Introduction

This introduction presents the problematic of the volume by showing how the question of community today arises. First, the background in Tönnies’s distinction between community and civil society is shown. Second, it is shown that out of a concern over twentieth-century forms of totalitarianism, the basic point of departure for contemporary continental perspectives on community is a criticism of any concept of community that understands community as a unity or a totality, be it the outcome of a work, to which all of the members of a community are supposed to contribute, or a natural or divine given. This gives the particular orientation to continental thought of community today and offers the basic question of this volume. In the second half of this introduction, the different contributions to the volume are discussed in more detail.