14 - Civil Society and the Calling of Self-Development

Summary

If we divide the history of mankind into five periods, that is, the prehistoric, ancient, medieval, modern and post-modern, one can say that the history of civil society begins only when the institution of the sacred or the divine kingship begins to dissolve into two differentiated institutions at the dawn of the ancient, or at the very latest the medieval, period out of the past…

Even if this civil society was indeed the “child of the modern world,” still it is the Christian society and its early modern reform that we may also have to consider, and not only the bourgeois society of modern capitalism. By this wider definition, the modern civil society was established or revived in Britain at any rate by the struggle of the Nonconformists, the new Christians, who together severed connection with the established Church of England when it accepted royal supremacy at the time of the Reformation… the new Christians wanted instead what we may call salvation through religion in society, with pluralist freedom of conscience and worship for all.

—J. P. S. Uberoi, “Civil Society” (2003, 115, 120)

There are groups as well as individuals all over the world who are increasingly conscious of their creative potentiality and wish to realise their aspirations. Contemporary history is about these multiple selves engaged in dynamic struggles. Some may be forward looking and emancipative while others may be regressive and irrational. But the overwhelming trend is likely to be one that demands respect for each self.

—Manoranjan Mohanty, “The Self as Center in the Emerging World of the Twenty-first Century: A Sino-indian perspective” (2002, 1)