The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Structural transformation of the public is the title of political science published in 1962 habilitation dissertation, Jürgen Habermas, which is subtitled inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. With the title of structural transformation of the public Habermas refers to as the subsequent social science discussion at him a comprehensive social process, involving the mass media, politics and bureaucracy and business, and marked the emergence of modern mass society.
- 3.1 Private Property
- 3.2 Civil Family
- 3.3 Literary public
Introduction
Habermas habilitated in 1961 in Marburg with Wolfgang Abendroth, after he had left in 1959, the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research for conflicts with the purpose originally intended as a supervisor of the habilitation Max Horkheimer. The then dedicated Abendroth book of public structural change (in the future, if the book is meant: SDOE ) has been widely launched since it was first published again and translated into several languages. Jürgen Habermas designs is a story of the rise and decline of the bourgeois public sphere, which makes an influential contributions to several areas of critical cultural theory in spite of their historical- empirical weaknesses: Over the understanding of the public function intended Habermas nothing less than the current company through one of its to get a grip on key categories and ultimately democratize in enlightened and rational manner. In addition, can the work as a groundwork of his later investigations already recognize the basic lines in which Habermas since the 1970s, in its normative claim full, empirically adequate and theoretically influential discourse theory developed (see SDOE, § 25). The influence of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School plays next to the status of Scripture SDOE in Habermas ' oeuvre a special role, which is apparent in SDOE content and language and could be converted by Habermas already productively.
First is an overview of Habermas's presentation of the theoretical and empirical development of the bourgeois public sphere as a principle and institution in relation to state and society. Then take a look at the social basis of the bourgeois public and its political impact will also be to throw on the normative character of Habermas ' concept of the public, on the connection to the critical theory and on the context of Habermas's oeuvre. Finally, I must respond to the causes and forms of public structural changes and on Habermas ' former and newer approaches this social development problems.
History of the bourgeois public
The bourgeois public sphere developed by Habermas in the early modern period from the feudal form of representative public. As a public Habermas understands those matters that are of concern for all and therefore to regulate society, in contrast to the private sphere of individual arbitrariness, which is extracted from the state or social access. The relationship between public and private is also a key element in Habermas ' theory of how the relationship between state and society and the relationship between monarchical and democratic representation.
Public and Private
Habermas ' discussion of public and private uses in Greek antiquity, when the private area of home economics was distinguished ( oikos ) from the public area of the city government policy (polis). During the Renaissance, this idea has been revived and is influential by Habermas today. Unlike in ancient times, the modern understanding developed by " private" and "public" but not in the context of the polis democracy, but with the sign of the monarchy, so that by the end of the 18th century, the public power of the monarch, the was opposed to private autonomy as freedom of Untertans sphere ( SDOE, § 1). Goods in the ancient Greek model of state and society (their citizens) still substantially identical, they were in modern Europe compared with each other ( SDOE, § 3).
State and society
Before accessing the absolutist state, the emerging middle class sought to be protected by the conquest of a private sphere of freedom, which manifested itself as an individual defensive rights against the state in the declaration of human rights. The resulting layer of urban citizens was formed since the 16th century slowly to an audience that accompanied looked at himself with his economic rise of more and more as a counterpart of the state. The " public authority " of the state presented the civil society 's own "public opinion" against which claimed to basis of legitimacy of state action to be ( SDOE, § 3). The successful implementation of this claim was based on the change of the representation understanding.
Monarchical and democratic representation
The changing meaning of the concept of representation can still be illustrated by the different meaning of "representative" in the phrases "representative residence" and " representative democracy ". While in the classical monarchy the ruler represented an act of God to the people (ie represented, embodied ), as reflected particularly in the idea of the divine right of kingship, developed since about the mercantilism by the permanent government activity (administrative, standing army ) the idea that the rulers have the people to represent (ie, to represent, to embody ), so that its prosperity - will be maximized ( SDOE, § 2) - the basis of stately power.
For Habermas thereby converted the "representative public," which manifested itself in the ornate royal household, in a " bourgeois public sphere " that developed a new form of publicity: The printing technique enabled the proliferation of a regular press, on the one hand in political and economic news about current events in the nation-state dominated the horizon of the emerging civil society informed (eg, commands, and ordinances), on the other hand mixed news as " miracle cures and cloudbursts " reported, and finally room for criticism of the räsonierenden public offering ( SDOE, § 3) as soon as the claim was raised by, the touchstone of successful representation of the people by the authorities to be ( SDOE, § 4). The legitimacy of the rule was gradually subject to the approval of public opinion, so that the legitimacy of state power from one instance was dependent who did not succumb to their own power of disposal.
Social basis of the bourgeois public
Habermas describes the social strata from which sprang the assembled to a critical public audience, as influenced by the factors of private property ( SDOE, § 4), the bourgeois- patriarchal nuclear family ( SDOE, § 6) and the modern literary culture ( SDOE, § 7).
Private property
The economic role of the bourgeoisie in the beginnings of the capitalist mode of production also constituted by him certain public. Commercial and financial capital, as well as manufacture and incipient industrial capital dominated the emerging bourgeois public sphere together with the educated middle layers of officials, academics and officers. This " bourgeoisie " was, on the one hand enforce by public criticism one not affected by the state field of free movement of goods, on the other hand wanted to hold the state guarantees about for economic large companies. Also associated with the industrialization conflicts between civic groups were held in the bourgeois public sphere, to assigning them a government-backed solution.
Was crucial for the formation of the bourgeois public sphere that could be as a private citizen only part of the audience, who was economically independent as a private owner, and had enjoyed an appropriate education.
Bourgeois Family
As such, a private citizen and private owners came in the context of the bourgeois family structure, only the father ( pater familias ) in question. The importance of other family members was addressed to their importance for the Patriarch of, or in their view, in the future ( by passing on the family fortune ) to move up to this position. To differentiate here between the English coffee houses (→ Café # History ), the socially slightly wider, but were it dominates all-male, and the French salons (→ Literary Salon ) in which the ladies of the upper layers (nobility, upper middle class, intelligence ) played an important role. The access to these classic addition to the German table society places civil discussion ( SDOE, § 5 ) were prepared in the privacy of the bourgeois family: The discovery of subjectivity and individual autonomy as well as nurturing a cultural literariness took place in the conjugal privacy, through the expansion of the private sphere was compressed to the commodity exchange to privacy.
Literary public
Against Habermas ' theory of the advance of a literary walking in front of the political public is argued (eg Böning 2008) that newspapers contributed political reporting from the beginning. The criticism is, like many other empirical- historical criticism of SDOE in principle entitled, especially Habermas treats the literary public at length, but somewhat indistinctly: He tells of reading psychological novels ( as a prime example of Pamela by Samuel Richardson ) and the discussion of the soon expanded from the salon in the press, because that was too narrow and the ensuing cultural criticism as first existing infrastructure that could be used for political criticism.
The objections to Habermas's theory of the literary public sphere as the basis of the political public sphere can be answered with the two notes that ( 1 ) the earliest political press (even under conditions of censorship) indeed could afford coverage but not unimpaired political criticism. However, this political information is to be regarded as a condition subsequent policy review. In the cultural sphere, however, such criticism was previously possible (even under the conditions of change of culture to the commodity form ) and served in this way for practicing the "critical business ", which was subsequently transferred to the policy. Next it should be noted that ( 2 ) Habermas ' notion of a literary public does not just mean a public that (beautiful ) deals with literature, but a public that (a) is trained individually and collectively on the basis of fiction that has practiced judgments, and ( b ) is literary to subliterary in contrast and post- literary publics ( SDOE § 25), in which Habermas ' requirements to a functional rationality public discourse can not be met.
Normative concept of the public
This provides an indication also of the normative character of the public sphere in Habermas, who suggests that is what Habermas in the following decades should develop as a discourse theory: the explication of the conditions of the possibility of a rational social organization is the common thread that runs through Habermas ' oeuvre. He appeals to the grown reflexive reason, the main demand of the ( Habermas positively flipped ) Dialectic of Enlightenment, but loses its traditional centering in the subject and is moved to the intersubjective field of human communication:
In his major work, Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas develops a discourse theory, citing Kant includes the three rational forms of theoretical, practical and aesthetic reason and its realization ( separately and together) seeks in the form of discourses. The discourse theory according to a statement it gives a lecture that ( under conditions of an ideal communication community) the validity claim of the statement could be converted at any time and anywhere in a consensus was under real conditions only by reasoned consensus substitutable, as Habermas (→ consensus theory of truth ).
Civil public whose " idea and ideology " Habermas with reference to Kant ( SDOE, § 13), Hegel and Marx ( SDOE, § 14), JS Mill and Tocqueville ( SDOE, § 15) analyzed claimed by Habermas truth ( theoretical reason ), accuracy ( practical reason ) and truthfulness ( aesthetic reason ) (→ consensus theory of truth ( Habermas) ). In principle, they can also redeem this claim, since it is free of domination, equal and generally thought only the unforced force of the better argument may establish and no areas exclusionary as unquestionable. But - and this is both an opportunity and the bourgeois public sphere, as well as the seeds of its own decay: What concerns everyone about it must all be able to advise. The general access to the bourgeois public sphere is its necessary postulate - and yet you merely ideological component: By the admission criteria of private property and the formation of the vast majority of people were excluded from public reasoning ( of meaningful discussion in coffee houses, salons, newspapers and magazines). The bourgeois public sphere was thus not only incomplete, but " rather no public. " ( SDOE, § 11)
Habermas's view of the early bourgeois public sphere of the 17th and 18th century is considered in historical studies since the 1980s as a not covered by the source material idealization.
Dialectic of public
Development of bourgeois democracy and capitalist economy could succeed with the help of the bourgeois public sphere, the overcoming of the " class character " of their domination and economic system but of course not. The Verfassungskodifikationen protected the conditions of the bourgeois public sphere (eg, freedom of the press ), but also the terms of their separation from the " fourth estate " ( protection of private property ).
However, by the rational- normative content of the general public as a necessary condition of public ever sought the bourgeois public sphere beyond itself. The broadening its social base by working-class movement, generalization of the franchise and the first welfare state approaches led to the weakening of the critical force and ultimately to irreversible dissolution of the bourgeois public.
Structural Transformation of the Public
The forth above separation of state and society, public and private, was the basis of the bourgeois public. After these had experienced its highest level of development, perhaps a hundred years until the late 19th century ( SDOE, § 16), their resolution began with the blurring of these separations. The never quite reached equivalent replacement after liberal model increasingly lost credibility, the more the idea of economic equality smaller products Ownership ad resulted in the concentration of capital and social power absurdum in individual hands. The necessary development of "socially constitutionally industrial society " ( SDOE, § 16) mixed state and society, public and private spheres, and led to the creation of an "intermediate sphere ": During the family leisure area was always private, moved the world of work in an intermediate position between private and public sector, what with a loss of function of the bourgeois family was associated ( SDOE, § 17).
On these necessary followed the collapse of the building upon it " literary public sphere " in the rise of the culture industry and the decline of the general reasoning about cultural issues. The mass media could only generate a pseudo-public, as their communication is almost exclusively in only one direction, the audience tends to be silenced ( SDOE, § 18). The resolution of critical publicity in manipulative advertising made even wither formally democratised policy. It led to the mere production of the public and to their refeudalization: The monarchical representation returned, this time in the form of public relations more or less private persons and organizations who want to represent their private interests as general ( SDOE, § 20f. ).
Solutions
Habermas's original impulse was the democratization and transformation of semi-public have become major social organizations that ( 1 ) functional internal publics and ( 2 ) should together establish a functioning whole public. The latter conception is filed, democratization and the other social subsystems in addition to the policy, are not ( Brunkhorst 2006). Importantly - and to watch with him later again and again - that Habermas did not fall to the short circuit, the welfare state development, which accompanied the "ideal " public with the collapse of the blame for these to explain and to demand their withdrawal. Rather, it aims to SDOE as in his discourse theory of law Facts and Norms in 1992 to a consistent implementation of the requirements of the welfare state as a " fact of the [ social ] evolution" ( Brunkhorst 2004): The human and civil rights must respect the rights of social participation and draw near political participation, to complete the " system of rights " ( Between Facts and Norms ) ( SDOE, § 23).
Against the depoliticized public paternalistic Adenauer era ( Brunkhorst 2006), Habermas turned implicit in SDOE. The 68 movement also called for, following Habermas, a re-politicization of the public and a public debate on all public (ie, political ) matters. In addition, Habermas ' theory of the public presented more than a normative approach that understands the cable laid by the older generation of the Frankfurt School in a vague beyond possibility of social improvement again as a real opportunity and the negation of domination and violence as a result of a rational social organization under the democratic rule of law provides ( Between Facts and Norms ) in view.
Overview of the breakdown of structural transformation of the public
Foreword I Introduction
II Social public structures
III Political public functions
IV Civil Public - idea and ideology
V Social Structure Transformation of the Public
VI Political Function Transformation of the Public
VII On the concept of public opinion