Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Penguin history) (Paperback)

~ (Author)

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 Description

A distinguished scholar's provocative analysis of the political forces transforming post-Communist Eastern Europe. What is filling the void left by the fall of Communism in the ex-Soviet Union and Eastern Europe? In this groundbreaking book, one of Europe's most distinguished social anthropologists addresses this question through an examination of the idea of the civil society, which is rooted in the Enlightenment's belief that society can be organized rationally.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140236058
• ISBN-13: 978-0140236057
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,458,590 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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

By	Stefan Herpel (Royal Oak, MI USA) - See all my reviews

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.