'Why is this such a vital study? Its significance rests in its analysis of one of the central notions on which both our political life and our political theories rest: 'public opinion'. Presidential candidates worry about it, the press talks about it, political scientists try to measure it, but Habermas is one of the few people to have actually sat down and tried to <i>think</i> about it, to ask what it means to have an 'opinion' that is not private, not idiosyncratic, but rather 'public'.' <br /> <i>James Schmidt, Boston University</i>
Habermas focuses on the liberal notion of the bourgeois public sphere as it emerged in Europe in the early modern period. He examines both the writings of political theorists, including Marx, Mill and de Tocqueville, and the specific institutions and social forms in which the public sphere was realized.
This brilliant and influential work has been widely recognized for many years as a classic of contemporary social and political thought, of interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.
Part I. Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere.
Part II. Social Structures of the Public Sphere.
Part III. Political Functions of the Public Sphere.
Part IV. The Bourgeois Public Sphere: Idea and Ideology.
Part V. The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Part VI. The Transformation of the Public Sphere's Political Function.
Notes.
Index.
Habermas focuses on the liberal notion of the bourgeois public sphere as it emerged in Europe in the early modern period. He examines both the writings of political theorists, including Marx, Mill and de Tocqueville, and the specific institutions and social forms in which the public sphere was realized.
This brilliant and influential work has been widely recognized for many years as a classic of contemporary social and political thought, of interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.