In the name of contradiction: A response to Jeffrey C. Alexander's ‘The civil sphere in war and peace’

In response to Jeffrey C. Alexander's ‘The civil sphere in war and peace’ (2026), this commentary offers a Hegelian reading of the contradictions that remain unacknowledged within Alexander's model. It argues that the civil sphere rests on a moral framework that externalises contradiction as the uncivil, rather than recognising it as constitutive of its own movement. Further, it shows how the grammar of inclusion in the civil sphere depends on translation into a fixed Western moral code that grants legitimacy only by neutralising otherness, especially in its Global South interlocutors. What presents itself as universal civility therefore constitutes a secret investment in a liberal moral sorting that conceals its internal tensions (such as its inherent patriarchy) and remains perpetually haunted by what it excludes.