Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

makes the object of criticism – here the illusion-forming social structure – more fluid and susceptible to change.

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

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

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.

They were fora in which people voluntarily came together and participated as equals in public debates. These arenas were autonomous in two senses: participation in them was voluntary, and they were relatively independent of the economic and political systems.

False reconciliation was brought about by the belief that the social world was rational, conducive to human freedom and happiness, and unalterable, when in fact it was deeply irrational, an obstacle to human freedom and happiness and alterable.

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.

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.

A vicious spiral ensues in which instrumental rationality becomes exclusive and total.