The concept of “Civil society” disappeared for a time from circulation for reasons that are obscure, only to later re-emerge. Whatever the difficulty in grasping both the reasons underlying the disappearance of civil society and the reasons for its ''revival'', it is not possible – at least at the epistemological level – to overlook the matter because of its relevance to the ''perception'' of some of the fundamental complications of this concept, and because of the importance of understanding the origins and premises of the contemporary articulation of the concept of civil society. If this temporary disappearance of civil society has opened up a ''time gap'' in the intellectual history of the concept, the revival of civil society likewise creates a parallel ''intellectual gap'' observable in the semantic differences between two distinct phases in the evolution of the concept. Accordingly, this article attempts to understand the reasons for the disappearance of the concept of civil society on the one hand, and for its ''return to life” on the other, towards an approach to the central problematic: to what extent has the revival of the concept of civil society in “political thought” contributed to the reformulation of the standing of the concept, a system of developing democracy?