The state and civil society

Abstract

Revolution, like so many words in the political vocabulary, has undergone a major change of meaning in the last two hundred years. For Greek and Roman thinkers, revolution meant a political change in which one form of government, one set of rulers, succeeded another in a predetermined sequence. Political life was conceived as a wheel of fortune which as it revolved brought authority and rule to some, and ruin to others. These changes were thought to be as inevitable, as fixed, and as unalterable as the positions and movements of the heavenly bodies were conceived to be by the astronomers.