Abstract

AI -BOOK REVIEW A TRANSLATION OF HABERMAS ON THE PUBLIC SPHERE The Structural Transformation of the Public tended his recent analyses of legitimation, Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of communkative norms, and argumenta­ Bourgeois Society. By Jiirgen Habermas. tion. It also invites consideration ofHaber­ Translated by Thomas Burger. Cam­ mas' abiding preoccupation with the pub­ bridge MA: MIT Press, 1 989; pp. xix + lic sphere. The book divides roughly into two parts. The first traces the arc of develop­ Students of public argument have long ment of "public opinion" (defined as been familiar with the principles of discus­ "critical-rational" discussion) in Europe and debate developed as an approach sion during the eighteenth and nineteenth to social problem solving by John Dewey. centuries; the second examines the social The pragmatic tradition holds that in­ pressures in the first half of the twentieth formed argument is a prerequisite of century that contributed to the rise of democracy and that self-government will mass-mediated communication and the flourish to the extent the public can demise of public debate. Combining the communicate its own critically tested con­ history of the press, political movements, cerns. Despite the technological augmenta­ and changes in the