Beyond Human Civil Society to Post-Human Civil Society/
Peter Baofu.
- New Delhi: Overseas press, 2018.
- 907p. 2v.
Is human civil society really so promsing that, as Edmund Burke once claimed, “Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all”? (TE 2018) This positive view on human civil society can be contrasted with an opposing one by Geoff Mulgan, who cautioned us by asking: “So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.” (BQ 2018) Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones as will be discussed in the book), human civil society (in relation to civilness and non-civilness—as well as other dichotomies) is neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe, such that there is no civilness without non-civilness (and vice versa), to be explained by the “softness-hardness principle,” the “materialitynonmateriality principle,” the “achievement-carefreedom principle,” the “inclusivenessexclusiveness principle,” the “symmetry-asymmetry principle,” the “valuation-devaluation principle,” the “regression-progression principle,” the “absoluteness-relativeness principle,”