Philosophy and Society 2025 – 36/1
The first issue of Philosophy and Society for the year 2025 (Philosophy and Society 36/1) features the thematic section Resilience and/or Vulnerability of the Civil Sphere, edited by Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Elisabeth Becker, and Milica Resanović. This thematic block is dedicated to the theory of the civil sphere theory (CST) and includes articles that, on the one hand, further elaborate and develop the framework originally formulated by Jeffrey Alexander (2006), and on the other hand, present empirical research grounded in this theoretical perspective, conducted in various social contexts. Following the thematic section are original research articles that critically examine postmodernism in social theory and art from a Hegelian perspective. In addition, this issue includes a review of Alessandro Ferrara’s book Sovereignty Across Generations: Constituent Power and Political Liberalism, written by Marjan Ivković. Finally, as in previous years, the first issue of the journal includes the “Overview of Conferences and Public Events at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in 2024,” prepared by Maja Pupovac and Tijana Uzelac.
RESILIENCE AND/OR VULNERABILITY OF THE CIVIL SPHERE
Galen Watts and Mervyn Horgan, in the article “Civil Society IV: Democratic Solidarity and the Non-Civil Scaffolding of the Civil Sphere,” expand the original theoretical conceptualization of the civil sphere, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of the relationship between civil and non-civil spheres, such as the family, school, and voluntary associations/public life. Their contribution lies in recognizing the positive effects these spheres can have on the quality of the civil sphere itself through democratic socialization, democratic dispositions, and the forms of interactions and actions that foster civic engagement.
The article “Membership, Migration, and Inclusion in the Civil Sphere” broadens Civil Sphere Theory (CST) by addressing the issue of international migration. Authors Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino analyse the intersection of migration, membership, and inclusion through the lens of CST, offering a more nuanced understanding of immigration as a crossing of geographical, political, and symbolic boundaries.
Daniel Joseph Belback, in the article “The Civil Sphere and its Resilient Tribalist Discontents: A Muslim Ban Cloaked in Sacralized Binaries,” examines how civil sphere discourse can function as a tool of exclusion through a case study of media representations of the Muslim Ban policies (2015–2021) in the United States. The article argues that the civil sphere is often more deeply rooted in preserving primordial ties than in upholding universal values, suggesting that examining tribalistic tendencies within the civil sphere is essential for understanding contemporary processes of de-democratization.
Jessica Dawson, in the article “The New Global Public: Surveillance and the Risks to the Civil Sphere” examines the impact of contemporary technologies on the civil sphere, specifically its vulnerability in the face of increasing surveillance and control. The focus of the text is an analysis of the negative effects of commercial actors engaged in mass surveillance, gathering personal data through phones, social media, facial recognition, and biometric systems, that undermine traditional democratic structures, solidarity, and trust.
The article “Rehearsing Civility: Bridgebuilding in Polarized America” explores the rise of bridgebuilding initiatives in the United States as a response to deepening political polarization and threats to the civil sphere. Through a case study of one such organization, Emily B. Campbell examines how participants “rehearse civility” in structured dialogues, reaffirming social bonds and rehumanizing political opponents in a controlled setting.
The article “The Potential for Civil Resilience: Staging Inequalities in a Stigmatized Neighborhood” shifts the focus to the arts, specifically theatre, as a means of empowering social inclusion and fostering civil repair. The authors, Anna Lund, Rebecca Brinch and Ylva Lorentzon, based on a case study conducted at a theatre in Stockholm, illuminate how theater can become a venue for social inclusion for a young, ethnically diverse audience by activating symbolic structures of meaning and emotions that recognize the inequalities present within marginalized groups and their experiences.
In the final article of the thematic section, “‘TIPNIS somos todos’: Discourse of Indigenousness Within and Beyond a National Civil Sphere,” Danny Daniel Mollericona Alfaro analyses the environmental movement that arose in Bolivia when Indigenous groups marched in protest against a controversial state highway project planned through their ancestral lands. The study illustrates how the Indigenous sphere articulates universalist aspirations for solidarity that transcend national boundaries, in contrast to the civil sphere, where solidarity is primarily shaped within the confines of the nation-state.
STUDIES AND ARTICLES
Gustavo Torrecilha in his article “The end of art, modernism and postmodernism” uses a Hegelian perspective to analyse modern and postmodern art, arguing that modernist art both realizes and resists Hegel’s “end of art” by seeking social relevance, while postmodernism accepts this end, resulting in art seen as either sterile or freely experimental.
The article “From the Postmodern to the Metamodern: The Hegelian Dialectical Process and Its Contemporization” by John David Vandevert argues that postmodernism, with its focus on disenchantment and fragmentation, has been surpassed by a new cultural model called metamodernism. The text analyses, through a Hegelian perspective, how metamodernism revives the modernist search for meaning while simultaneously acknowledging its internal contradictions.
Martin Retamozo in the article “The Forgetting of Hegel in Ernesto Laclau: an Unfortunate Disengagement” analyses Laclau’s interpretation of Hegelian dialectics across his various works and scrutinises his exploration of the concepts of determination, negativity, and contingency in order to offer a non-deterministic understanding of dialectics more aligned with post-foundational political thought.
The article “An Absolute Hegelianism for Postmodern Times: Hegel with Lacan after Bataille and Derrida” examines the Hegelian dialectical procedure of determinate negation in the Phenomenology of Spirit through the lens of “failure” in light of its critique by post-Hegelian thinkers, primarily Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. Rutwij Nakhwa argues that, despite the criticisms, the concept of absolute knowledge remains a key notion for overcoming the dead ends of postmodern thought.
The article “Lyotard versus Hegel: The Violent End of Postmodernity” critiques Jean-François Lyotard’s theory by examining its internal contradictions and proposing that it exchanged the totalising discourse of the absolute for a similarly totalising discourse of the particular. Revisiting Hegel’s philosophy of history, Andreas Herberg-Rothe, develops a new framework for understanding the era that follows postmodernity.
