil society" may have been inspired by Michael Oakeshott's use of the term in his book, "On Human Conduct," but the analytical approaches of these two thinkers could not be more different.) Gellner contrasts civil society with the Islamic system, and with the system that was in place in the former Soviet Union.

This short book is rich in insights too numerous to mention here. Among other things, Gellner explains the relationship between the emergence of nationalism and the development of civil society. He draws on Max Weber's ideas to show how changing conceptions of religion affected the evolution of civil society. And he offers some fascinating observations about why the Soviet system collapsed with so little resistance.

This short book is so packed with fascinating ideas that I am willing to rate it as outstanding despite some uncharacteristic lapses in Gellner's writing. The usual wit and irreverence are there, but the editing and organization could have been better.