Abstract

Today, there is an ambiguity over the concept of public sphere and this ambiguity leads to confusion in both the political arena and in the field of social sciences. This study aims to clarify the concept of public sphere in the light of the history of philosophy. It examines the ways this concept has been discussed since Plato; and then, the narrow and wide usages of the concept are distinguished. In the conclusion part, public sphere is determined in terms of “general will”, based especially on the thoughts of Aristotle and Rousseau