Description
Book SynopsisExamines opinion as a foundational concept of modernity. This book focuses on interpretive shifts begun in the Enlightenment and cemented by the French Revolution to restore the concept of "opinion" to a central role in our understanding of the political public sphere.
Trade ReviewThe best book on the public sphere after Habermas' classical study from 1962. Wetters' historical trajectory establishes a thorough theoretical frame for the contextual practice of an advanced critique of literature and the media after New Historicism.
---—Anselm Haverkamp, New York University“Fills a gap in English-language scholarship on the history and theory of opinion.”
---—Paul Fleming, New York UniversityExplores the intellectual history and philosophy of opinion as a central concept in modernity. * —The Chronicle of Higher Education *
In theories of democracy public opionion uses to play a central role, whereas our own private opinions most of the time appear as a deficient mode of knowledge. In his highly nuanced and insightful study on both facets of opinion in writers and philosophers around 1800 Kirk Wetters demonstrates that the intricacies of both concepts depend on the extent to which we see them as connected or not connected. German observers of the French Revolution, from Wieland to Fichte, and Lichtenberg to Goethe, had a keen interest in and a subtle take on this point where private and public spheres, shades of knowing and political legitimacy meet and part from each other. Kirk Wetters proves a skilled and fine observer of these observers.
---—Rudiger Campe, Yale UniversityOpinions – everybody has them, but nobody owns them. In his elegant and resourceful study of the 'opinion system', Wetters probes the historical underpinnings of one of the most fraught yet inescapable categories of political thought. His forays into this tradition yield
unexepected insights into the current state and stakes of democracy.
---—Eva Geulen, University of BonnLearned, well-researched and broadly conceived.
---—Andreas Gailus, University of Michigan
