The Opinion System - Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas (Hardcover)

The Opinion System explores the category of opinion as a foundational concept of modernity. Terminologically indispensable in ideas like "public opinion" and "freedom of opinion," opinion assumes a central position in modern philosophy, literature, sociology, and political theory while also becoming the object of extremely contradictory valuations. Opinion's obvious centrality, combined with its widely recognized theoretical dubiousness, has produced a long-term oversight in assessing this concept and its effects. I attempt to rectify this situation by focusing on interpretative shifts begun by the Enlightenment and cemented by the French Revolution. Locke's "law of opinion," underwritten by antiquity's conceptions of nomos and fama, undergoes a largely critical reception insofar as it is inconsistent with the modern ideal of a rational political order. The contemporary dynamics of this problem have been worked out by JA1/4rgen Habermas and Reinhart Koselleck: Habermas believes that the private law of opinion can be brought under the rational control of public discourse and procedural form, whereas Koselleck views modernity as the period in which the irrational potentials of fama were unleashed by a political-conceptual language that only intensified and accelerated the upheavals of history. Within this context, modernity risked making opinions into the idols of collective representations, sacrificing opinion to ideology and individualism to totalitarianism. I argue that this transformation, though irreversible, finds its point of resistance in literary language that opposes the rigid formalism that compels individuals to identify with their opinions. Rather than forcing theinterruption of thought to represent stable opinions, modern literary forms seek to suspend this moment of closure and representation, so that held opinions do not bring all deliberative processes to a standstill.

General

Imprint:	Fordham University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	October 2008
First published:	November 2008
Authors:	Kirk Wetters
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 25mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth / Cloth
Pages:	256
ISBN-13:	978-0-8232-2988-8
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political science & theory Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Public opinion & polls Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy Promotions
LSN:	0-8232-2988-2
Barcode:	9780823229888

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