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The Quest for Civil OrderPolitics, rules and individualityChor-yung CheungSearch
Inside the Book at Amazon.com
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- In this study, four notable thinkers in the field of modern social
and political theory are examined, with a view to determining how far it
is possible to create and maintain a non-coercive but sustainable political
order under conditions of diversity in contemporary Western societies.
The four writers considered are Ernest Gellner, whose thought focused on the concept of civil society; Friedrich Hayek, whose principal concern was with a market-centred spontaneous social order; Jurgen Habermas, whose ideal is a discursive democracy; and Michael Oakeshott, whose model of a free society is based on a non-instrumental conception of civil association.
The author is a senior lecturer in the Division of Social Studies at
the City University of Hong Kong.