Habermas' writings are an oft-cited theoretical resource for debates about civil society. This paper suggests that Habermas's discourse on civil society is embedded in his concern of the fulfillment of publicness in social life. Habermas provides a dualistic perspective of system and lifeworld to examine the social life in modern society, contending that there is an ongoing process of the colonization of the lifeworld by the system. Confronting the process of colonization, the fulfillment of publicness therefore depends on the communicative action anchored in the civil society of modern democracy.