Dreaming of peace amidst the nightmare of war: Responding to my interlocutors

While domestic civil spheres extend Lockean ties of mutual understanding, they often legitimate a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’ among nations outside their national boundaries. As cultural trauma theory suggests, however, there is a sociological pathway for extending civil solidarity beyond the nation state, such that war between nations is prevented. The European Union underwent just such a process in the wake of the Second World War. Even as Civil Sphere Theory develops an empirical understanding of Kant's universalizing moral claims, the frustration of these claims in ‘actually existing» civil spheres is conceptualized in a Hegelian manner – as generated by the fundamental contradictions of space, time, and function. These contradictions generate extraordinary strains inside and outside of nationally bounded civil spheres, triggering social movements for peace and justice.