A new structural transformation of the public sphere?

Law, Deliberative Democracy and Social Learning in Jürgen Habermas’ most recent works

Abstract

Sixty years after the diagnosis of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere  (1962) and thirty years after the diagnosis of Between Facts and Norms (1992), the impacts of digitalization, driven by the World Wide Web, of neoliberal economic policy provide us with an ambiguous scenario. On the one hand, new public spheres are inaugurated at all times by civil societies through a media technology that is not limited to the territory of nation-states. On the other hand, the deregulated media and economic expansion produces pathological phenomena that threaten the democratic-deliberative model of loss of its epistemic dimension. Explaining these phenomena is what motivated Habermas in Ein Neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik (2022), a work that aroused a comprehensive appreciation worldwide, of which we highlight the intervention of William Scheuerman at the symposium organized by the journal Constellations (2023). First, the Habermasian diagnosis will be explained and confronted with the criticism directed to him by W. Scheuerman in his contribution. The arguments of W. Scheuerman demand a reconstruction of the Habermasian diagnosis under the background of the premises of the Discursive Theory of Law and Democracy (1992), demonstrating its compatibility. Third, they contrast the Habermasian proposal in 1992 with the more comprehensive criticisms of W. Scheuerman, developed in other texts. Fourthly, the conceptual constellation formed by deliberative democracy, public sphere and social learning will be reconstructed, confronting William Scheuerman’s criticism of the Discursive Theory of Law and Democracy, value of its concept of deliberative democracy.