“I would in fact tend to have more confidence in the outcome of a democratic decision if there was a minority that voted against it, than if it was unanimous... Social psychology has amply shown the strength of this bandwagon effect.” IfsFactsSocialDecisionPsychologyEffectsDemocraticOutcomesMinoritiesSocial PsychologyBandwagon Author:Jurgen Habermas
“The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.” StatesSeemsLanguageSocialConditionsHistoricalVariousEmploymentWelfareConfusedSpheresBetrayPhasesBourgeoisInappropriateMultiplicityUsageWelfare StateFuseCloudedSocial Welfare Author:Jurgen Habermas
“The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.” PeopleMayTogetherSocialAuthorityLaborRelationDebateSpheresRelevantCommodityGoverningBourgeois Author:Jurgen Habermas
“Although objectively greater demands are placed on this authority, it operates less as a public opinion giving a rational foundation to the exercise of political and social authority, the more it is generated for the purpose of an abstract vote that amounts to no more than an act of acclamation within a public sphere temporarily manufactured for show or manipulation.” GivingShowsPoliticalPurposeSocialOpinionGreaterAmountExerciseDemandAuthorityVoteFoundationRationalAbstractManipulationSpheresPublic Opinion Author:Jurgen Habermas
“[Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.” ActionSocialPrinciplesRelationDetermineCriticalStatementsTransformedDependenceFrozenTheoreticalSocial ScienceRegularitySocial Action Author:Jurgen Habermas
“As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.” WorldStatesOrderSocialUnderstandingEventsSpeechRelationAffairOneselfAccessMediumsReachingManifestSpeakersPrivilegedSubjectiveSocial OrderInterpersonal Author:Jurgen Habermas
