Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Jürgen Habermas is the author of numerous works including The New Conservatism (Polity 1990), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Polity 1991), and Postmetaphysical Thinking (Polity 1992).

• Introduction by Thomas McCarthy. Part I. Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere.Part II. Social Structures of the Public Sphere.Part III. Political Functions of the Public Sphere.Part IV. The Bourgeois Public Sphere: Idea and Ideology.Part V. The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.Part VI. The Transformation of the Public Sphere's Political Function.Notes.Index.

'Why is this such a vital study? Its significance rests in its analysis of one of the central notions on which both our political life and our political theories rest: 'public opinion'. Presidential candidates worry about it, the press talks about it, political scientists try to measure it, but Habermas is one of the few people to have actually sat down and tried to think about it, to ask what it means to have an 'opinion' that is not private, not idiosyncratic, but rather 'public'.' James Schmidt, Boston University