CONCEPTS OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN MODERN SOCIO-HUMANITIES THOUGHT

One of the important problems of modern socio-humanitarian thought is the formation and development of civil society. This problem is especially relevant for transit societies, which include Kyrgyzstan. The article examines conceptual approaches to understanding civil society in modern Western and post-Soviet social sciences and humanities. The author identifies four periods in the genesis of the idea of civil society and notes that the actualization of the theory and practice of civil society begins in the second half of the 20th century. in Western countries. The modern period coincides with the era of postmodernism. Western socio-humanitarian thought of postmodernism in matters of civil society, relying on classical theories of civil society, creatively reworks them in accordance with the new realities of public life. The author notes that Western social scientists note the spontaneous and multivariate nature of the formation of civil society, due to objective and subjective factors. Post-Soviet researchers view civil society as, on the one hand, an ideal phenomenon, and on the other, as a real, concrete historical state.