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Beyond Habermas

Democracy, Knowledge, and the Public Sphere

David Midgley editor Christian J Emden editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:1st Nov '12

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Beyond Habermas cover

During the 1960s the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the notion of a “bourgeois public sphere” in order to describe the symbolic arena of political life and conversation that originated with the cultural institutions of the early eighteenth-century; since then the “public sphere” itself has become perhaps one of the most debated concepts at the very heart of modernity. For Habermas, the tension between the administrative power of the state, with its understanding of sovereignty, and the emerging institutions of the bourgeoisie—coffee houses, periodicals, encyclopedias, literary culture, etc.—was seen as being mediated by the public sphere, making it a symbolic site of public reasoning. This volume examines whether the “public sphere” remains a central explanatory model in the social sciences, political theory, and the humanities.

Informed, informative, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and reflecting an expansion based or inspired in part upon the earlier work of Habermas, this superb anthology of impeccable scholarship is a seminal and highly recommended body of work. Enhanced with the inclusion of an extensive bibliography, notes on the contributors, and a comprehensive index, Beyond Habermasis an essential addition to academic library philosophy collections.”  ·  The Midwest Book Review

This is an interesting collection of essays by a set of prominent and important scholars. Most of the essays respond to Habermas’ early book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. They do so, however, in a wide variety of fields… It is a huge benefit, in that the reader is not fed a diet of restricted and distorting examples, as is so often the case when political theorists debate the notion of the public space or the public voice.”  ·  Andrew Norris, University of California, Santa Barbara

ISBN: 9780857457219

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 485g

232 pages