Toward a Post-Critical Public Sphere in Germany and the United States

Abstract

The modern understanding of the public sphere is inseparable from criticism: the public is the space in which criticism can be articulated most effectively. The critical public emerged historically as a platform for individuals to call into question the decisions of state authority, especially when those decisions were taken outside the public view, as was typical for the premodern state—although the penchant for secrecy in government certainly lives on today. The public sphere stretches across multiple fields: individual discussion, journalistic reportage and evaluation, and deliberative parliamentary institutions, no matter how much current legislatures fail on that score. In a broad…