These new forums were democratic because they didn’t care who said what–they only cared about the arguments being made. Cafes and journals provided spaces where people could discuss things outside the control of government officials like kings or queens. Because it was associated with middle-class trade rather than working-class labor or noble-class aristocracy, Habermas calls this “bourgeois” societyĪs Habermas explains in Chapters 2 and 3, the bourgeois public sphere emerged to facilitate private citizens’ discussions of their affairs. As people began trading with each other directly instead of through the king’s economy, there emerged a public sphere where news could be shared freely between citizens without going through government channels first. This was due to mercantile capitalism and economies based on trade. However, over the course of the Renaissance and beyond, kings lost their monopoly over public life. There was no such thing as a public sphere separate from state authority. In the introduction, Habermas tells us that in medieval times, most Western societies were controlled by kings. His theory and history examines how we should define our role as citizens, what part media plays in democracy, and how it can help us understand our current problems. He traces the evolution of public sphere from its roots in Renaissance Italy to today’s society.
Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher who developed the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
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