Structural change of the public

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Structural Change of the Public is the title of the political science habilitation thesis by Jürgen Habermas , which was published in 1962 and bears the subtitle Investigations into a category of civil society . With the title Structural Change of the Public , Habermas describes a comprehensive social process in which mass media and politics as well as bureaucracy and economy were involved and which shaped the emergence of modern mass society , like the social science discussion that followed .

introduction

Habermas completed his habilitation in Marburg under Wolfgang Abendroth in 1961 , after he left the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in 1959 after conflicts with Max Horkheimer, who was originally intended to be the supervisor of the habilitation .

Horkheimer had described Habermas as a Marxist who "aided the business of the gentlemen in the East" after Habermas had written a research report on Marx and Marxism in which he described the unity of critical theory and revolutionary practice as the a priori of Marxism. As director of the institute, Horkheimer then asked Adorno to dismiss his assistant Habermas.

The book, which is dedicated to Abendroth, Structural Change of the Public (in the future, if the book is meant: SdÖ ) has been reprinted many times since its first publication and translated into several languages.

Jürgen Habermas drafts a story of the rise and fall of the bourgeois public , which, despite its historical-empirical weaknesses, makes an influential contribution to various areas of critical cultural theory : Habermas intended nothing less than the understanding of the function of the public to do with contemporary society to get a grip on central categories and ultimately to democratize them in an enlightening and rational manner. In addition, as the preliminary work for his later investigations, the work reveals the basic lines in which Habermas developed what he claims to be normatively substantive, empirically appropriate and theoretically influential discourse theory since the 1970s (cf. SdÖ , § 25). In addition to the status of the SdÖ in Habermas' oeuvre, the influence of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School plays a special role, which becomes clear in SdÖ in terms of both content and language and which Habermas was able to convert productively here.

First, there is an overview of Habermas' presentation of the theoretical and empirical formation of the bourgeois public as a principle and institution in relation to the state and society. Then a look at the social basis of the bourgeois public sphere and its political impact will have to be taken, as well as the normative character of Habermas 'concept of publicity, the connection to critical theory and the connection with Habermas' complete works. Finally, the causes and forms of structural change in the public sphere must be dealt with, as well as Habermas' then and more recent approaches to solving this social development problem.

Prehistory of the bourgeois public

The central term in Habermas' public relations concept is the “bourgeois public”, which has developed from the previously dominant, monarchically ruled “representative public” since the European early modern period . Habermas uses the adjective "public" to refer to all those productions of human existence that are of general importance, that is, affect all members of a group, and are therefore subject to negotiation and regulation processes as a whole. On the other hand, there is the private sector, which is fundamentally subject to the rule of the individual and is protected from interference by the general public, be they state or social in nature. The respective relationships between state and society as well as between monarchical and democratic representation therefore complete Habermas' understanding of the relationship between public and private.

Public and private

The essential background to Habermas' theory of the public in modern times is formed by the ancient Greek city-states, in which the sector of the house ( oikos ) was strictly separated from that of the collective negotiation of public interests ( polis ). After the European Middle Ages, in Habermas' point of view, had not carried out such a separation of the public and the private, this dichotomous concept was rediscovered in the Renaissance and has been the dominant model of interpretation of social constitution up to the present day. Despite these parallels between ancient and modern public understanding, there are also significant differences: the Greek city-states had developed their dichotomy of the private and public sectors on the basis of ancient-democratic social structures, while the predominant form of society in pre-modern Europe was precisely the monarchy. Up until the European Enlightenment, the state-ruling sphere of the monarch was opposed to the free-private sphere, in which the private autonomy of the ruled should be preserved ( SdÖ , § 1). So if the ancient state and society (full citizens) basically coincided in the Greek city-state, they existed in a fundamentally opposed relationship in modern European times ( SdÖ , § 3).

State and society

For Habermas, the history of the development of the European public idea is primarily linked to the social rise of the bourgeoisie, a group that had significant economic influence but hardly any social shaping power. With increasing factual social importance, the bourgeoisie developed the idea of ​​a private space of freedom protected from encroachments and encroachments by the absolutist state , in which the increasing degree of positive bourgeois self- image was expressed. The first culmination point in this process was the Declaration of Human Rights of the French National Assembly , which codified the right of the individual to protection from imperial coercion. Habermas started the process of “bourgeoisisation” of European societies since the 16th century, as the idea of ​​the bourgeois public emerged parallel to the economic rise of the bourgeoisie . This audience experienced stately regulations primarily in the form of “public authority” and therefore increasingly saw themselves as an alternative to the monarchically organized state, whose stately actions they contrasted with their own, so-called “ public opinion ”, which only serve to legitimize authoritarian decisions in the interests of the common good should ( SdÖ , § 3). The ultimate basic condition for this fundamental change in the concept of "public" was the simultaneous change in the concept of "representation".

Monarchical and democratic representation

The reading room of Johann Peter Hasenclever , 1843

The change in the concept of representation can still be illustrated today by the different meanings of “representative” in the expressions “ representative court ” and “ representative democracy ”. The dominant concept of rulers in medieval and early modern monarchies was based on the idea of ​​a divine legitimation qua office that was actually manifested in the ruler's body ( divine right ). The respective ruler thus represented the divine world order through his rule. In the course of the progressive diversification of state tasks (administration, standing army), which emerged parallel to the economic changes brought about by mercantilism , the understanding of stately representation changed fundamentally: Instead of the representation of divine omnipotence by the ruler, the respective ruled people appeared, that was to be represented by the ruler. The economic success of a society, which ultimately formed the basis of all sovereign action ( SdÖ , § 2) , became the yardstick for a successful form of this newly understood stately representation .

From Habermas' point of view, this change in the concept of representation also caused the change from the “representative public” of the monarchical court to the “bourgeois public”. The central means of mass dissemination of this new concept of publicity was expressed in the development of new forms of bourgeois publicity ; The increasing improvement in printing technology led to the emergence of periodical press organs across Europe . Firstly, these newspapers and magazines delivered political and economic news to their bourgeois audience , which reported, sometimes up to date, on publicly relevant events and regulations in the respective nation state (e.g. orders and ordinances). Second, they also provided entertaining, escapist news with topics such as “miraculous cures and cloudbursts”. Thirdly, and this is the essential characteristic of bourgeois newspapers for Habermas, they made it possible for the bourgeois reading public to criticize monarchical and lordly behavior ( SdÖ , § 3). The bourgeois public, represented by the public opinion of the newspaper audience, thus gradually became a touchstone of the successes and failures of the lordly representation of the people by the ruler ( SdÖ , § 4). Ultimately, this led to the paradoxical situation that the question of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of monarchical-ruling action was linked to the approval or rejection of public opinion, and thus authoritarian-state power in an institution, the bourgeois press, could become the subject of discussion, which could only be subjected to the ruler's regulatory access by means of restricting the civil sphere of freedom (press censorship).

Social basis of the bourgeois public

Habermas describes the social strata from which the public gathered for a critical public arose as shaped by the factors of private property ( SdÖ , § 4), the bourgeois- patriarchal nuclear family ( SdÖ , § 6) and modern literary culture ( SdÖ , § 7).

Private property

The economic role of the bourgeoisie in the beginnings of the capitalist mode of production also determined the public that it constituted. Commercial and financial capital as well as manufacturing and incipient industrial capital shaped the emerging bourgeois public, together with the educated bourgeois classes of civil servants , academics and officers . It was this “ bourgeoisie ” who on the one hand wanted to enforce an area of ​​the free movement of goods that was not impaired by the state through public criticism, and on the other hand wanted to demand state guarantees for large economic companies, for example. The conflicts between the bourgeois groups that went hand in hand with industrialization were also carried out in public in order to bring them to a state-supported solution.

The decisive factor for the formation of the bourgeois public was that private individuals could only be part of the public if they were also financially independent as private owners and had received the appropriate education .

Bourgeois family

As such a private person and private owner, only the family father ( pater familias ) came into question within the framework of the bourgeois family structure . The importance of the other family members was based on their importance to the patriarch, or on their prospect of moving up to this position in the future (by passing on the family fortune). A distinction must be made here between the English coffee houses (→ Café # Geschichte ), which were socially somewhat broader, but purely male-dominated, and the French salons (→ Literary Salon ), in which the ladies of the upper classes ( nobility , upper class , intelligentsia ) played an important role. The conditions for access to these places of bourgeois discussion ( SdÖ , § 5), which are classic in addition to the German table society , were established in the privacy of the bourgeois family: The discovery of subjectivity and individual autonomy as well as the development of a cultural literacy took place in the small family's private sphere , which was brought about by the Expansion of the private to the exchange of goods was compressed into an intimate sphere .

Literary public

Against Habermas' theory that a literary public precedes the political public, it is objected (e.g. Böning 2008) that newspapers provided political coverage from the start. Like many other empirical-historical criticisms of SdÖ, the criticism is in principle justified, especially since Habermas treats the literary public in detail, but somewhat indistinctly: He reports on reading psychological novels (as a prime example Pamela by Samuel Richardson ) and the discussion about the soon expanded from the salon to the press, as it had become too narrow, and from the cultural criticism that grew out of it as the first existing infrastructure that could be used for political criticism.

The objections to Habermas' theory of the literary public as the basis of the political public can be answered with the two references that (1.) the earliest political press (especially under the conditions of censorship ) could provide coverage, but not an undisturbed political one Criticism. Nevertheless, this political information is to be regarded as a prerequisite for later political criticism. In the cultural field, however, such criticism was possible earlier (especially under the conditions of the change from culture to the form of goods ) and in this way served to practice the “critical business” that could subsequently be transferred to politics. It should also be pointed out that (2.) Habermas' concept of a literary public does not just mean a public that deals with (beautiful) literature, but rather a public that (a) has been trained individually and collectively on the basis of fiction and has practiced judgment , and which (b) is literary in contrast to subliterary and postliterary publics ( SdÖ § 25), in which Habermas' requirements for a rationality-functional public discourse cannot be met.

Normative concept of the public

This also shows the normative character of Habermas 'concept of the public sphere, which already indicates what Habermas was to develop as a discourse theory in the following decades: The explication of the conditions for the possibility of a rational social organization is the common thread that runs through Habermas' oeuvre . In doing so, he refers to reason that has become reflexive , the main demand of the dialectic of Enlightenment (which Habermas turned positively) , but which loses its traditional centering in the subject and is shifted to the intersubjective area of ​​human communication :

In his main work, Theory of Communicative Action , Habermas drafts a discourse theory which, with reference to Kant , encompasses the three forms of reason of theoretical, practical and aesthetic reason and aims for their realization (separately and as a unit) in the form of discourses. The discourse theory, according to which an assertion refers to the fact that (under the conditions of an ideal communication community) the validity claim of the statement could be converted into a consensus at any time and anywhere , can only be substituted by a well-founded consensus under real conditions, according to Habermas (→ consensus theory of truth ) .

The bourgeois public, whose " idea and ideology " Habermas analyzes with reference to Kant ( SdÖ , § 13), Hegel and Marx ( SdÖ , § 14), JS Mill and Tocqueville ( SdÖ , § 15), claims truth (theoretical reason ), Correctness (practical reason) and truthfulness (aesthetic reason) (→ consensus theory of truth (Habermas) ). In principle, it could also redeem this claim, since it was thought to be non-dominant, equal and general, only used the informal compulsion of the better argument and did not exclude any areas as unquestionable. But - and here lies both the chance of the bourgeois public and the germ of its disintegration: As far as everyone is concerned, everyone must be able to advise. General access to the bourgeois public is its necessary postulate - and yet its purely ideological component: by the access criteria of private property and education, the vast majority of people were excluded from public reasoning (the reasonable discussion in coffee houses, salons, newspapers and magazines). The bourgeois public was not only incomplete, but "rather no public at all." ( SdÖ , § 11)

Habermas' image of the early bourgeois public in the 17th and 18th centuries has been viewed in historical studies since the 1980s as an idealization not covered by the sources.

Dialectic of the public

The development of bourgeois democracy and the capitalist economy could succeed with the help of the bourgeois public, but of course not overcoming the “class character” of their form of rule and economy. The constitutional codifications protected the conditions of the bourgeois public (e.g. freedom of the press ), but also the conditions of their demarcation from the “fourth estate” (the proletariat for the protection of private property).

But through the rational-normative content of the general public as a necessary condition of the public in general, the bourgeois public strived beyond itself. The broadening of their social basis through the labor movement , generalization of the right to vote and the first approaches to the welfare state led to a weakening of the critical power and ultimately to the irreversible dissolution of the bourgeois public.

Structural Change in Public: Neo-Feudalism

The above-mentioned separation of state and society, public and private, was the basis of the bourgeois public. After this had experienced its highest level of development for perhaps a hundred years until the late 19th century ( SdÖ , § 16), its dissolution began with the blurring of the aforementioned separations. The never quite achieved exchange of equivalents according to the liberal model became increasingly implausible the more the concentration of capital and social power in individual hands reduced the idea of ​​the economic equality of small property owners to absurdity. The necessary development towards an “ industrial society based on the welfare state ” ( SdÖ , § 16) mixed state and society, public and private, and led to the emergence of an “intermediate sphere”: While the family leisure area became more and more private, the world of work moved into an intermediate position private and public areas, which went hand in hand with a loss of function of the bourgeois family ( SdÖ , § 17).

This was followed by the disintegration of the “literary public” based on it in the rise of the cultural industry and the decline of general reasoning about cultural issues. The mass media could only create a pseudo-public, since their communication is almost exclusively in one direction, the public tends to fall silent ( SdÖ , § 18). The dissolution of critical publicity into manipulative advertising stunted even formally democratized politics. It led to the mere staging of the public and to its refeudalization : monarchical representation returned, this time in the form of public relations of more or less private persons and associations who want to present their private interests as general ( SdÖ , § 20f.).

solutions

Habermas' original impulse was the democratization and reshaping of the large social organizations that had become semi-public, which were supposed to create (1.) functioning internal publics and (2.) each other a functioning general public. The latter conception has been discarded, but the democratization of the other social subsystems besides politics is not (Brunkhorst 2006). It is important - and to be observed again and again with him later - that Habermas did not fall into the short circuit of declaring the welfare state development, which accompanied the collapse of the "ideal" public, responsible for it and demanding its withdrawal. Rather, in SdÖ, as in his discourse theory of the law facticity and validity 1992 , he aims to consistently implement the requirements of the welfare state as a "fact of [social] evolution" (Brunkhorst 2004): In addition to human and civil rights, the rights of social participation and political participation to complete the “system of rights” ( factuality and validity ) ( SdÖ , § 23).

Habermas implicitly turned against the depoliticized public of the paternalistic Adenauer era (Brunkhorst 2006) in SdÖ . The 68 movement also called, following Habermas, a re-politicization of the public and a public debate on all public (ie political) affairs. In addition, Habermas' theory continues to present itself to the public as a normative approach that again understands the possibility of social improvement , which the older generation of the Frankfurt School has relocated to an indefinite beyond , as a real opportunity and the negation of domination and violence as the result of a rational social organization within the framework of the democratic constitutional state ( factuality and validity ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE PUBLIC by Jürgen Habermas. Accessed December 30, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Jörg Später: The great struggles of theory . In: The daily newspaper: taz . June 15, 2019, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 12 ( taz.de [accessed December 30, 2019]).
  3. ^ Philosopher, citizen, European, Jürgen Habermas on his 90th birthday. Accessed December 30, 2019 .
  4. ^ Andreas Gestrich , Absolutism and the public. Political communication at the beginning of the 18th century , Göttingen 1994, pp. 28–33.

Web sources

literature

  • Jürgen Habermas: Structural Change in the Public. Investigations into a category of civil society . 5th edition, Neuwied / Berlin 1971 [1962].
  • Jürgen Habermas: Foreword to the new edition 1990 . In: Ders .: Structural change of the public. Investigations into a category of civil society . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 11-50.
  • Jürgen Habermas: factuality and validity. Contributions to the discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state . Frankfurt am Main 1998 [1992].
  • Lutz Wingert / Klaus Günther (Ed.): The public of reason and the reason of the public. Festschrift for Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt am Main 2001.
  • Hauke ​​Brunkhorst : Jürgen Habermas . In: Franco Volpi (Hrsg.): Großes Werklexikon der Philosophie . Vol. 1: A-K, Stuttgart 2004 [1999], pp. 603-610.
  • Jürgen Schiewe: Public. Origin and change in Germany. Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2004.
  • Hauke ​​Brunkhorst: Habermas . Leipzig 2006.
  • Holger Böning : Newspaper and Enlightenment . In: Martin Welke / Jürgen Wilke (eds.): 400 years of the newspaper. The development of the daily press in an international context. Bremen 2008, pp. 287-310.

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