Habermas’ definition in ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’ A844 Ex. 1.3.2
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Habermas’ definition in ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’ A844 Ex. 1.3.2
Read Jürgen Habermas et al.,'The public sphere: an
encyclopedia article (1964)(Habermas, et al., 1974) and consider how
Habermas is defining the term ‘public’ and the public sphere. Also try to
articulate what he sees as the differences between the medieval public and the
bourgeois public sphere.
___________
The definition is insistently historical but not very
precisely historical. For instance, whilst the ‘public sphere’ appears fully
established in the 18th century, we examine only the ‘high middle
ages’ to find an instance of where no such ‘public sphere’ could have been said
to be formed. This leaves the vast duration of the Renaissance and seventeenth
century as, should we say, transitory. Yet the notion that links monarchs to
representation of higher power was more fully developed in the 16th/17th
centuries and often read in retrospect into the supposed meaning of the middle
ages – notably in Shakespeare in Britain. Habermas’ take on history is rather
loose in one sense and over-simplified in its terms in another. The idea of the
public sphere as a collection of private individuals, set up in potential
conflict with the state through the former’s development of organs of articulation
is surely simple in that sense. It certainly pays no attention to the history
of communalism or its roots in history. As a result, it has no way of reading
peasant insurrections that takes these as serious political articulations
(whether rightly or wrongly).
Moreover, using the word throughout history as an index of
change, makes some of the shifts in meaning hard to grasp especially in the
complex world of postliberal advanced capitalism where covert control of the
public and public opinion is the prize sought by private interests, such as
organised and global capital.
The contrast of the bourgeois and medieval ‘public sphere’
hangs on a play of words focused on the ‘idea of representation’. In the Middle
Ages the feudal monarch represented higher power and the inherited common land by
virtue of this very aspect and part of the nation and thus made present again
and again the sources of power to the eyes and imagination of everyone. This
second sense of re-presentation is missing in the eighteenth century since
political representation fragments with commonality and the state being forced
to give attention to the self-representations of public opinion in the public
sphere (pp. 50-51). This again is all very simplistic. Even in Byzantium kings
could not guarantee that they were the true representatives of God, since they
had through conflict to nullify the aspirations of the church at some points of
history and this was even more the case in Western Europe (gulphs and Ghibelline
conflict being the best representation of that).
DISCUSSION FROM COURSE:
Habermas begins his famous book by offering some initial thoughts about the
public, many of which are also expressed in the first two pages of his article:
We call events and occasions ‘public’
when they are open to all, in contrast to closed or exclusive affairs – as when
we speak of public places or public houses. But as in the expression ‘public
building,’ the term need not refer to general accessibility; the building does
not even have to be open to public traffic. ‘Public buildings’ simply house
state institutions and as such are ‘public.’ The state is the ‘public
authority.’
(Habermas, 1989, pp. 1–2)
As he argues in the article, there is a
significant difference between the public sphere and state authority: ‘Citizens
behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion – that is,
with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to
express and publish their opinions – about matters of general interest’
(Habermas et al., 1974, p. 49).
What had changed for Habermas was the
relationship between the private, the public, and who had rights to be a public
person. If in the feudal system the public sphere was one in which the lord was
represented before the people, the new bourgeois public sphere
allowed for state authority to be ‘publicly monitored through informed and
critical discourse by the people’ (McCarthy in Habermas, 1989,
p. xi). As Habermas articulates, the medieval representative public sphere was
a ‘public sphere directly linked to the concrete existence of a ruler’
(Habermas et al., 1974, p. 51). By contrast, the bourgeois public sphere of the
eighteenth century was made up of private people coming together to form a
public body, who through things like newspapers could critique public authority
itself (Habermas et al., 1974, p. 52).
The concept of the public sphere is
largely connected to issues of representation, as it is broadly defined
(political representation certainly, but also the material and textual forms of
representation).
Habermas’ definition in ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’ A844 Ex. 1.3.2
Habermas’ definition in ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’ A844 Ex. 1.3.2
Read Jürgen Habermas et al.,'The public sphere: an encyclopedia article (1964)(Habermas, et al., 1974) and consider how Habermas is defining the term ‘public’ and the public sphere. Also try to articulate what he sees as the differences between the medieval public and the bourgeois public sphere.
___________
The definition is insistently historical but not very precisely historical. For instance, whilst the ‘public sphere’ appears fully established in the 18th century, we examine only the ‘high middle ages’ to find an instance of where no such ‘public sphere’ could have been said to be formed. This leaves the vast duration of the Renaissance and seventeenth century as, should we say, transitory. Yet the notion that links monarchs to representation of higher power was more fully developed in the 16th/17th centuries and often read in retrospect into the supposed meaning of the middle ages – notably in Shakespeare in Britain. Habermas’ take on history is rather loose in one sense and over-simplified in its terms in another. The idea of the public sphere as a collection of private individuals, set up in potential conflict with the state through the former’s development of organs of articulation is surely simple in that sense. It certainly pays no attention to the history of communalism or its roots in history. As a result, it has no way of reading peasant insurrections that takes these as serious political articulations (whether rightly or wrongly).
Moreover, using the word throughout history as an index of change, makes some of the shifts in meaning hard to grasp especially in the complex world of postliberal advanced capitalism where covert control of the public and public opinion is the prize sought by private interests, such as organised and global capital.
The contrast of the bourgeois and medieval ‘public sphere’ hangs on a play of words focused on the ‘idea of representation’. In the Middle Ages the feudal monarch represented higher power and the inherited common land by virtue of this very aspect and part of the nation and thus made present again and again the sources of power to the eyes and imagination of everyone. This second sense of re-presentation is missing in the eighteenth century since political representation fragments with commonality and the state being forced to give attention to the self-representations of public opinion in the public sphere (pp. 50-51). This again is all very simplistic. Even in Byzantium kings could not guarantee that they were the true representatives of God, since they had through conflict to nullify the aspirations of the church at some points of history and this was even more the case in Western Europe (gulphs and Ghibelline conflict being the best representation of that).
DISCUSSION FROM COURSE:
Habermas begins his famous book by offering some initial thoughts about the public, many of which are also expressed in the first two pages of his article:
We call events and occasions ‘public’ when they are open to all, in contrast to closed or exclusive affairs – as when we speak of public places or public houses. But as in the expression ‘public building,’ the term need not refer to general accessibility; the building does not even have to be open to public traffic. ‘Public buildings’ simply house state institutions and as such are ‘public.’ The state is the ‘public authority.’
(Habermas, 1989, pp. 1–2)
As he argues in the article, there is a significant difference between the public sphere and state authority: ‘Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion – that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions – about matters of general interest’ (Habermas et al., 1974, p. 49).
What had changed for Habermas was the relationship between the private, the public, and who had rights to be a public person. If in the feudal system the public sphere was one in which the lord was represented before the people, the new bourgeois public sphere allowed for state authority to be ‘publicly monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people’ (McCarthy in Habermas, 1989, p. xi). As Habermas articulates, the medieval representative public sphere was a ‘public sphere directly linked to the concrete existence of a ruler’ (Habermas et al., 1974, p. 51). By contrast, the bourgeois public sphere of the eighteenth century was made up of private people coming together to form a public body, who through things like newspapers could critique public authority itself (Habermas et al., 1974, p. 52).
The concept of the public sphere is largely connected to issues of representation, as it is broadly defined (political representation certainly, but also the material and textual forms of representation).