Introduction
The stakes of the public sphere for modern societies appear already in Kant’s famous notion of the public use of reason. “That a public [Publikum] should enlighten itself […] is nearly inevitable, if only it is granted freedom,” that is, “the freedom to make a public use of one’s reason in all matters. […] The public use of reason must at all times be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men.”
Despite its central relevance for the members of modern societies for determining the course of history through reasoned debate and public choice, the study of the public sphere is not an integrated research field. Since Jürgen Habermas’ work on “The structural transformation of the public sphere” in 1962 (Habermas, 1989), there has been no major attempt for a synthesis. What such an integrative approach means is best expressed by later Habermas who recalls “that the original study emerged from the synthesis of contributions based in several disciplines, whose...
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Koller, A. (2010). Public Sphere. In: Anheier, H.K., Toepler, S. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_156
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