ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes between community (gemeinschaft) and society (gesellschaft) with neoclassical realist theory on civilisations. The tendency in human nature to swing from one extreme to another undermines the ability of civilisations to find a balance between community and society. In the community, law becomes indistinguishable from morality. The community appeals to what Plato and Aristotle refer to as 'thumos' or spiritedness. Society offers the prospect of greater economic prosperity and to become more competitive and capable of survival as it us guided by rationality and efficiency. The Hegelian pendulum increased its velocity when Western civilisation thrived under burgeoning rationality during the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. Rational and self-conscious human beings seek to gradually dismantle and abolish the irrational components of their past to remove restraints and obtain greater control over the future. The egalitarian impulse of liberalism therefore places rationality, human freedom, and prosperity at the centre, which is not to be constrained by communitarian or republican virtues.
