Two Conceptions of the Public Sphere in Jürgen Habermas' Work

Author(s)

Pedro Pacheco e Zan

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2023-12-12

Examining board members

Marcos Nobre; Jonas Marcondes Sarubi de Medeiros; Nathalie de Almeida Bressiani

• Advisor: Marcos Nobre

Abstract

This research aims at comparing two conceptions of the public sphere in Habermas’s work, presented both in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, from 1962, and in The Theory of Communicative Action, from 1981. As it will be shown, the first diagnosis from Habermas culminates at the analysis of the bourgeois public sphere’s decay in the context of the Welfare State in the 20th century, because of the influence of both state interventionism, and mass culture in the public debate. This conception is widely criticized after its publication, by questions about the applicability of the concept of public sphere in late capitalism. As this dissertation shows, in his work of 1981, Habermas elaborates a new theoretical framework, anchoring the public sphere on the daily communicative practice, and repositioning it in his conception of society in two levels: system and lifeworld, a movement that the author himself highlights in his preface to the new edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1990. The hypothesis of this research is that, beyond those new theoretical presuppositions, the public sphere is rethought by Habermas because of his diagnosis of Capitalism in which the system turns itself towards the lifeworld in a colonization movement, such that this concept reappears as the locus in which this fight occurs, presenting itself "in a siegelike manner", as expressed in the 1990’s preface, containing the colonizing imperatives, and defending the lifeworld’s autonomy (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 21/00964-6 - Two conceptions of the public sphere in Jurgen Habermas work
• Grantee: Pedro Pacheco e Zan
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master