The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Introduction

Habermas submitted the work as his habilitation thesis in Marburg under the political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth, after Horkheimer had raised objections in Frankfurt; it appeared in 1962. He traces how in the eighteenth century private persons came together in coffee houses, salons and periodicals to discuss public affairs, submitting the authority of the state to the critical use of reason. In the welfare state and mass media of the twentieth century this sphere disintegrates into consumer culture and managed publicity, a process Habermas calls “refeudalisation”. The English translation appeared only in 1989; in 1990 he revised parts of the argument in a new preface. The book shaped research on the public sphere and media.

Connections

Builds on

• An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?1784 · Immanuel Kant

Criticized in

• Rethinking the Public Sphere1990 · Nancy Fraser

More works by Jürgen Habermas

• 1968Knowledge and Human Interests
• 1981The Theory of Communicative Action
• 1985The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity