The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
by Habermas
2.4 The Basic Blueprint
Definition: "The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public."
The Emergence
The bourgeois public sphere emerged as a sphere of people coming together to engage with public authorities or themselves about public governing issues.
Use reason as the medium of political confrontation
It broke away from the tradition of princes & lords/landowners struggling for power because now, in a commercial economy, privatization is apolitical.
It tries to use rational-critical public debate to replace the principle of domination.
The standards of "reason" and the forms of "law" were guided by private experience in the conjugal family's intimate domain with an imaged audience lens.
Those private conjugal family domain experiences were the first set of public spheres in the sense that people talked about them collectively before they started talking about political content. Those apolitical conversations about private experiences eventually become relevant for psychology.
Early on, the public sphere in the world of letters was not completely void of monarch influence. It was a graduate shift to eventually dominated by the bourgeois.
2.5 Institutions of the Public Sphere
Coffee Houses (1680s - 1730s)
Both coffee houses and later salons were centers of criticism, from literary first to political.
Coffee houses are more from the literature side. But the nobility joining still possessd land and money.
Thus, critical debate ignited by literature and art soon extended to include economic and political disputes.
The discussion in a coffee house can have direct consequences for politics (unlike salons) since salons were larged shaped by women at the time.
Coffee houses made access to relevant circles less formal and easier and embraced the wider strata of the middle class.
Salon (France Regency period to Evolution)
More "intellectuals" met with the aristocracy in equal footing.
The early form of salon existed in the 17th century but with a mix of noble and bourgeois.
Only with the reign of Philip of Orleans, who moved the royal residence from Versailles to Paris, did the court lose its central position in the public sphere.
In Great Britain, the Court had less control over the town, but still a lot. Up to Charles II, literature and art served as the representation of the King.
Tischgesellschaften (table societies) - Germany, 17-18th century
More removed from practical politics than the salons. People were recruited from private people engaged in productive work (similar to coffee houses)
It's kind of like a secret society where people of different classes all join and are considered equal once joined.
Three characteristics shared by all three
Preserved a kind of social intercourse that disregarded status altogether
Discussion within such a public presupposed the problematization of areas that until then had not been questioned. In other words, it created a new set of "common concerns" that are not driven by church and state.
The same process that converted culture into a commodity established the public as, in principle, inclusive. The issues being discussed also are general.
But do note that in relation to the mass rural population and the common people, the bourgeois pubic still only involved a very small group of people. Music, art, and literature all had their own slightly different trajectory.
Tischgesellschaften (table society)
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