Description
Book SynopsisIn this work, Habermas retraces the emergence and development of the bourgeois public sphere, focusing on Europe in the early modern period. He examines the writing of political theorists and the specific institutions and social forms in which the public sphere was realized.
Trade Review'Why is this such a vital study? Its significance rests in its analysis of one of the central notions on which both our political life and our political theories rest: 'public opinion'. Presidential candidates worry about it, the press talks about it, political scientists try to measure it, but Habermas is one of the few people to have actually sat down and tried to
think about it, to ask what it means to have an 'opinion' that is not private, not idiosyncratic, but rather 'public'.'
James Schmidt, Boston UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction by Thomas McCarthy.
Part I. Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere.
Part II. Social Structures of the Public Sphere.
Part III. Political Functions of the Public Sphere.
Part IV. The Bourgeois Public Sphere: Idea and Ideology.
Part V. The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Part VI. The Transformation of the Public Sphere's Political Function.
Notes.
Index.
