This paper explores historicity and normativity of J. Habermas’s conception of the public sphere.... more This paper explores historicity and normativity of J. Habermas’s conception of the public sphere. Historicity refers to empirical circumstances in which the public sphere came into being; normativity makes it an organizational and regulative principle of modern political order. In Habermas’s theory historicity intertwines with normativity, and in this combination are to be found references to both: (1) empirical facts and (2) emancipative aspirations and moral obligations. Due to its function to mobilize the strivings of ordinary people who seek to escape the colonizing effects authoritarian powers (absolutist state and the world of systems) produce, the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) is regarded as a synonym for morally justified claims. Its historicity is related to the semi-institutional structures of an early European bourgeoisie; its normativity is rooted in universal morality: individual freedoms (Menschenrechte) and popular sovereignty (Volkssouveränität). Since both disposit...
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica, 2019
The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of th... more The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of the public sphere remains untouched at its core, despite having undergone some corrective alterations since the time of its first unveiling in the 1960s. This normative core is derived from two individual claims, historically articulated in the eighteenth-century’s “golden age” of reason and liberty as both sacred and self-evident: (1) the individual right to an unrestrained disposal of one’s private property; and (2) the individual right to formulate one’s opinion in the course of public debate. Habermas perceives the public sphere anchored to these two fundamental freedoms/rights as an arena of interactive opinion exchange with the capacity to solidly and reliably generate sound reason and public rationality. Despite its historical and cultural attachments to the bourgeois culture as its classical setting, Habermas’s model of the public sphere, due to its universal normativity, maintains...
Since sociology deals with the description of society as an abstract whole concept, its cultivati... more Since sociology deals with the description of society as an abstract whole concept, its cultivation is only possible if sociologists are able to follow sociological imagination - the ability of distancing itself from the actual conditions of life perceived by each person subjectively. The sociological imagination is an open-space perception and understanding of human needs, attitudes, aspirations, and preferences. Its openness involves methodical openness as well. The sociological imagination confronts the difficult task of contemporary sociology to reach what is its proper object. Under the present circumstances it is the people subjected to transformations, caused by globalization processes. One effect of these transformations is to push the public sphere socialitas into the background by international capital and state administration. Burawoy’s postulate of including a new sociological sub-discipline called organic public sociology into the established sociological division is an...
Życie publiczne to wszelkie działania zwykłych ludzi podejmowane w szczelinowym obszarze pomiędzy... more Życie publiczne to wszelkie działania zwykłych ludzi podejmowane w szczelinowym obszarze pomiędzy sferą prywatności a państwem. Choć kultywowane w antyku jako sposób osiągania wysublimowanej emancypacji, swą aktualną formę zawdzięcza nowożytnej kulturze mieszczańskiej. Ponieważ życie publiczne rozgrywa się wokół kwestii nieodzownych dla prawidłowej egzystencji zbiorowości staje się szczególnym polem odpowiedzialności. Odpowiedzialność w życiu publicznym polega na możliwie najbardziej efektywnym wykorzystaniu rezerwuaru dostępnych środków, celem korygowania społecznego świata systemów cząstkowych, zwłaszcza tych bezpośrednio poddanych społecznemu skrutynium: polityki i kultury.
This paper explores a normative layer of Habermas’s public sphere in its relation to human rights... more This paper explores a normative layer of Habermas’s public sphere in its relation to human rights. His public sphere came into being as a result of a spontaneous nonconformity manifested by the early bourgeoisie’s reaction to an absolutist regimen making inroads in the realm of basic human liberties; it managed to survive the changeable conditions of society and state thanks to its participants’ capability of cultivating collective self-determination, fed from the outset by the intellectual claims of modernity. Thereafter, the link between Habermas’s public sphere and human rights bifurcates, leading concurrently to liberal individual rights (Menschenrechte) and to the republican freedom of popular sovereignty (Volkssouveränität). Further revisions and corrections transpose that simple dualism from the clear-cut bourgeois world of universal morality into the realm of legalism and the protocols de rigueur in the world of systems. Habermas integrates individual human rights and popular sovereignty in the procedures of a democratic state, overcoming this ostensibly irreconcilable duality in his genuine claim about the co-originality of civil autonomy. This thesis institutionally unifies universal pre-constitutional morality, with legalism regulating the democratic world of legal subjects (citizens) and their constitutionally guaranteed entitlement.
This paper explores historicity and normativity of J. Habermas’s conception of the public sphere.... more This paper explores historicity and normativity of J. Habermas’s conception of the public sphere. Historicity refers to empirical circumstances in which the public sphere came into being; normativity makes it an organizational and regulative principle of modern political order. In Habermas’s theory historicity intertwines with normativity, and in this combination are to be found references to both: (1) empirical facts and (2) emancipative aspirations and moral obligations. Due to its function to mobilize the strivings of ordinary people who seek to escape the colonizing effects authoritarian powers (absolutist state and the world of systems) produce, the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) is regarded as a synonym for morally justified claims. Its historicity is related to the semi-institutional structures of an early European bourgeoisie; its normativity is rooted in universal morality: individual freedoms (Menschenrechte) and popular sovereignty (Volkssouveränität). Since both disposit...
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica, 2019
The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of th... more The paper argues that the original normativity that provides the basis for Habermas’s model of the public sphere remains untouched at its core, despite having undergone some corrective alterations since the time of its first unveiling in the 1960s. This normative core is derived from two individual claims, historically articulated in the eighteenth-century’s “golden age” of reason and liberty as both sacred and self-evident: (1) the individual right to an unrestrained disposal of one’s private property; and (2) the individual right to formulate one’s opinion in the course of public debate. Habermas perceives the public sphere anchored to these two fundamental freedoms/rights as an arena of interactive opinion exchange with the capacity to solidly and reliably generate sound reason and public rationality. Despite its historical and cultural attachments to the bourgeois culture as its classical setting, Habermas’s model of the public sphere, due to its universal normativity, maintains...
Since sociology deals with the description of society as an abstract whole concept, its cultivati... more Since sociology deals with the description of society as an abstract whole concept, its cultivation is only possible if sociologists are able to follow sociological imagination - the ability of distancing itself from the actual conditions of life perceived by each person subjectively. The sociological imagination is an open-space perception and understanding of human needs, attitudes, aspirations, and preferences. Its openness involves methodical openness as well. The sociological imagination confronts the difficult task of contemporary sociology to reach what is its proper object. Under the present circumstances it is the people subjected to transformations, caused by globalization processes. One effect of these transformations is to push the public sphere socialitas into the background by international capital and state administration. Burawoy’s postulate of including a new sociological sub-discipline called organic public sociology into the established sociological division is an...
Życie publiczne to wszelkie działania zwykłych ludzi podejmowane w szczelinowym obszarze pomiędzy... more Życie publiczne to wszelkie działania zwykłych ludzi podejmowane w szczelinowym obszarze pomiędzy sferą prywatności a państwem. Choć kultywowane w antyku jako sposób osiągania wysublimowanej emancypacji, swą aktualną formę zawdzięcza nowożytnej kulturze mieszczańskiej. Ponieważ życie publiczne rozgrywa się wokół kwestii nieodzownych dla prawidłowej egzystencji zbiorowości staje się szczególnym polem odpowiedzialności. Odpowiedzialność w życiu publicznym polega na możliwie najbardziej efektywnym wykorzystaniu rezerwuaru dostępnych środków, celem korygowania społecznego świata systemów cząstkowych, zwłaszcza tych bezpośrednio poddanych społecznemu skrutynium: polityki i kultury.
This paper explores a normative layer of Habermas’s public sphere in its relation to human rights... more This paper explores a normative layer of Habermas’s public sphere in its relation to human rights. His public sphere came into being as a result of a spontaneous nonconformity manifested by the early bourgeoisie’s reaction to an absolutist regimen making inroads in the realm of basic human liberties; it managed to survive the changeable conditions of society and state thanks to its participants’ capability of cultivating collective self-determination, fed from the outset by the intellectual claims of modernity. Thereafter, the link between Habermas’s public sphere and human rights bifurcates, leading concurrently to liberal individual rights (Menschenrechte) and to the republican freedom of popular sovereignty (Volkssouveränität). Further revisions and corrections transpose that simple dualism from the clear-cut bourgeois world of universal morality into the realm of legalism and the protocols de rigueur in the world of systems. Habermas integrates individual human rights and popular sovereignty in the procedures of a democratic state, overcoming this ostensibly irreconcilable duality in his genuine claim about the co-originality of civil autonomy. This thesis institutionally unifies universal pre-constitutional morality, with legalism regulating the democratic world of legal subjects (citizens) and their constitutionally guaranteed entitlement.
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