Habermas
Subtitle: rescuing the public sphere
By: Pauline Johnson.
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006
Place of publication: London, United Kingdom; New York, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 211
Subjects: Habermas, Jürgen; Community life; Social participation; Social action; Citizens' associations; Collective behavior
Description: "This study explores the major episodes in Habermas' thinking about the public sphere. From the outset, he has maintained that the complex ambiguity of the Enlightenment, its cultural achievements and potentials have been poorly understood. Whereas his first major work tried to retrieve this ambiguity by excavating the neglected public-democratic core of Enlightenment liberalism, his later writings attempted to provide this cultural potential with a more secure anthropological basis in the pragmatics of communication."

"Habermas' project of re-animating the significance of the public sphere and 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 charge, Pauline Johnson defends Habermas' utopian credentials while simultaneously arguing that his own construction of contemporary emancipatory hopes is too narrow and one-sided."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: The plight of the public sphere; title: The structural transformation of the public sphere; title: The theory of communicative action; title: Discourse ethics and the normative justification of tolerance; title: A discourse theory of law and democracy; title: Globalizing the public sphere; title: The utopian energies of a radical reformist; title: Romantic and enlightenment legacies : the post-modern critics; title: Distorted communications : Habermas and feminism; title: Conclusion.