In Uncivil Society, Richard Boyd argues contrarily that contemporary political theorist and social scientists have unduly neglected the "uncivil" properties of groups. Through a careful reading of such exemplary figures as Hobbes, Locke, the Scottish Moralist, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Michael Oakeshott in the classical liberal tradition - and their defense of the virtue of civility - this work calls into question many contemporary assumptions about the nature and origins of civil society.