Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book refers to everything which has the words civil society in its title. The author hopes that if this book inspires anyone to do anything, it will be to read the original words of the likes of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx. The book is perhaps best read as a series of sociological and philosophical speculations. It might be said that Civil Society looks at the immediate problem of the forest rather than at the relatively secondary matter of the foliage of the trees. Civil Society is intended to be a commentary on various texts and problems. It is in no way an account of them. It is inevitable that Civil Society often assumes and alludes to points which were developed at a more leisurely pace in The Two Sovereigns.