Lecture 2 - Habermas

Question 1

Why is there no public sphere in feudalism?:

Answer 1

• Not a lot of interaction between estate, estate determined what life would look like
• Public sphere has social/political function, but in feudalistic system there was no use for this because common people had no political power (no point in debating).
• In 18th century there is a group of people who do this either way  bourgeoisie.

Question 2

Relation public sphere and social media

Answer 2

Public sphere expands to social media, which is owned by companies. They govern them without paying attention to political legitimacy.

Question 3

Habermas as a critical theorist

Answer 3

• Moving beyond negativism of first generation
• Enlightenment as an ‘unfinished project’
• Rationality (/rational universal) becomes communicative: inherent to communication, is found in means we use to communicate
• Immensely influential thinker: work connected to building up democratic institutions

Question 4

Features of the bourgeois public spheres

Answer 4

• Status differences are bracketed
• Discussions through communicative rationality, oriented at understanding each other, that is the goal
• Inclusive (or so they claim)

Question 5

Fraser’s feminist critique on bourgeois public sphere:

Answer 5

• Impossible to bracket power differences: they are reproduced in norms and practices (power difference is also brought into reading room by means of norms and values associated with this power)
• Not one public sphere, but plurality of competing publics
• Private issues should also be thematized (not clear what is the ‘common good’, determination of public/private is part of politics/democratics)
• Weak vs strong publics, instead of public opinion vs the state

Question 6

If it wasn’t as inclusive, what can we take away from this idealized public sphere?:

Answer 6

• Precisely because of this idealization it is presupposition for mass democracy, has to be grounded in the public at large
• Point of democracy: Authors of the law are also its addressees (= radical proceduralisation, legitimacy derived from procedure of democratic will-formation), its about self-legislation
• Development of bourgeois private sphere is represented in democracy

Question 7

Public vs private reason according to Kant and Habermas

Answer 7

Public: Cut free from feudal relationships, individuals engaged each other through public use of reason: without guiding of another, open form of communication in which anyone could participate (argue!)
Private: bounded by specific function, occupation, membership (obey!)

Question 8

Habermas – reason and public sphere:

Answer 8

• Emergence of critical debating public in 18/19th century
• Intertwined with the development of industrial capitalism (more time for it)
• Bourgeois public sphere: disregards status, engages in rational argumentation, is open
• Structural transformation of public sphere: refeudalization

Question 9

Linguistic turn (intersection focus on language + development public sphere  Habermas):

Answer 9

• Early enlightenment:
  o cogito ergo sum, thinking is separate from world ‘out there’,
  o this philosophy of consciousness led to narrow/instrumental view of rationality
  o it individualizes / makes politics individual affairs,
  o it overlooks structure or medium: communication [Lacan: unconsciousness is structure, language is intertwined in consciousness]
• Linguistic turn (20th century):
  o Away from consciousness-oriented approach
  o Approach of daily or common language (mediation)
  o Critical theory takes notice of it through Habermas (quite late)

Question 10

Habermas and linguistic turn:

Answer 10

• Language becomes basis of cooperative self-actualization between humans
• Contained in daily practices of language and communication, participants in same language structure, desire to be understood
• Achieving consensus in which actors freely agree that there goal(s) are reasonable
• Theory of communicative action
  o Micro-theory: rationality based on communicative coordination
  o Macro-theory: systemic integration of modern societies [?] through such mechanism as market

Question 11

Communicative action theory:

Answer 11

• Aimed at mutual understanding
• Formal pragmatics (language in formal sense) of validity in speaking
  o What you say is true (objective)
  o Accurate judgement (social)
  o That you meant what you said (subjective)

Question 12

Strategic action

Answer 12

• Aimed at personal goals of one participant
• Instrumental use of language is parasitical to spontaneous use of language
• In communicative action, the validity aims are assumed, in strategic action, the validity claims are broken
• Strategic action can only work because you don’t assume the other to be instrumental

Question 13

Contesting claims: discourse:

Answer 13

• Speech acts inherently involve contestable claims: they invoke criticism and justification
• Normally, speakers implicitly commit to explaining and justifying themselves
• When contested: speaker and hearer shift to reflexive levels, ordinary speech  discourse

Question 14

Communicative/strategic distinction in real life

Answer 14

The distinction communicative/strategic is analytical, in reality not able to separate these two.

Question 15

Social and system integration:

Answer 15

• Lifeworld vs systemworld
• Lifeworld is linguistic, communicative action
• Systemworld is strategic, nonlinguistic
• Pathological modernization: colonizing the lifeworld