Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s theory is self-consciously aporetic; it throws a little light on a situation from which there is no way out. Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, by contrast, holds up the ideal of free rational discussion between equals as one that, though presently unfulfilled, is nonetheless worthy of pursuit.

For Adorno, though, Mündigkeit is linked to emancipation in an entirely negative way: emancipation in the current situation can only mean resistance to the established order, the capacity to say ‘no’, to refuse to adjust or adapt to current social reality. Habermas, by contrast, wants to identify the social and institutional conditions that foster

Mündigkeit

The practical aim of Adorno’s critical theory is to equip individuals with the capacities that would enable them to resist integration into the fateful homogenizing institutions of capitalist society.

critical theory had to say something about what kinds of institutions are needed to protect individuals against the attractions of political extremism, on the one hand, and the depredations of a burgeoning capitalist economy, on the other.

he takes a much keener interest in the concrete institutional structure of democratic society than either Horkheimer or Adorno.

Habermas’s work always differed from that of his Frankfurt School mentors in that his deep concern for individual freedom was always wedded to an interest in the fate of democratic institutions and in the prospects for the renewal of democratic politics.

Given the right political and social conditions, the ever-widening gap between the idea of the public sphere and social and political reality might be closed again.

The public sphere which in fact declined and fragmented should have deepened, broadened, and continued to exert a critical and legitimating function on the political and economic systems, pushing them into arenas of democratic control.