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The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
This is Jürgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.
301 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Jürgen Habermas
354 books689 followersJürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and American pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, the topic of his first book entitled The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. His work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary politics—particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
March 3, 2009
Retold in fairy tale language for a class assignment
In a distant past, there existed a feudal society, and in this society, there was not yet a public sphere. In fact, public referred to nobility, and everyone else was common (6). However, with the rise of capitalism and the bourgeois class came the commercial trade in news (15), and a public sphere began to emerge between the private sphere of life and the government (23). This public sphere was composed of the bourgeoisie, mostly male property owners, who used reason to debate public issues (27-29). In western Europe and America, these citizens engaged in dialogue in coffee shops, newspapers, and letters — that is, they debated in largely private spaces that created publics. Public opinion began to develop, but this wasn’t the public opinion we conceive of today: instead, it was formed through public debate, not through polling or other more modern mechanisms (66).
An aim of the public sphere was to abolish the domination of the state, and constitutional governments were set up to connect the law to public opinion (81-82). A central value of the bourgeois public sphere was inclusiveness — that as the bourgeoisie grew, so too would access to the public sphere. However, as the public enlarged, public opinion changed from the result of ongoing dialogue to a coercive force (133). This is largely because as the liberal state became a welfare state, it encroached on the private lives of people, or “stateized” society (142); the public sphere became less politicized (140). In part, this was caused as economic struggles became political struggles, and the state began to protect families and individuals, through education, workers’ rights laws, and welfare (155). Consumer culture also arose, so that a debating public sphere was replaced by an advertising public sphere; public debate became administered and consumed (164). The state began to “‘address’ its citizens like consumers” (195). Public opinion and propaganda began to be used in order to gain good will and justify legislation (177). The public sphere became “refeudalized” by the state and others looking to gain publicity.
The bourgeois public sphere has since passed away, and in its stead we have the modern notions of public opinion and publicity, as well as private individuals not engaged in a public, rational debate. Good bye, dear bourgeois public sphere. You are missed.
In a distant past, there existed a feudal society, and in this society, there was not yet a public sphere. In fact, public referred to nobility, and everyone else was common (6). However, with the rise of capitalism and the bourgeois class came the commercial trade in news (15), and a public sphere began to emerge between the private sphere of life and the government (23). This public sphere was composed of the bourgeoisie, mostly male property owners, who used reason to debate public issues (27-29). In western Europe and America, these citizens engaged in dialogue in coffee shops, newspapers, and letters — that is, they debated in largely private spaces that created publics. Public opinion began to develop, but this wasn’t the public opinion we conceive of today: instead, it was formed through public debate, not through polling or other more modern mechanisms (66).
An aim of the public sphere was to abolish the domination of the state, and constitutional governments were set up to connect the law to public opinion (81-82). A central value of the bourgeois public sphere was inclusiveness — that as the bourgeoisie grew, so too would access to the public sphere. However, as the public enlarged, public opinion changed from the result of ongoing dialogue to a coercive force (133). This is largely because as the liberal state became a welfare state, it encroached on the private lives of people, or “stateized” society (142); the public sphere became less politicized (140). In part, this was caused as economic struggles became political struggles, and the state began to protect families and individuals, through education, workers’ rights laws, and welfare (155). Consumer culture also arose, so that a debating public sphere was replaced by an advertising public sphere; public debate became administered and consumed (164). The state began to “‘address’ its citizens like consumers” (195). Public opinion and propaganda began to be used in order to gain good will and justify legislation (177). The public sphere became “refeudalized” by the state and others looking to gain publicity.
The bourgeois public sphere has since passed away, and in its stead we have the modern notions of public opinion and publicity, as well as private individuals not engaged in a public, rational debate. Good bye, dear bourgeois public sphere. You are missed.
December 1, 2016
Habermas' bourgeois pubic sphere is a seminal contribution to the Frankfurt School.
December 19, 2011
This is the ur-text of publics theory. I'm glad I read it, like I'm glad when I eat healthy food.
October 4, 2020
he says the word "public" 47 times in the first two pages....
June 3, 2010
Several important influences on Habermas's work are evident. Firstly, he borrows many important terms and categories from Kant, Hegel and Marx. Many of his ways of thinking about the public sphere are explicitly Kantian, and he develops Hegel's central category of civil society into the basis from which public opinion emerges. Of these, Kant is perhaps the greatest influence, simply because for Habermas his work represents the "fully developed" theory of the public sphere.
The Marxist cultural theory of the Frankfurt School is also an important influence, particularly on the second part of the Structural Transformation.The Frankfurt School was a group of philosophers linked to the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, active from the 1920s on. Two of its most famous names were Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. The Frankfurt School adapted Marx's theories greatly, in order to study modern culture and society. They took the unorthodox view that the experience of totalitarianism in the Second World War showed that the lower classes, or proletariat, had become corrupted by mass culture. They could no longer act as a revolutionary force. Their pessimism about what social force might replace the proletariat increased as the twentieth century progressed. Adorno is well known for his critique of the modern "culture industry", which manipulated the public, creating consumers of the mass media, rather than critical readers. Habermas draws on this savage criticism of modern society and culture in his treatment of advertising and the press.
A more personal influence was the German legal scholar Wolfgang Abendroth, who supervised Habermas's original thesis at Marburg, after it was rejected by Horkheimer and Adorno in Frankfurt. Abendroth's work analyzed the relationship between the social-welfare principle and the inherited structure of the German constitutional state. He argued that the Federal German constitution aimed to extend the ideas of equality and welfare, and that a socialist democratic state could emerge from its constitutional predecessor. Habermas moved away from this concept of the development of states, but acknowledges his debt to Abendroth in the dedidcation to the Structural Transformation.
Habermas's influence over other writers is considerable. It has recently become more evident in the English-speaking world, with the publication of a translation of the Structural Transformation. An important collection of essays edited by Craig Calhoun (see bibliography) shows wide range of responses to his work: scholars in English, political theory and philosophy respond to Habermas in this volume. Responses are so varied because so many different elements are present in Habermas's work. Historians criticise the factual basis of many of his claims about the publishing industry, about economic history and bourgeois culture. More abstract theorists challenge his assumptions about a range of issues. Feminist scholars, for example, argue that Habermas neglects the importance of gender, and of the exclusion of women from the public sphere. This is a point that Habermas has recently conceded.
Theorists have attempted to work out the implications of the Structural Transformation for modern political theory. This perhaps a more difficult task, as the second half of the book is more problematic and less satisfying than the first. Habermas's debates about public reason with the US philosopher John Rawls are well-known. Also, many writers have attempted to apply Habermas's model of the bourgeois public sphere to other countries and periods. They have tried to find the public sphere in America, the Far East, and a host of other unlikely places. There is a tendency for these projects to misrepresent Habermas's original idea of the public sphere. Given that he makes it clear that the public sphere was inseparably related to the social and economic conditions of eighteenth century Europe, these attempts do not always seem worth the effort. Almost all histories of publishing and the book trade, such as those of the US historian Robert Darnton, react to Habermas's ideas.
Habermas himself has attempted to answer his critics. In his essay Further reflections on the public sphere, he revises his position in several ways.. Firstly, he admits some problems with the historical basis of his work. He also suggests other areas for consideration, namely; one) the possibility of a popular or plebian public sphere with a different social basis, in which popular culture is not merely a backdrop to representative publicity two) a reconsideration of the role of women in the bourgeois public sphere three) a need to develop a less pessimistic view about the modern mass public. Some of the issues about public discourse and the role of the state raised in the Structural Transformation reemerge in later works, such as his Theory of Communicative Action and Legitimation Crisis. Habermas has changed so many of his positions, however, that it is unwise to see his work on public sphere as a basis for his later philosophy.
The Marxist cultural theory of the Frankfurt School is also an important influence, particularly on the second part of the Structural Transformation.The Frankfurt School was a group of philosophers linked to the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, active from the 1920s on. Two of its most famous names were Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. The Frankfurt School adapted Marx's theories greatly, in order to study modern culture and society. They took the unorthodox view that the experience of totalitarianism in the Second World War showed that the lower classes, or proletariat, had become corrupted by mass culture. They could no longer act as a revolutionary force. Their pessimism about what social force might replace the proletariat increased as the twentieth century progressed. Adorno is well known for his critique of the modern "culture industry", which manipulated the public, creating consumers of the mass media, rather than critical readers. Habermas draws on this savage criticism of modern society and culture in his treatment of advertising and the press.
A more personal influence was the German legal scholar Wolfgang Abendroth, who supervised Habermas's original thesis at Marburg, after it was rejected by Horkheimer and Adorno in Frankfurt. Abendroth's work analyzed the relationship between the social-welfare principle and the inherited structure of the German constitutional state. He argued that the Federal German constitution aimed to extend the ideas of equality and welfare, and that a socialist democratic state could emerge from its constitutional predecessor. Habermas moved away from this concept of the development of states, but acknowledges his debt to Abendroth in the dedidcation to the Structural Transformation.
Habermas's influence over other writers is considerable. It has recently become more evident in the English-speaking world, with the publication of a translation of the Structural Transformation. An important collection of essays edited by Craig Calhoun (see bibliography) shows wide range of responses to his work: scholars in English, political theory and philosophy respond to Habermas in this volume. Responses are so varied because so many different elements are present in Habermas's work. Historians criticise the factual basis of many of his claims about the publishing industry, about economic history and bourgeois culture. More abstract theorists challenge his assumptions about a range of issues. Feminist scholars, for example, argue that Habermas neglects the importance of gender, and of the exclusion of women from the public sphere. This is a point that Habermas has recently conceded.
Theorists have attempted to work out the implications of the Structural Transformation for modern political theory. This perhaps a more difficult task, as the second half of the book is more problematic and less satisfying than the first. Habermas's debates about public reason with the US philosopher John Rawls are well-known. Also, many writers have attempted to apply Habermas's model of the bourgeois public sphere to other countries and periods. They have tried to find the public sphere in America, the Far East, and a host of other unlikely places. There is a tendency for these projects to misrepresent Habermas's original idea of the public sphere. Given that he makes it clear that the public sphere was inseparably related to the social and economic conditions of eighteenth century Europe, these attempts do not always seem worth the effort. Almost all histories of publishing and the book trade, such as those of the US historian Robert Darnton, react to Habermas's ideas.
Habermas himself has attempted to answer his critics. In his essay Further reflections on the public sphere, he revises his position in several ways.. Firstly, he admits some problems with the historical basis of his work. He also suggests other areas for consideration, namely; one) the possibility of a popular or plebian public sphere with a different social basis, in which popular culture is not merely a backdrop to representative publicity two) a reconsideration of the role of women in the bourgeois public sphere three) a need to develop a less pessimistic view about the modern mass public. Some of the issues about public discourse and the role of the state raised in the Structural Transformation reemerge in later works, such as his Theory of Communicative Action and Legitimation Crisis. Habermas has changed so many of his positions, however, that it is unwise to see his work on public sphere as a basis for his later philosophy.
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February 14, 2013Habermas, you're a helluva humanist thinker. I can't complain about the man's motives-- this is the sort of qualitative commentary that stands on its own merits rather than feeling like the speculations of some dude in a bourgeois university position in Paris or New York.
But when he tries to claim that the public sphere has degenerated from its role in the early-capitalist era, I have to question Habermas' work. To what extent did this public sphere play a role in the expansion of justice, and to what extent did it simply protect its own neck? Looking for a "Golden Age" is almost always a bad idea, and I'm afraid Habermas slips into this trap. His analysis of how consumers receive rather than debate culture remains provocative, however.
But when he tries to claim that the public sphere has degenerated from its role in the early-capitalist era, I have to question Habermas' work. To what extent did this public sphere play a role in the expansion of justice, and to what extent did it simply protect its own neck? Looking for a "Golden Age" is almost always a bad idea, and I'm afraid Habermas slips into this trap. His analysis of how consumers receive rather than debate culture remains provocative, however.
September 18, 2007
okay, yes its dense and wordy and translated from german. but it kind of is like a political sociology epic poem. smash together my high school modern european history class from high school with my freshman year college political philosophy course with the word bourgeois sprinkled throughout and you get a flavor. its fun to watch the public sphere evolve from feudalism to high industrial capitalism era. i'm sure i didnt glean whole swaths of it, but what i did get i enjoyed.
June 3, 2024
A remarkable book that describes the profound changes in society that allowed capitalism to emerge from a feudal society ordered by blood and sword. Habermas focuses on the bourgeois literary public sphere that emerges in C18th Britain and mediates between the needs of the new capitalists or bourgeoisie, and the monarchial state with its legal, administrative, religious and political wings. This struggle between a public and the state gives rise to a legal equality and a parliamentary system to represent all owners of property. Habermas is at pains to emphasis the rational critical nature of the discourse that was possible in this early public sphere which took similar forms in Germany and France. The power of publishers had yet to become infused with capitalist interests. A wide public were at liberty to discuss a wide range of subjects for the first time, to give these debates wide publicity and to form an informed public opinion.
Habermas celebrates the rational nature of this discourse, informed as it was by the European enlightenment. He also points out that the liberty of this public discourse did not critique the violent exploitation of labour that was at the heart of the capitalist mode that was spreading over the globe.
The book goes on to see how the liberty and rational critical aspect of the early public sphere, and its apparent equality of opportunity to participate, degrades as capitalism develops into the C19th. However, aspects of the early formation are still evident in the system we have today. As the Public Sphere degrades, or even becomes re-feudalised, the voting franchise expands to gradually include all adults.
This is not a passive history as it is implies we ask if it is possible to recreate a rational public sphere to include the whole population. In fact how a modern democracy might be possible.
It is however not an easy read… just when you think you can’t go on with the stodgy language or plodding and dated arguments he comes up with a blindingly incisive formulation that wakes you up and drives you on. As someone on twitter said those who persist with Habermas gain something of a super power.
My longish summary and commentary followed by a short conclusion from the point of view of a working class artist in London in 2023 is here:
https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com...
PS I should add that there was an apparent update of this in October 2023 'A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics' but it seems from reviews this is a bit of a hatchet job and not any profound rewrite.
Habermas celebrates the rational nature of this discourse, informed as it was by the European enlightenment. He also points out that the liberty of this public discourse did not critique the violent exploitation of labour that was at the heart of the capitalist mode that was spreading over the globe.
The book goes on to see how the liberty and rational critical aspect of the early public sphere, and its apparent equality of opportunity to participate, degrades as capitalism develops into the C19th. However, aspects of the early formation are still evident in the system we have today. As the Public Sphere degrades, or even becomes re-feudalised, the voting franchise expands to gradually include all adults.
This is not a passive history as it is implies we ask if it is possible to recreate a rational public sphere to include the whole population. In fact how a modern democracy might be possible.
It is however not an easy read… just when you think you can’t go on with the stodgy language or plodding and dated arguments he comes up with a blindingly incisive formulation that wakes you up and drives you on. As someone on twitter said those who persist with Habermas gain something of a super power.
My longish summary and commentary followed by a short conclusion from the point of view of a working class artist in London in 2023 is here:
https://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.com...
PS I should add that there was an apparent update of this in October 2023 'A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics' but it seems from reviews this is a bit of a hatchet job and not any profound rewrite.
November 23, 2018
If this wasn't assigned reading I probably would've enjoyed this much more - that or I would've never picked it up. I'm glad it's over anyways.
June 13, 2025
The best work of critical theory I have read to date.
I've written 3 essays on this tome (banger of a debut) so will not attempt to do so again, but let it be known: we are prisoners and happy deniers of the fact that we in no measure live up to the demands of our own ideas. Claims to liberal democracy sounds hollow on the tongues of usurpers of capital in the age of the masses. Much like King Arthur I want justice and a round table of strongman intellectuals. But though I may want it, there is no reason to take history to task for not delivering it at my feet. The writing was always on the immanent contradictions.
I've written 3 essays on this tome (banger of a debut) so will not attempt to do so again, but let it be known: we are prisoners and happy deniers of the fact that we in no measure live up to the demands of our own ideas. Claims to liberal democracy sounds hollow on the tongues of usurpers of capital in the age of the masses. Much like King Arthur I want justice and a round table of strongman intellectuals. But though I may want it, there is no reason to take history to task for not delivering it at my feet. The writing was always on the immanent contradictions.
March 13, 2015
(Second Review): Habermas presents a strong case for understanding the history of the public sphere tied primarily to the interests of a bourgeois reading class during the Liberal era (roughly mid 18th-10th centuries), evolving out of a coffeehouse and salon culture and then mutating into different forms that eroded the rational-critical aspect of the public sphere while and by expanding democratic political participation.
What Habermas means by the 'public sphere' is a rational-critical space where educated and propertied (which were almost universally the same thing during this period) individuals could gather together to discuss issues of common interest--literary, artistic, political, economic, social, etc. The central aspect of this public sphere was a debate between educated people which was ostensibly stripped of social rank and deference, and conducted entirely on the basis of reasoned arguments. He ties this public sphere strongly to classical Liberalism, which supported the ideals of individual rights (but only insofar as those rights were tied to property ownership) and freedom of ideas, information, expression, and assembly.
One of the things I find most fascinating about Habermas' description of the public sphere and its Liberal partisans is how anti-democratic this sphere and philosophy was (an anti-democratic tendency revived today in neoliberalism), at least by the etymological definition of democracy (the authority of the people). The late Liberal era developed (or seized upon) the idea of representative democracy precisely as a way of preventing non-property owners--women, the working classes, and the poor--from effectively engaging in politics. The idea was (and I think we see this in how contemporary US and UK politics runs) that if the people could only vote for leaders rather than vote on issues, then effective power would remain in the hands of property owners because they would have the leisure time and education to construct political platforms--in essence, we get to endorse someone's platform rather than having our own opinions on issues.
(Original Review): I didn't get all the way through this book, but I read a decent sized chunk of it considering how much other stuff I had to do this week (I read this for a class). But I think I got the major idea. Habermas argues that the rise of a specifically bourgeois public sphere, as opposed to the ancient and feudal conceptions of publicness, was based in the rise of critical rational debate, or in the age of reason. He argues that the bourgeois public sphere began during the era of the coffee houses and salons, when ostensibly anyone could join in discussions of contemporary political, economic, and philosophical issues based on reason (of course in practice access to education, leisure, and reading material excluded many people from the public realm of debate).
What Habermas means by the 'public sphere' is a rational-critical space where educated and propertied (which were almost universally the same thing during this period) individuals could gather together to discuss issues of common interest--literary, artistic, political, economic, social, etc. The central aspect of this public sphere was a debate between educated people which was ostensibly stripped of social rank and deference, and conducted entirely on the basis of reasoned arguments. He ties this public sphere strongly to classical Liberalism, which supported the ideals of individual rights (but only insofar as those rights were tied to property ownership) and freedom of ideas, information, expression, and assembly.
One of the things I find most fascinating about Habermas' description of the public sphere and its Liberal partisans is how anti-democratic this sphere and philosophy was (an anti-democratic tendency revived today in neoliberalism), at least by the etymological definition of democracy (the authority of the people). The late Liberal era developed (or seized upon) the idea of representative democracy precisely as a way of preventing non-property owners--women, the working classes, and the poor--from effectively engaging in politics. The idea was (and I think we see this in how contemporary US and UK politics runs) that if the people could only vote for leaders rather than vote on issues, then effective power would remain in the hands of property owners because they would have the leisure time and education to construct political platforms--in essence, we get to endorse someone's platform rather than having our own opinions on issues.
(Original Review): I didn't get all the way through this book, but I read a decent sized chunk of it considering how much other stuff I had to do this week (I read this for a class). But I think I got the major idea. Habermas argues that the rise of a specifically bourgeois public sphere, as opposed to the ancient and feudal conceptions of publicness, was based in the rise of critical rational debate, or in the age of reason. He argues that the bourgeois public sphere began during the era of the coffee houses and salons, when ostensibly anyone could join in discussions of contemporary political, economic, and philosophical issues based on reason (of course in practice access to education, leisure, and reading material excluded many people from the public realm of debate).
June 27, 2020
Kavramın etimolojik tarihinde belirtildiği üzere, antik Yunan'da polis(kamu) özgür vatandaslarin alanı olarak kabul edilirken, oikos, bir anlamıyla da ekonomi, şahsi bir alan olarak biliniyordu. Günümüze dek devam eden Helenik kamu modeli hala normatif bir güç taşıyor. Merkantilist kapitalizmin gelişimiyle beraber mal ve haber dolaşımı artmış, sermayenin ihtiyacı doğrultusunda etkili bir vergi sisteminin kurumlaşmasını baz alan modern devletin kurulmasıyla modern kamusallık ortaya çıkmıştır. Yani kamu ve devlet özdeşleşmeye başlar. Oikos'tan (ev ekonomisi) pazar ekonomisine geçişle birlikte kamunun ekonomi-dışı özelliği yerini burjuva kamusuna bırakmıştır. Modern devlet kurumlaştıkça, muhatabının adresi halk olarak kabul ediliyordu, ancak burada halk sıradan insana değil, eğitimli zümrelerin oluşturduğu burjuvaya tekabül etmektedir. Bu noktadan sonra Habermas, burjuva kamusunun tarihini anlatır, aleniyet ilkesinin en iyi bu kamuda ortaya konduğunu belirtir. Kamusal akıl yürütmenin bizatihi kendisinin tüketim nesnesine dönüştüğünü belirtip parlamenter kamusallığa yönelik haklı eleştirisine rağmen burjuva kamusunu idealize edip siyaseti bu kamuya havale etmiş ve özel-kamusal ayrımıyla birlikte geçmişten beri süregelen hiyerarşiyi devam ettirmiştir. Rancier'ci bağlamda belirtirsek siyaseti devlet idaresine indirgediğini ve sıradan halk kitlesini-demos'u dışlayarak elitleştirdiğini düşünüyorum.
July 8, 2020
The thing that I don't understand about this book is how Habermas spends the last hundred pages of it constantly referring back to a previously existing public sphere and analyzing the consequences of its loss after spending the first half of the book seemingly making clear that there never was a fully functioning public sphere in the strict sense; he analyzes how the Greeks and the coffee houses and salons of the 18th century where only able to think of their interests as objectively general because the public spheres were small, gatekept ponds of discussion composed of people who could only enjoy the supposed separation of their private lives from the public by virtue of their own domination (of slaves, the "penurious masses," women, the patriachal domination of the conjugal family, etc), and that once you scratched this surface, as happened in the 19th century, it was revealed to be ideology and one "group's" interests rather than a general interest. In other words, it only ever appeared to be a public sphere because of its unacknowledged reliance on a social hegemony that was simply taken for granted. It seems to me that the fully functional public sphere Habermas laments losing never actually existed beyond the mythological form on which democracy is predicted. Writing a summary of this book as a fairy tale, as another reviewer has done, seems spot on.
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October 17, 2024jürgen hat für meinen geschmack zu viel spaß an fancy wörtern, komplizierten sätzen und französischen zitaten
August 25, 2022
Fascinating and thorough analysis of the rise and fall of the bourgeoise public sphere. Studies like this are a reminder that the institutions taken for granted as foundational are often the most contingent and malleable. However, Habermas does not engage enough with the notion that the public sphere was bound to disintegrate from the moment of its inception. The endogenous factors are, I think, just as important as the exogenous factors in its decline (e.g., the bourgeoise’s double role as private and public participant will inevitably collapse into one or the other—as Habermas notes in the section on Marx). At the very least, the question ought to be examined more thoroughly than it was (historical rather than purely theoretical analysis would help), seeing as it would determine whether the bourgeois public sphere is a viable option in the first place.
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April 12, 2023Até pareço intelectual, mas fui obrigada a lê lo
September 20, 2024
Lowkey Trash and kinda boring. Plato is way better
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April 8, 2023Se eu fui obrigada a ler isto, que não é um livro pequeno, vai contar para o desafio.
September 18, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # The most “difficult” works ever written
When one first opens Habermas’s *The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere*, one senses not a calm doctrine but a lament, a diagnostic symphony: how the space where citizens once gathered to speak truth to power has cracked, been hollowed, reframed. Habermas reconstructs how in early modern Europe a “bourgeois public sphere” emerged: private individuals, educated and property-holding, meeting in salons, coffee houses, reading rooms, journals—spaces outside the state, distinct from the family, where what mattered was not rank or title but argument, reason, critical discussion.
That ideal of public reasoning—of *bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit*—had three vital features: universal access in theory (though never in practice), a norm of rational-critical debate, and an orientation toward the common good, toward public interest rather than particular privilege. Participants were to bracket social status in favour of what is said, not who says it.
But Habermas also shows how this sphere underwent transformation (“structural transformation”) through the 19th and 20th centuries. Economic growth, mass media, the rise of state bureaucracy, the welfare state, political parties, and commercial culture all gradually eroded the autonomy of the public sphere. The boundaries between state, society, and private citizen blurred. What was once a space of debate becomes increasingly managed, mediated, and commodified. The public sphere is no longer a theatre of rational criticism but often becomes spectacle, marketing, or propaganda.
Habermas diagnoses what he calls “refeudalization”: the public sphere being usurped by private power (corporations, mass media), and the state increasingly intervening in civil society. Public opinion becomes less “public” in the democratic, deliberative sense and more shaped by interest groups, mass culture, and mediated images. The café discussions give way to mass newspapers, radio, and later television—audiences rather than conversation partners. The ideal of rational-critical debate becomes harder to sustain.
Reading it now, one feels resonances with the ancient voices. In the Upanishads, there is the perennial insistence on *dharma*, on truth as that which remains when falsehood is stripped away. The *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* or *Chandogya Upaniṣad* teaches that a wise person must speak truth and see beyond ritual formalism. Habermas’s ideal public is in that tradition: a place where citizens speak honestly, listen truly, engage in *kritikos* dialogue, not performative speech. Yet the drift he traces is away from that: toward ritual, image, performance, toward persuasion rather than truth.
The Vedas, too, with their hymns calling for open dialogue (“Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides” — Ṛg Veda), seem to anticipate Habermas’s normative criteria: openness, inclusivity, deliberation. But Habermas reminds us that historically these ideals were constrained: only certain classes, only property-owners, literate men, could really participate. If “all noble thoughts” are invited, many voices are never heard. The ideal never matched the reality.
Shakespeare gives us images of public speech and its corruption. In *Julius Caesar*, Cassius warns: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Habermas would echo: the public sphere weakens not simply because stars misalign, but because citizens (or institutions speaking for them) abdicate their role, or are prevented from acting with reason. The crowd watches, but the debate is stage-managed.
In *King Lear*, the storm scenes where Lear’s power dissolves in wind, rain, chaos—those moments when symbolic authority warps into spectacle—mirror what Habermas describes: when authority becomes image, performance, when media spectacle substitutes for genuine deliberation. Lear’s identity knotted in rank, then unraveled; public dignity exposed. So too the bourgeois public sphere’s dignity was bound up with norms of civility, reason, mutual respect—norms that gradually fray.
Milton’s voice is also present in an echo. In *Paradise Lost*, Satan’s line *“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”* speaks of rebel pride, but also of the risk: when the ideal of service (or duty, or public good) is twisted, when power becomes servility to image, when rulership becomes spectacle, what remains is a kind of internal exile. Habermas warns that the public sphere can be exiled, made internal: citizens no longer truly engage in public reason; they consume, repeat, spectate. They are served images rather than serving critique.
The strength of Habermas’s work is not merely historical reconstruction but normative urgency. He reconstructs an “ideal type” of the bourgeois public sphere: not to idolize it, but to show what democratic culture once promised, what it still might promise. Even if it was exclusionary, even if it always had blind spots (women, laboring classes, colonized peoples), the norms of universal access, rationality, critique, and public-ness remain essential thresholds for judging current democracies.
Yet the transformations are alarming. Habermas shows how the rise of mass culture shifts public opinion from critique to consumption. News becomes entertainment; public issues are packaged; political elites shape agendas. The media do not simply report; they select, frame, and distort. The public sphere becomes less a space for deliberation and more a marketplace of images. Rational-critical debate gives way to emotional resonance, spectacle, and persuasion. Public spaces shrink. Private interests intrude. The state’s administrative power grows; civil society��s public autonomy wanes.
Here, too, echoes of Indian philosophy: in Buddhist or Upanishadic teaching, the path of *śūnyatā*, of emptiness, warns that forms without substance lose meaning. The public sphere, once rich in substance (conversation, critique, voluntary association), risks becoming empty, a shell of form (images, spectacle) without its earlier substance. The selfhood of citizens, their capacity for reflection, for speaking, for listening, for forming opinion, becomes hollowed.
Habermas’s diagnosis includes that in modern welfare-state democracy, citizens often become “clients” rather than participants; participation shifts from deliberative to consumptive, from critique to satisfaction of preference. The public sphere is “administered” rather than spontaneous. Political speech is filtered through interest groups, political parties, and media institutions. The rational core is crowded out by strategic speech, by persuasion that aims at effect rather than mutual understanding.
But the transformation isn’t total; Habermas also gestures to possibilities of renewal. He suggests that public spheres could be reinvigorated—with institutions that protect publicness, with media forms that resist commodification, with more inclusive participation, with civil society spaces that are not completely colonised by state or market. Even more in later reflections, questions of digital media, partial publics, social movements, and counterpublics take up that mantle.
In reading *The Structural Transformation* today, one cannot help but see modern resonances: social media platforms that claim to democratize public speech but often mediate, filter, and amplify only certain voices; online “public‐sphere” spaces that face echo chambers, commercial pressures, and algorithmic manipulation. The very tools of connection can also be tools of control. Habermas’s concerns about mass media decades ago feel prophetic in light of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, streaming, and clickbait.
One worry: Habermas’s ideal type, while powerful, is also somewhat nostalgic. The bourgeois public sphere is sometimes painted as more rational, more deliberative, more autonomous than what might have ever existed in purely egalitarian terms. The exclusions are many: women, people of low property, colonized people. It risks idealizing what was always partial. Scholars like Nancy Fraser and others have pushed back: what about multiple publics, counterpublics, publics outside the bourgeois tradition? What about publics in non-European societies with different dynamics of speech, caste, colonial legacy?
Still, this work remains foundational. Its insights furnish many of the tools we use to diagnose our current crisis of democracy: the decline of trust, the manipulation of public opinion, the commodification of news, the concentration of media power, and the difficulty of sustaining rational-critical debate when many citizens feel alienated, unheard.
If I may paraphrase Shakespeare: “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” (Lear, V.3) The public sphere must again become a space where feelings are not mere spectacle but prelude to critique, where speech is not performance but truth‐seeking. And Milton’s invocation: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Because often renewal is slow: institutions, norms, public spirit cannot be conjured in a moment. Habermas suggests their resurrection may need patient cultivation, education, media reform, and civic culture.
In a way, Habermas’s public sphere echoes the Upanishadic Mahāvākya *Tat Tvam Asi*: “That thou art.” The idea is that the individual, even a private citizen, is part of the public; voice matters; identity matters; recognition matters. The self in private is the self in public. The boundary does not erase the inner self. But once the structure transforms to silence or spectacle, the connection breaks.
In sum, *The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere* is not just historical or academic; it is moral, existential. It reminds us that democracy is more than elections; it is speech, association, criticism, visibility, and listening.
It warns that if these erode, tyranny creeps in not with guns but with apathy, spectacle, and manipulation.
It offers no simple remedy, but offers a map of what has been lost and what can still be reclaimed—a call to re-open the public, to re-anchor voice, to re-rekindle reason.
When one first opens Habermas’s *The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere*, one senses not a calm doctrine but a lament, a diagnostic symphony: how the space where citizens once gathered to speak truth to power has cracked, been hollowed, reframed. Habermas reconstructs how in early modern Europe a “bourgeois public sphere” emerged: private individuals, educated and property-holding, meeting in salons, coffee houses, reading rooms, journals—spaces outside the state, distinct from the family, where what mattered was not rank or title but argument, reason, critical discussion.
That ideal of public reasoning—of *bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit*—had three vital features: universal access in theory (though never in practice), a norm of rational-critical debate, and an orientation toward the common good, toward public interest rather than particular privilege. Participants were to bracket social status in favour of what is said, not who says it.
But Habermas also shows how this sphere underwent transformation (“structural transformation”) through the 19th and 20th centuries. Economic growth, mass media, the rise of state bureaucracy, the welfare state, political parties, and commercial culture all gradually eroded the autonomy of the public sphere. The boundaries between state, society, and private citizen blurred. What was once a space of debate becomes increasingly managed, mediated, and commodified. The public sphere is no longer a theatre of rational criticism but often becomes spectacle, marketing, or propaganda.
Habermas diagnoses what he calls “refeudalization”: the public sphere being usurped by private power (corporations, mass media), and the state increasingly intervening in civil society. Public opinion becomes less “public” in the democratic, deliberative sense and more shaped by interest groups, mass culture, and mediated images. The café discussions give way to mass newspapers, radio, and later television—audiences rather than conversation partners. The ideal of rational-critical debate becomes harder to sustain.
Reading it now, one feels resonances with the ancient voices. In the Upanishads, there is the perennial insistence on *dharma*, on truth as that which remains when falsehood is stripped away. The *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* or *Chandogya Upaniṣad* teaches that a wise person must speak truth and see beyond ritual formalism. Habermas’s ideal public is in that tradition: a place where citizens speak honestly, listen truly, engage in *kritikos* dialogue, not performative speech. Yet the drift he traces is away from that: toward ritual, image, performance, toward persuasion rather than truth.
The Vedas, too, with their hymns calling for open dialogue (“Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides” — Ṛg Veda), seem to anticipate Habermas’s normative criteria: openness, inclusivity, deliberation. But Habermas reminds us that historically these ideals were constrained: only certain classes, only property-owners, literate men, could really participate. If “all noble thoughts” are invited, many voices are never heard. The ideal never matched the reality.
Shakespeare gives us images of public speech and its corruption. In *Julius Caesar*, Cassius warns: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Habermas would echo: the public sphere weakens not simply because stars misalign, but because citizens (or institutions speaking for them) abdicate their role, or are prevented from acting with reason. The crowd watches, but the debate is stage-managed.
In *King Lear*, the storm scenes where Lear’s power dissolves in wind, rain, chaos—those moments when symbolic authority warps into spectacle—mirror what Habermas describes: when authority becomes image, performance, when media spectacle substitutes for genuine deliberation. Lear’s identity knotted in rank, then unraveled; public dignity exposed. So too the bourgeois public sphere’s dignity was bound up with norms of civility, reason, mutual respect—norms that gradually fray.
Milton’s voice is also present in an echo. In *Paradise Lost*, Satan’s line *“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”* speaks of rebel pride, but also of the risk: when the ideal of service (or duty, or public good) is twisted, when power becomes servility to image, when rulership becomes spectacle, what remains is a kind of internal exile. Habermas warns that the public sphere can be exiled, made internal: citizens no longer truly engage in public reason; they consume, repeat, spectate. They are served images rather than serving critique.
The strength of Habermas’s work is not merely historical reconstruction but normative urgency. He reconstructs an “ideal type” of the bourgeois public sphere: not to idolize it, but to show what democratic culture once promised, what it still might promise. Even if it was exclusionary, even if it always had blind spots (women, laboring classes, colonized peoples), the norms of universal access, rationality, critique, and public-ness remain essential thresholds for judging current democracies.
Yet the transformations are alarming. Habermas shows how the rise of mass culture shifts public opinion from critique to consumption. News becomes entertainment; public issues are packaged; political elites shape agendas. The media do not simply report; they select, frame, and distort. The public sphere becomes less a space for deliberation and more a marketplace of images. Rational-critical debate gives way to emotional resonance, spectacle, and persuasion. Public spaces shrink. Private interests intrude. The state’s administrative power grows; civil society��s public autonomy wanes.
Here, too, echoes of Indian philosophy: in Buddhist or Upanishadic teaching, the path of *śūnyatā*, of emptiness, warns that forms without substance lose meaning. The public sphere, once rich in substance (conversation, critique, voluntary association), risks becoming empty, a shell of form (images, spectacle) without its earlier substance. The selfhood of citizens, their capacity for reflection, for speaking, for listening, for forming opinion, becomes hollowed.
Habermas’s diagnosis includes that in modern welfare-state democracy, citizens often become “clients” rather than participants; participation shifts from deliberative to consumptive, from critique to satisfaction of preference. The public sphere is “administered” rather than spontaneous. Political speech is filtered through interest groups, political parties, and media institutions. The rational core is crowded out by strategic speech, by persuasion that aims at effect rather than mutual understanding.
But the transformation isn’t total; Habermas also gestures to possibilities of renewal. He suggests that public spheres could be reinvigorated—with institutions that protect publicness, with media forms that resist commodification, with more inclusive participation, with civil society spaces that are not completely colonised by state or market. Even more in later reflections, questions of digital media, partial publics, social movements, and counterpublics take up that mantle.
In reading *The Structural Transformation* today, one cannot help but see modern resonances: social media platforms that claim to democratize public speech but often mediate, filter, and amplify only certain voices; online “public‐sphere” spaces that face echo chambers, commercial pressures, and algorithmic manipulation. The very tools of connection can also be tools of control. Habermas’s concerns about mass media decades ago feel prophetic in light of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, streaming, and clickbait.
One worry: Habermas’s ideal type, while powerful, is also somewhat nostalgic. The bourgeois public sphere is sometimes painted as more rational, more deliberative, more autonomous than what might have ever existed in purely egalitarian terms. The exclusions are many: women, people of low property, colonized people. It risks idealizing what was always partial. Scholars like Nancy Fraser and others have pushed back: what about multiple publics, counterpublics, publics outside the bourgeois tradition? What about publics in non-European societies with different dynamics of speech, caste, colonial legacy?
Still, this work remains foundational. Its insights furnish many of the tools we use to diagnose our current crisis of democracy: the decline of trust, the manipulation of public opinion, the commodification of news, the concentration of media power, and the difficulty of sustaining rational-critical debate when many citizens feel alienated, unheard.
If I may paraphrase Shakespeare: “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” (Lear, V.3) The public sphere must again become a space where feelings are not mere spectacle but prelude to critique, where speech is not performance but truth‐seeking. And Milton’s invocation: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Because often renewal is slow: institutions, norms, public spirit cannot be conjured in a moment. Habermas suggests their resurrection may need patient cultivation, education, media reform, and civic culture.
In a way, Habermas’s public sphere echoes the Upanishadic Mahāvākya *Tat Tvam Asi*: “That thou art.” The idea is that the individual, even a private citizen, is part of the public; voice matters; identity matters; recognition matters. The self in private is the self in public. The boundary does not erase the inner self. But once the structure transforms to silence or spectacle, the connection breaks.
In sum, *The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere* is not just historical or academic; it is moral, existential. It reminds us that democracy is more than elections; it is speech, association, criticism, visibility, and listening.
It warns that if these erode, tyranny creeps in not with guns but with apathy, spectacle, and manipulation.
It offers no simple remedy, but offers a map of what has been lost and what can still be reclaimed—a call to re-open the public, to re-anchor voice, to re-rekindle reason.
January 19, 2022
Very interesting book with very inspiring ideas about the correlation between the public and private spheres. I enjoyed most the historic overview of this correlation. Very nicely written and totally understandable, even if you're not a sociologist.
September 25, 2013
It's not the easiest read and the most interesting material is front-loaded but Habermas' first major work remains interesting half a century after it was published.
After a definition of terms, he moves onto a multichapter review of the history of the development of critical public debate, its gradual broadening to include more segments of the rapidly expanding bourgeoisie, and then its coalescing into the origins of constitutional states. The focus is primarily France and England with
some acknowledgement of Germany's slow development, disappointingly ignoring most developments elsewhere in the Occident.
This could have served as its own book and perhaps should have as a more thorough examination and a broadening of the analysis would have made some of his later arguments more convincing. However, dividing up the book would belie the fact that this is, at its core, a philosophical work.
The second half shows the deep influence Adorno had on young Juergen as it lays out the ways in which the social welfare state and the corporate media compromise (or destroy) the existence of a true public sphere and propagandize the populace into a sort of political universe of false choices. The argument is a decent read, but overstated and ascribes too much agency to messy bureacracies and too little to individuals. In that way, he occasionally sounds almost libertarian.
The work isn't without its problems. Habermas is particularly weak when he uses the bourgeois family structure as a model for the ideology of the bourgeois state (e.g., in Chapter 6). While his tone makes every attempt to be even throughout, one does find him slipping into utopian idealism: he really has a fondness for the bourgeoisie of the late 18th century and even hints that, really, the only problem with a ruling class is a practical one of proportionate representation from all segments of society.
But this is a book of analysis and not solutions, the fact of which left me feeling unsatisfied through the second half. Perhaps in this mediatized culture I have become so accustomed to punditry that its absence leaves me feeling empty. Perhaps. But perhaps it's also that a book of this scope and insight could benefit from a little speculative futurism.
I remember reading a review somewhere on the internet that argued that the internet made this text irrelevant, but while the internet fulfills C. W. Mills' criteria for a critical public, I think Habermas would argue that it is shot through with the sort of publicity that already infects the rest of mediatized culture. Look at the talking points cut and pasted into any comments thread on gun violence in the United States; the wording is almost always so well-practiced, and it becomes clear that the repetition of this ritual text is an extension of the ubiquitous publicity of nonpublic interests and political parties. It's sloganeering, not critical debate, and the goal is clearly political domination and not consensus and compromise.
A young Habermas would have likely despaired at the quality of modern discourse given the possibilities inherent in the tools, but he's no Adorno and has grown and evolved since these early days. I look forward to reading more of his early work, but I'm going to need some lighter philosophy as a palate cleanser before doing so.
After a definition of terms, he moves onto a multichapter review of the history of the development of critical public debate, its gradual broadening to include more segments of the rapidly expanding bourgeoisie, and then its coalescing into the origins of constitutional states. The focus is primarily France and England with
some acknowledgement of Germany's slow development, disappointingly ignoring most developments elsewhere in the Occident.
This could have served as its own book and perhaps should have as a more thorough examination and a broadening of the analysis would have made some of his later arguments more convincing. However, dividing up the book would belie the fact that this is, at its core, a philosophical work.
The second half shows the deep influence Adorno had on young Juergen as it lays out the ways in which the social welfare state and the corporate media compromise (or destroy) the existence of a true public sphere and propagandize the populace into a sort of political universe of false choices. The argument is a decent read, but overstated and ascribes too much agency to messy bureacracies and too little to individuals. In that way, he occasionally sounds almost libertarian.
The work isn't without its problems. Habermas is particularly weak when he uses the bourgeois family structure as a model for the ideology of the bourgeois state (e.g., in Chapter 6). While his tone makes every attempt to be even throughout, one does find him slipping into utopian idealism: he really has a fondness for the bourgeoisie of the late 18th century and even hints that, really, the only problem with a ruling class is a practical one of proportionate representation from all segments of society.
But this is a book of analysis and not solutions, the fact of which left me feeling unsatisfied through the second half. Perhaps in this mediatized culture I have become so accustomed to punditry that its absence leaves me feeling empty. Perhaps. But perhaps it's also that a book of this scope and insight could benefit from a little speculative futurism.
I remember reading a review somewhere on the internet that argued that the internet made this text irrelevant, but while the internet fulfills C. W. Mills' criteria for a critical public, I think Habermas would argue that it is shot through with the sort of publicity that already infects the rest of mediatized culture. Look at the talking points cut and pasted into any comments thread on gun violence in the United States; the wording is almost always so well-practiced, and it becomes clear that the repetition of this ritual text is an extension of the ubiquitous publicity of nonpublic interests and political parties. It's sloganeering, not critical debate, and the goal is clearly political domination and not consensus and compromise.
A young Habermas would have likely despaired at the quality of modern discourse given the possibilities inherent in the tools, but he's no Adorno and has grown and evolved since these early days. I look forward to reading more of his early work, but I'm going to need some lighter philosophy as a palate cleanser before doing so.
January 27, 2018
I forgot to put in that I read this, because I got so swept up in school. So the thing about this is that I had to read the book and then in the next week my class and I had to read different articles all about the problems with the text and it was my job to discuss all the articles that found all the problems and talk about it at length. I don't really know how to rate or even talk about this book, because I can't say that I enjoyed it but I do understand why it's an important foundation. Even in all the articles we went over that talked about the problems with the text it still applauded what Habermas did as groundbreaking. So all at once I don't get it and I do get it. It's not a super clear argument, but is doing something important so I don't know I'm kind of middle of the road about it.
February 3, 2016
I gave this book four stars because it is well considered and offers some valuable insights concerning the social organization of public opinion. However, not only are there questionable depictions of the historical account of the "public sphere," but I cannot accept the normative indictment on social organization. Habermas paints a convincing picture of what he considers the ideal form of civic participation of 18th century white culture. I object to its limitations though. It is very exclusive and is unapologetic on this point. Also, as a materialist dialectic on the human condition, I don't see how this idealized form could ever be re-captured. The logic precludes it and so the normative aspect of the discourse is self-defeating.
Read
February 7, 2008I read this book to clarify my discussion of public and private, but it only proved useful as a way of understanding Habermas' view of how we lost sight of the modern project, the Enlightenment. That's all it's intended to do, I imagine, so I just needed something else, which I think I've found in Michael McKeon's "The Secret History of Domesticity."
January 12, 2018
Habermas ideas about democracy and his attempt on giving historical background to public sphere was very appealing to me. The downside - his described 'democracy' reflects 'ideal' no realistic view on the subject
June 26, 2020
El trabajo clásico (1962) sobre la opinión pública en el siglo XX, su propuesta, aunque relevante, resulta limitada desde una perspectiva actual, sin embargo, es el punto de partida para entender la discusión contemporánea al respecto.
May 10, 2020
Part historical overview (think the Chartist Movement and the February Revolution), part philosophical exploration (everyone from Bayle, to Hobbes, to Rousseau, to Locke), part political science debate (the social welfare state vs. the liberal democracy), Jurgen Habermas's "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society" delineates the outlines of the author's thesis with care and erudition, leading to a work which eases its reader into a discussion of its main elements with rigorousness and supreme clarity. Beginning with an initial "Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere," the book goes on to outline the role the traditional bourgeois family had, through its cultivation of interiority and concommitant engagement with the public sphere, on informing and creating a rational-critical informed analysis and dialogue with the political-public sphere. Delving deep into this area, Habermas lucidly delineates the role, in the critical 18th century, that the middle class family, with its development of literary engagement with the self and society, had in creating the environment that made possible the great yet short-lived existence of liberal democracy. Moreover, Habermas also dialectically describes the ideology of this period, and its subsequent developments, in a particularly enlightening discussion of thinkers as diverse as Marx, Hobbes, and Locke. All through these introductory chapters the ideas are presented with a lucidity and clearness that both goes far to make clear the sometimes obscure/difficult concepts involved as well as bring the reader along gently in almost a classically "narrative" sense. Developing the history of the public/private sphere dialectic even more, Habermas also discusses the historical development of the journal and newspaper, discussing cogently how technological developments and the negative influence of capitalism weakened this once strong and vigorous voice of the informed public. But perhaps the most compelling aspect of the work is saved for the end, where Habermas, acknowledging the transition from the Bourgeois state to the Social-Welfare state, outlines the growth of publicity and the public sphere in a world where "public relations" artifically molds what was once an authentic voice, publicity, into a easily manipulable form of false consciousness. However, not all is completely bleak, for Habermas postulates a future where rational consensus can return. And while this may seem like just a fig-leaf of hope, perhaps it is all we can wish for in our debased times.
January 4, 2023
Um dem neuen Buch von Habermas gerecht zu werden, habe ich es nach zwanzig Jahren wieder gelesen und bin verblüfft, wie synkretistisch es ist.
Im ersten Teil rekapituliert er lediglich die Klassiker, die da wären Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Christoph Martin Wieland in der Frühphase und der Entstehung von so etwas wie ein bürgerlicher Öffentlichkeit. Auf dem Höhepunkt der Vernunft rekapituliert er wenig überraschend Immanuel Kant und Jean-Jacques Rousseau, und mit Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel und Karl Marx beginnt der Abstieg einer monetär sich verklärenden, disparaten Öffentlichkeit. Der Teil ist sehr akademisch geschrieben. Ein klassischer erster Teil einer Habilitation.
Der zweite Teil ist dann eine Engführung an Max Horkheimers und Theodor W. Adornos "Dialektik der Aufklärung" und deren Kritik an einer Kulturindustrie. Hier liest sich Habermas sehr hörig und gefällig, wie er sich in die Gruppe der Frankfurter Schule schreibt, ohne irgendeinen Begriff in Zweifel zu ziehen. Die Reste der heroischen Bürgerlichkeit werden vom Finanzkapital aufgeklärt und der Schutzraum des Privaten aufgezehrt.
Im dritten Abschnitt schreibt Habermas dann darüber, dass vereinzelte Intellektuelle keine Chance mehr in der Öffentlichkeit haben, gegen Aufmerksamkeitskonzerne, und dass die kritische Publizität sich organisieren muss. Hier liest sich klar Wolfgang Abendroth heraus und seine Arbeiterorganisationskonzeption. Das Buch endet mit dem Aufruf nach kritischer Publizität, um die Gesetzgebung zu hinterfragen und zu rechtfertigen, also ganz und gar ikonoklastisch, sondern sehr stromlinienförmig mit seiner Zeit und dem aufgehenden Stern des Spiegels:
"Der Streit einer kritischen Publizität mit der zu manipulativen Zwecken bloß veranstalteten ist offen; die Durchsetzung der sozialstaatlich gebotenen Öffentlichkeit des politischen Machtvollzugs und Machtausgleichs gegenüber jener zu Zwecken der Akklamation bloß hergestellten ist keineswegs gewiß; aber als eine Ideologie, wie die Idee der bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit zur Zeit ihrer liberalen Entfaltung, läßt sie sich nicht denunzieren: sie bringt allenfalls die Dialektik jener zur Ideologie herabgesetzten Idee zu ihrem Ende."
Das Buch eines aufstrebenden Akademikers, der es leider vermisst, seine Begriffe wie "Vernunft", "Wahrheit", "Gerechtigkeit" und "Kritik" zu klären.
Im ersten Teil rekapituliert er lediglich die Klassiker, die da wären Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Christoph Martin Wieland in der Frühphase und der Entstehung von so etwas wie ein bürgerlicher Öffentlichkeit. Auf dem Höhepunkt der Vernunft rekapituliert er wenig überraschend Immanuel Kant und Jean-Jacques Rousseau, und mit Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel und Karl Marx beginnt der Abstieg einer monetär sich verklärenden, disparaten Öffentlichkeit. Der Teil ist sehr akademisch geschrieben. Ein klassischer erster Teil einer Habilitation.
Der zweite Teil ist dann eine Engführung an Max Horkheimers und Theodor W. Adornos "Dialektik der Aufklärung" und deren Kritik an einer Kulturindustrie. Hier liest sich Habermas sehr hörig und gefällig, wie er sich in die Gruppe der Frankfurter Schule schreibt, ohne irgendeinen Begriff in Zweifel zu ziehen. Die Reste der heroischen Bürgerlichkeit werden vom Finanzkapital aufgeklärt und der Schutzraum des Privaten aufgezehrt.
Im dritten Abschnitt schreibt Habermas dann darüber, dass vereinzelte Intellektuelle keine Chance mehr in der Öffentlichkeit haben, gegen Aufmerksamkeitskonzerne, und dass die kritische Publizität sich organisieren muss. Hier liest sich klar Wolfgang Abendroth heraus und seine Arbeiterorganisationskonzeption. Das Buch endet mit dem Aufruf nach kritischer Publizität, um die Gesetzgebung zu hinterfragen und zu rechtfertigen, also ganz und gar ikonoklastisch, sondern sehr stromlinienförmig mit seiner Zeit und dem aufgehenden Stern des Spiegels:
"Der Streit einer kritischen Publizität mit der zu manipulativen Zwecken bloß veranstalteten ist offen; die Durchsetzung der sozialstaatlich gebotenen Öffentlichkeit des politischen Machtvollzugs und Machtausgleichs gegenüber jener zu Zwecken der Akklamation bloß hergestellten ist keineswegs gewiß; aber als eine Ideologie, wie die Idee der bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit zur Zeit ihrer liberalen Entfaltung, läßt sie sich nicht denunzieren: sie bringt allenfalls die Dialektik jener zur Ideologie herabgesetzten Idee zu ihrem Ende."
Das Buch eines aufstrebenden Akademikers, der es leider vermisst, seine Begriffe wie "Vernunft", "Wahrheit", "Gerechtigkeit" und "Kritik" zu klären.
October 24, 2025
habermas’ obstinate style (or burger and lawrence’s translation) continues to push at the edge of my psyche. this reminds me so strongly that habermas is a critical theorist and an inheritor of the frankfurt school, in the sense that there’s this complex history that underlies the concept of publicity, but i’m left thinking this might just not be true (or at least conflates the idea with the empirical).
at the same time i think this is the definitive starting point to really think about why public discussions about rational legitimation of governance have come to fail, and why these concepts (rational justification, legitimation) have had their semantic contents gutted and fully replaced. whether or not you buy this particular story, very few authors offer as detailed and genuinely compelling a story as Habermas does. the point in history before the student movement took off has long since passed. habermas is serious though, that there’s a future with a public and it’s in a social welfare state. to an extent i think this is simply true, but showing us why the liberal ideal of publicity has dissolved is just as important, to show us where we could go and why there’s no going back. writing an essay for a class on this book right now so i’ll probably fully revise all of these thoughts later.
at the same time i think this is the definitive starting point to really think about why public discussions about rational legitimation of governance have come to fail, and why these concepts (rational justification, legitimation) have had their semantic contents gutted and fully replaced. whether or not you buy this particular story, very few authors offer as detailed and genuinely compelling a story as Habermas does. the point in history before the student movement took off has long since passed. habermas is serious though, that there’s a future with a public and it’s in a social welfare state. to an extent i think this is simply true, but showing us why the liberal ideal of publicity has dissolved is just as important, to show us where we could go and why there’s no going back. writing an essay for a class on this book right now so i’ll probably fully revise all of these thoughts later.
July 25, 2025
Habermas takes the reader on a journey that starts in ancient Greece and moves through absolutist monarchy, mercantilism, the Enlightenment, liberalism, and finally, modern capitalism. His analysis of the bourgeois public sphere so the space where private citizens come together to critically debate public matters is eye-opening. I found it especially fascinating how he ties together the rise of newspapers, bourgeois salons, and even domestic architecture as elements that shaped a new form of collective consciousness.
This is not an easy read! The writing is dense and many of the key concepts are tough to grasp, especially if you’re not already familiar with political philosophy or sociology (I’m not so I can tell).
That said, it’s a brilliant book. You can really tell how deeply researched and thought-out it is. Habermas doesn’t just describe the evolution of the public sphere; he builds a whole framework for understanding how modern democracies developed (and where they may be failing today).
It’s challenging, but definitely worth the effort.
Many parts of the book feel surprisingly relevant today: the crisis of public opinion, media manipulation, populism… Habermas seems to have anticipated a lot of the problems we’re now seeing in democratic systems.
This is not an easy read! The writing is dense and many of the key concepts are tough to grasp, especially if you’re not already familiar with political philosophy or sociology (I’m not so I can tell).
That said, it’s a brilliant book. You can really tell how deeply researched and thought-out it is. Habermas doesn’t just describe the evolution of the public sphere; he builds a whole framework for understanding how modern democracies developed (and where they may be failing today).
It’s challenging, but definitely worth the effort.
Many parts of the book feel surprisingly relevant today: the crisis of public opinion, media manipulation, populism… Habermas seems to have anticipated a lot of the problems we’re now seeing in democratic systems.
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