Toward the end of the twentieth century, while earlier discussions of holism versus individualism did not die out, the interplay among three different but related notions of society—civil society, the corporation, and cosmopolitan society or the society of nations—an interplay adumbrated in the last two paragraphs above, began increasingly to dominate philosophical inquiry. The development that, more than any other, propelled the notion of civil society back into greater prominence late in that century was an ever more publicly articulated dissatisfaction with the totalitarian nature of the political regimes and their corresponding societies in Eastern Europe. It was widely contended that the suppressed elements of "civil society" in those countries needed to be regenerated and kept independent of the state. Hence the eventual, generally peaceful dissolution of the governments in question was seen as a triumph of the ideals of civil society.

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