Abstract

ExcerptJürgen Habermas's conception of the early modern public sphere derived in good part from a Kantian epistemology and the corollary Kantian theory of communication. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas made extended reference to Kant as the centerpiece of his crucial chapter “The Bourgeois Public Sphere: Idea and Ideology,” and the following quotation from Kant, selectively cited by Habermas, may be taken as the inspiration of Habermas's public sphere theory: Persuasion is a mere illusion; for the judgment's basis, which lies in the subject, is regarded as objective. Hence such a judgment also has…