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Reading Habermas
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
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2022
Summary
Reading Habermas: Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere dissolves Habermas’s monolithic stylization to precisely access his seminal distinction between the purely political polis of antiquity, which excludes the private economy from the res publica, and the modern public sphere with its rational-critical discourse about commodity exchange and social labor in the political economy. Deconstructing the uniform mold of Structural Transformation’s narrative about a rise and fall of the bourgeois public sphere in modernity also allows to identify and understand the ideology-critical methodologies of Habermas’s theory reconstruction of Kant’s ideal of the liberal public in the context of the French Revolution.
Readers of this guide realize that Habermas’s interpretation of a sociological and political category with the norms of constitutional theory and intellectual history causes the “collapsing of norm and description” he acknowledged in 1989 and thus frequent misunderstandings about the historical validity of Structural Transformation’s ideal-type derived from Condorcet’s absolute rationalism and Kant’s “unofficial” philosophy of history. Specifically, the guide explains that Habermas’s key construct of a “morally pretentious rationality” of the bourgeois public sphere entirely depends on the claim about “natural laws” harmoniously regulating the economy. While neoliberalism still maintains this claim, Hegel “decisively destroyed” it already in 1821.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2022
ISBN-Print
978-1-4985-9016-7
ISBN-Online
978-1-4985-9017-4
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
286
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Dedication No access
Contents No access
List of Abbreviations No access
Preface: The Social Media Transformation of the Public Sphere and the Crisis of Neoliberal Democracy No access
Introduction: The Unique Significance of Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere for the Theory and Practice of Democratic Deliberation No access Pages 1 - 18
1 Structural Transformation’s Normative Theses about a Dissolution of Domination in the Bourgeois Public Sphere No access Pages 19 - 26
2 Habermas’s Dialectical Use of Ideology Critique to Counterfactually Assert a Moment of Historical Credibility for the Bourgeois Ideal of the Public Sphere No access Pages 27 - 36
3 Structural Transformation’s Cold War Origins: Habermas’s Defense of Kantian Rationality, Human Rights, and the Enlightenment No access Pages 37 - 50
4 Participatory Democracy versus Political Manipulation: The Role of Habermas’s “Celebrated Coffee Houses” (Todd Gitlin) in the Modern Public Sphere No access Pages 51 - 68
5 Understanding Habermas’s Public Sphere Concept by Dissolving Its Monolithic Stylization: Structural Transformation’s Interpretation of a Sociological and Political Category with the Norms of Constitutional Theory and Intellectual History No access Pages 69 - 116
6 Structural Transformation’s Tacit Model Case of the Bourgeois Public Sphere: The French Revolution, Kant’s “Unofficial” Philosophy of History, Condorcet’s Absolute Rationalism, and Schiller’s Expressive Subjectivism No access Pages 117 - 144
7 The Achilles’ Heel of Schiller’s Moral Stage and Structural Transformation’s Moral Politics: A Dependency of Smith’s Political Economy and Kant’s Constitutional Law on Mandeville’s Moral Paradox of Bourgeois Society No access Pages 145 - 168
8 Habermas’s Unexplained Methodology: A Complex “Ideology-Critical Procedure” No access Pages 169 - 198
9 The Result of Structural Transformation’s Dialectical Use of Schmitt’s “Civil War Topos” and Koselleck’s “Process of Criticism”: A Tension between Developmental History and Ideology-Critical Procedure No access Pages 199 - 218
Conclusion: Renewing the Human Rights Perspective in the Political Public Sphere No access Pages 219 - 248
