If we are to believe what many sociologists are telling us, the
public sphere is in a near terminal state. Our ability to build
solidarities with strangers and to agree on the general
significance of needs and problems seems to be collapsing. These
cultural potentials appear endangered by a newly aggressive attempt
to universalize and extend the norms of the market. For four
decades Habermas has been trying to bring the claims of a modern
public sphere before us. His vast oeuvre has investigated its
historical, sociological and theoretical preconditions, has
explored its relevance and meaning as well as diagnosing its
on-going crises. In the contemporary climate, a systematic look at
Habermas lifelong project of rescuing the modern public sphere
seems an urgent task.
This study reconstructs major developments in Habermas thinking
about the public sphere, and is a contribution to the current
vigorous debate over its plight. It marshals the significance of
Habermas lifetime of work on this topic to illuminate what is at
stake in a contemporary interest in rescuing an embattled modern
public sphere.
Habermas project of rescuing the neglected potentials of
Enlightenment legacies has been deeply controversial. For many, it
is too lacking in radical commitments to warrant its claim to a
contemporary place within a critical theory tradition. Against this
developing consensus, Pauline Johnson describes Habermas project as
one that is still informed by utopian energies, even though his own
construction of emancipatory hopes itself proves to be too narrow
and one-sided.
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