The Normative Core of the Public Sphere

• Published in: Political theory Vol. 40; no. 6; pp. 767 - 778
• Main Author: Bernstein, Richard J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA Sage Publications 01.12.2012; SAGE Publications
• Subjects: Bourgeois; Contemporary political ideas; Democracy; Normativity; Political debate; Political Ideologies; Political life; Political philosophy; Political revolutions; Political theory; Public life; Public opinion; Public Sphere; Reason; Special Feature: 50th Anniversary Symposium on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Jürgen Habermas; Structural change
• ISSN: 0090-5917; 1552-7476
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591712457666

Three of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century, Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and John Dewey, were deeply concerned about the character and fate of political public life in the contemporary world. The publicespecially the political significance of the public sphere or public spacestands at the very center of their thinking. Each feared the real possibility of what Dewey called the eclipse of the public. Despite their striking differences, each captures features of public life thatwhen we weave their insights togetherresults in a more textured understanding of both the real possibilities of, and threats to, political public life.Before turning to how Arendt and Dewey complement Habermas, I want to focus on a creative tension that is at the heart of Habermass narrative in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.