Sociedad civil: una concepción radical

The objective of this paper is to present a concept of civil society from a critical perspective that can explain the potential for change and social transformation encompassed within this sphere of social interaction. To this end, we first explore the difficult relationship between democracy and civil society, through an analysis of the shift from participative to deliberative democracy. The global character of civil society and the problems of its practical achievement lead us, in a second stage, to discuss proposals from authors such as J. Habermas and M. Kaldor, and to uncover the inadequacies of their respective approaches. This is followed by a proposal, arising from debate on the works of J. Keane, in which the concept of civil society is defined and grounded –based on a critical hermeneutic– that is capable of justifying its moral core as the ethics of civil society and at the same time, justifying its real possibilities for application. Finally, the concept of moral resources is proposed to reconstruct the basic characteristics that define the resources characteristic of civil society.