Front cover image for The emergence of civil society in the eighteenth century : a privileged moment in the history of England, Scotland, and France

The emergence of civil society in the eighteenth century : a privileged moment in the history of England, Scotland, and France

In this sequel to Civility and Society in Western Europe, 1300-1600, Marvin Becker continues his study of the interior life of Western culture. Here Becker treats the rise of civil society in England and Scotland as it worked to reorganize the spaces and practices that constituted human sociability. For Becker, the emergence of civil society marks the tilt from familiarity toward impersonality, from public toward private, from social solidarity toward self-interest. He shows how these cultural changes from an archaic to a commercial social model called for new approaches to human nature, ethics, and politics, which Becker summarizes as a scaling down of expectations
Print Book, English, ©1994
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, ©1994