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A FEATURE OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IS THE EMERGENCE OF THE NATURE OF THE POLITICAL ITSELF AS A CENTRAL THEME OF DISCUSSION. THREE CURRENTLY INFLUENTIAL CONCEPTS OF THE POLITICAL ARE ANALYZED, AFTER WHICH IT IS SUGGESTED THAT A FOURTH CONCEPT, WHICH IS A REVISED AND REFORMULATED VERSION OF THE CLASSICAL IDEAS OF CIVIL ASSOCIATION, PROVIDES THE BASIS FOR A CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL BEST SUITED TO MODERN CONDITIONS OF INCREASING DIVERSITY.

A striking feature of contemporary political philosophy is the emergence of the nature of the political itself as a central theme of discussion. There are various reasons for this development, but all of them merely reinforce the problem posed in its most stark form by postmodern theory. This is the problem of determining what concept of the political, if any, can accommodate the extreme diversity that is the main feature of contemporary western life. That is the question with which the present paper is concerned. The three currently influential concepts of the political are analysed, after which it is suggested that a fourth concept, which is a revised and reformulated version of the classical idea of civil association, provides the basis for a concept of the political best suited to modern conditions of increasing diversity.

What is the place of religion in a pluralist democracy? The continuous presence of religion in the public sphere has raised anew normative and practical issues related to the role of religion in a democratic polity, generating spirited political debates in Western and non-Western contexts. Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religionprovides an advanced introduction to, and a critical appraisal of, the major schools of political thought with a focus on the relationship between democracy and religion.

The aim of this essay is to provide a theoretically satisfactory de€nition of communitarianism, a de€nition which would be theoretically proli€c and so fully substantial that it would allow to distinguish communitarianism from the other philosophical streams; and it would give us an answer as to why a given idea or thinker is categorized as communitarian. e essence of this goal is to show a rationally justi€ed method of constructing the de€nition of communitarianism is aim will be achieved in three steps: 1. Showing that communitarianism related research has not been able to provide a theoretically satisfactory de€nition of the philosophy; 2. Identifying the causes of this theoretical failure; 3. Formulating a rational method for constructing the theoretically satisfactory de€nition of communitarianism.