The Importance of Habermas in Making Sense of the World
Jurgen Habermas has contributed at least three ideas:
The public sphere
Distinct from home life,
distinct from the church, and distinct from government there
arose a place for people to gather and talk about life. Habermas calls
this the public sphere, where ideas are examined, talked about, reasoned over
The realm of this public sphere
has been steadily decreasing under the encroachment
of large corporations and vacuous media.
An obvious implication is that this is a divide and conquer strategy.
An interesting recent event is the rise of
the internet as a new public sphere.
(see below).
The Reconcilliation of Hermeneutics and Positivism
Roughly: it is clear that there is an objective reality, and that
the tools of the natural sciences are well matched to exploring it.
It is also clear (to Habermas) that the logic of the natural sciences
is not the same logic that applies to the human sciences. Why? Because
society and culture are domains structured around symbols; symbols
require interpretation. Any methodology that systematically neglects
the interpretive schema through which social action occurs is doomed
to failure. He goes on to postulate a third realm of distinct logic:
that of power and domination, which is to be understood using the
logic of critical theory. (Well, perhaps. But this whole theme
is devestating for deconstructionisitic critics of science, which is
seen to be an application of literay theory outside its realm of competence.)
The Theory of Communicative Action
Habermas argues that anyone that uses language presumes that they can
justify four caims to validity: what is said can be shown to be meaningful,
truthful, justifed, and sincere.
That is, users of language make the following claims:
(1) What is said is intelligable; it obeys certain synatic and semantic rules
so that there is a `meaning' that can be understood by others
(2) That the propositional content of what is said is true
(3) That the speaker is is justified in saying it; certain social rights
or norms are invoked is the use of language
(4) That the speaker is sincere in what is said, not trying to deceive the
listener. This is what Habermas calls undistorted communications. When
one of the validity claims is violated, say that the speaker is lying,
then the communication is distorted. This theory of communication has
lots of implications, including a definition of truth that claims to
universiality.
In the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,
Habermas argues that England in the 1700's saw the emergence of a new
'public sphere ... which mediates between society and state,
in which the public organises itself as the bearer of public opinion'.
The greatest contribution to the development of the public sphere was
the emergence of its institutional base, the organisational structures
that allowed these 'webs of social development' to exist. It links the
growth of an urban culture (metropolitan, provincial, imperial),
as the new arena of public life (theatres, museums, opera houses,
meeting rooms, coffeehouses), to a new infrastructure for social
communication (the press, publishing ventures, circulating libraies,
improved trasnportation (canals, carriages), increasing reading public,
and centers of sociability like coffeehouses and taverns), and the new
philanthropic movement of voluntary association. As Craig Calhoun argues,
the model allows of print culture and architecture as well as organisations:
but the prime example is the coffeehouse, and stresses how
'the conversation of these little circles branched out into
affairs of state administration and politics' (p. 12).
In these circles or webs, there were several crucial features,
Habermas argues: 'a kind of social intercourse that, far from
presupposing equality of status, disregarded status altogether'
(Habermas, p. 37). There was also a general trust in
discursivity and reason. And the emerging public web was established
as inclusive by principle: anyone with access to cultural technology
like novels, journals, plays, had the potential to claim the
attention of the 'culture-debating public'. 'However exclusive the public
might be in any given instance, it could never close itself off
entirely and become consolidated as a clique; for it always
understood and found itself immersed within a more inclusive public of
private people, persons who-insofar as they were propertied and
educated-as readers, listeners, and spectators could avail
themselves via the market of the objects that were subject to discussion.'
Further reading:
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere:
An Inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (1962),
trans Thomas Burger, London: Polity, 1989.
Craig Calhoun, 'Introduction', Habermas and the Public Sphere,
ed. Craig Calhoun, Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1992.
(Thanks to Markman Ellis http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~english/MEllisHome.html for the
coffee-Habermas connection.)