New Transformations of the public Sphere: Contemporary Discussions in Germany

Mikhaylov Igor' ORCID: 0000-0001-7750-9890 PhD in Philosophy Senior Researcher, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences 109240, Russia, Moscow, Goncharnaya str., 12/1, office 414 ia.mikhaylov@gmail.com

In 2021-22, the issue of publicity once again became a topic of lively discussion in Germany. One of the reasons was given by Jurgen Habermas. The author marked the 60th anniversary of the "Structural Change of the Public Sphere" ^[10] - his first and, according to his own assessment, the most successful book – with another small book on this topic ^[2],[13]. As is most often the case with Habermas, this book is compiled from previously published texts. Apart from a brief preface, there are only three of them this time: "Reflections and hypotheses for a new structural change in political publicity"; "Deliberative democracy. (Interview) and "What is a "deliberative democracy". Objections and misinterpretations." The appearance of this book has contributed to the widespread use of the expression "publicity 2.0", a designation that in modern publications on this topic in Germany is largely due to the needs of marketing ¹. Here is the first work of the young philosopher, which opened a new perspective for subsequent research, and here is the publication of a mature, experienced master, a recognized classic of political philosophy for many decades. Six decades of the gap between these books have already created a kind of magical historical-temporal distance. The hundred pages published in 2022 seem to symbolize the summing up, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of the book published in 1962. Both publications are based on emphasizing the contrast between the past and the present, they point to new events, new phenomena in an important field for social sciences. The reader's attention is directed to the new things that Habermas noticed about publicity in 1962, as well as to the changes that occurred with it already in the first decades of the XXI century. To fully appreciate the novelty of these two books, it is necessary to understand what "publicity" was before Habermas.

1. On the history of the term and its ambiguity

1.1. Various meanings of "publicity"

In the German tradition, the word "public" (?ffentlich), from which the substantive "publicity" (?ffentlichkeit) was subsequently formed, was originally synonymous with the word "state"². The closest equivalent to German-understandable publicity in English is public sphere (similar to the "public sphere" in Russian). Despite the fact that both terms go back to the Latin publicus, in other languages there are no connotations associated with openness present in German: "?ffentlich" means, among other things: "open", "visible", "explicit" ^{[20, S. 1663]}. According to the different contexts of German usage, we can distinguish at least four types of meanings of the term publicity. The first context refers to the journalistic one – for example, in the expressions "the public (?ffentlichkeit) has the right to know ...". In this case, it implies discursive practices used by journalists and any media representatives in general. Journalists inform and report on how things are in a particular area of society. The second context is related to the legal aspects of public affairs. In this sense, we say, for example: "in the public interest (im ?ffentlichen Interesse) <there must be transparency in the actions of public authorities or large private companies>". Note that in these two cases it seems more natural to use the word "public" rather than the term "public" (as in the translation of both Habermas books). The third context refers, rather, to the field of sociology – as in the expressions "only in the space of publicity is it possible to form a community of consciousness of individual social groups". Note that here, as the most successful equivalent of the difficult-to-translate word ?ffentlichkeit, we already use "publicity". The fourth context, close to the third, is implied in expressions like "publicity is a guarantee <that private or political concentration of power will be limited>". This implies a political science discourse, which expresses something about the place of publicity in the political system ^{[20, S. 1663-1664]}. The conclusion that modern political theory draws on the basis of this analysis: there is no single, "unified" publicity. What this term means will always depend on the context and the tasks that are crucial for the person asking the question about the "public / publicity".

1.2. The "flawed publicity" of German philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century.

In almost every Habermas publication that talks about publicity, there is always another topic – democracy. The very first book by this leading democratic theorist and political philosopher of the German-speaking space in general explicitly links socio-political problems and, in particular, the problem of publicity, with the problems of democracy. "I am interested," Habermas writes in the 1990 preface, "in what contribution this research can make to the issues of the theory of democracy, which are becoming important again today" ^{[1, p. 10]}.

By clarifying this essential connection between the topic of publicity and the problem of democracy, we can better understand the significance of his 1962 book on the public sphere. The fact is that for German philosophy in the first decades of the twentieth century, neither one nor the other topic existed as a positive philosophical problem. Firstly, there was no problem of democracy in academic German philosophy. Today, this problem is discussed most often in the context of philosophers who have criticized the foundations of rationalism in various forms. Any criticism of rationality was branded as "irrationalism", and irrationalism, in turn, was responsible for preparing and strengthening "anti-democratic thinking". The most natural recipients of this criticism were the ideas of the main representatives of German idealism (Hegel, Fichte, Schelling), romanticism, the works of Nietzsche, philosophy of life, "organicism" or "existentialism" ^[29],[30]. Subsequently, criticism focused on the most prominent representatives of any of these traditions. Martin Heidegger became the central figure here, especially after the studies of Victor Farias ^[5]; ^[6] and Hugo Ott ^[27]; ^[28] appeared. The main conclusion of these studies is that Heidegger's brief rectorship after the Nazis came to power was not an accidental political mistake, but stemmed from the very essence of his philosophy. Thus, the authors only reinforced the suspicions that had long before been expressed directly or indirectly by Heidegger's contemporaries. In 1953, Karl Levit spoke about this ^[23], the same kind of suspicion is a constant refrain of K.'s notes. Jaspers on Heidegger ^[18].

By the 70s and 80s, there was a general opinion that understanding publicity as a positive phenomenon – and at the same time, understanding the democratic principles of government – was impossible in Heidegger's philosophy. Then the origins of "anti-democracy" began to be sought in his publications and speeches that appeared before his rectorship at the University of Freiburg, before the National Socialists came to power. Attention turned to "Being and Time"; in view of the problem of democracy, they looked especially closely at the famous paragraphs 25-27, which ask the question of "who", in fact, is that being, whose existence in the world was discussed in the previous hundred pages. And here Heidegger makes an unexpected move. Contrary to the entire tradition that built philosophy on the certainty of the Self ("subject"/ "person"/ "spirit" / "consciousness" – all these designations, depending on one or another philosophy), Heidegger proves that the identity of this being in the most frequent and everyday situations is "scattered" and dispersed, dissolved externally. Just as a person can live mainly in the outside: in the world, in things, deeds and worries, he can also understand the question of himself according to the pattern of how and what others do and understand. He rejoices and grieves, as it is customary to do, judges something, as it is usually done. Moreover, here the question of "who" will not indicate anything definite: "who" here is "not this or that one, not the person himself, and not some, and not the sum of all", "who" here is of a neutral kind, people (das Man)" ^{[3, p. 126]}; ^{[13, S. 126]}. This is not the power of "these or those" over a person, but a very special kind of phenomenon, the dictatorship of impersonality. Heidegger's innovation lies precisely in the fact that he points to any other subjects, "social agents", but considers such dissolution and subordination to be a trait inherent in man himself.

For the first time, we find similar-sounding ideas in Kierkegaard's writings. "The "crowd" (Menge) is untrue. What the ap says sounds eternal, pious and Christian. Paul: “Only one will reach the goal,” and not in comparison (vergleichsweise), because in comparison there are “others". This means that everyone can be this One, and God will help him in this – but only one will reach the goal; and it also means that everyone should be careful to come into contact with "others", and in fact talk alone with God and himself" ^{[19, S. 99]}. However, in general, there is no term for this phenomenon – and Heidegger invents it, substantiating the impersonal pronoun "man". But as soon as such a construct (das Man – "someone") is invented, it is immediately perceived as a parody of a person (der Mann – a man, a man), as an indication of a special kind of specific people, inconspicuous, faceless. He is perceived as a critique of the mass man; this understanding is consolidated when, following Heidegger, the problems of mass society begin to be considered by other brilliant thinkers and masters of the word. It is no coincidence that Jose Ortega y Gasset's "Uprising of the Masses" appears two years later than Genesis and Time. Elias Canetti's "Mass and Power" (1960) is published in a completely different situation, but in general it helps to interpret Heidegger as a supporter of conservative values and an enemy of democracy (for a discussion of this topic, see, in particular: ^[7]).

So, neither democracy nor publicity was a topic of German philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. These concepts were usually associated with negative connotations. Of course, assessing the attitude of German philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century to democracy and liberalism, it must be taken into account that some representatives of the academic environment – mainly neo–Kantians - quite allowed themselves to be designated as "liberals and democrats", and even in the case when in the early years of the First World War they defended Germany and the "German spirit". We find such statements, for example, in Hermann Cohen ^{[4, S. 304-305]}. However, in the case of Marburg neo-Kantianism, democracy has a predominantly religious interpretation.

It may seem that talking about Habermas' achievements in developing a theory of publicity, using examples of thinkers who are obviously considered "undemocratic", "conservative" is too simple, if not even a primitive technique. However, publicity in a positive sense is also absent in the works of the theorists of the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Adorno and Horkheimer proceed from the fact that by the 40s. "publicity (?ffentlichkeit) had reached a state in which thought irreversibly turned into a commodity, and the word into its praise" ^{[16, S. 17]}. Instead of this word, which occurs only once in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, the authors are much more likely to talk about the public (Publikum). The general characteristic of the "public" in its negative connotations hardly differs from the tone in which impersonal publicity is discussed in "Being and Time"; the section on the cultural industry in this program work by the two authors can be considered as a continuation of Heidegger's analysis of "das Man" – but only taking into account the new reality of the media and the economic structure of bourgeois society. Radio, with its race for talent, competitions and advertising, takes away even the slightest trace of spontaneity from the public, and the very nature of the public is not a passive object of the cultural industry, but its necessary, essential part ^{[16, S. 146]}. In fact, Horkheimer and Adorno are trying to show the same thing in relation to the public as they do in relation to the ideals of Reason and Enlightenment: they show that Enlightenment (and, accordingly, liberal ideals) can have a self–destructive force that turns enlightenment ideals into a "mythology", and turns democracy and publicity into authoritarianism.

Of course, we should not expect much from philosophy either, which (like German in the 1910s and 1930s) is influenced by skeptics and critics of the ideas of society and sociality. Kierkegaard's Renaissance, characteristic of Germany in the 1910s and 20s (and in the corresponding period completely absent in Russian, French and British philosophy), necessarily borrowed from Kierkegaard also an orientation towards a single, lonely, isolated subject and the accompanying criticism of society, forms of public communication as "untrue". Thanks to this social pessimism, a new radical philosophy of man became possible in Germany, which at first became known as "existential philosophy" (1932-1936), and then quickly received a response in France, already under the brand of "existentialism". We use all these examples only to illustrate the new level of reasoning about democracy and publicity that is being achieved in the works of Habermas.

The main feature of the change in political theory from Horkheimer/Adorno to Habermas and his followers can be considered the rejection of "global pessimism". Although it is still taken into account, it is no longer a guideline for political research. In a "methodical and meaningful sense, the modern research program of the Institute of Social Research departs from it rather than uses it" ^{[15, S. 17]}. At the same time, the very pessimism and skepticism of these new political theories does not disappear anywhere. It is only moving to a structurally new level. Moreover, in the 2010s and 20s, it seems to be regaining global features. "If more recently, at the level of describing social transformations, there was confidence that liberal democratic societies as a whole follow the path of expanding individual rights and abolishing authoritarian styles of behavior, strengthening forms of democratic mutual understanding, today there is a remarkable restraint and even confusion even at the very description of these processes," A. Honnet and F. Suttelyuti note; the process achieving equality of rights is in danger of turning into either increasing control or politically enforced homogenization ^{[15, S. 13-14]}. In recent decades, it has all the same features of "globality", only now they are located on other, more specific levels of reflection. Pessimism is no longer associated with general ideas about reason and rationality. The general trend is a departure from general speculative concepts, whether it is Heidegger's critique of technology, Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of instrumental reason, or the critique of power in the works of M. Foucault. The reorientation is in favor of "positive", positivistically oriented topics and research areas. What are they like? Since 2016, following the results of the US elections, the volume of publications on the problems of populism has increased significantly. Interest in this phenomenon continues to this day, and "populism colors <all> modern democracies" ^{[22, S. 1]}. But another problem that has gained particular popularity in recent decades has become the problem of the democratic structure of society in a new situation of publicity, and a new situation of modern media.

2. "Publicity 1.0": "Structural changes in the public sphere" (1962)

The "public sphere" is one of Habermas' most well–known concepts, the theory of publicity is set out in his habilitation work, defended by Habermas in 1961 and published a year later. The public sphere belongs neither to the State, nor to the economic system, nor to various social groups. It is a "place" in which the public mind is realized and "public opinion" is formed. Habermas's book reconstructs the history of the formation of the public sphere using the example of societies in Britain, France and Germany. In his book, Habermas diagnoses the collapse of traditional forms of political publicity, which are gradually being replaced by the mass media and the organization of the economy. In the feudal society of the Middle Ages, there is no public sphere in the modern sense – it is a special, "representative publicity", and it is formed "not as a social area, as a sphere of publicity, rather it is something similar to a status sign" ^{[1, p. 55, 57]}. By the way, however, one of the unexpected conclusions of Habermas is the conclusion about the return of some features of the Middle Ages in the political culture of the twentieth century. Rational criticism is gradually giving way to a special kind of publicity – it rather assumes conformity and agreement, and in this sense "does not oblige", but rather offers something to someone who is ready to follow it and on the part of those who "present" this publicity, publicity refers to personal prestige and supernatural authority, and we can talk about "refeodalization of publicity" ^{[1, p. 270]}. The bourgeois sphere of publicity itself originated in the XVII—XVIII centuries and was initially realized in the form of clubs, salons and literary societies. The skills and practice of critical discussion, which were formed at first in the discussion of literary works, were soon applied to government issues. At the same time, the growth and strengthening of the new bourgeoisie class required increasing awareness of the state and prospects of the market; these interests contributed to the development of periodicals (magazines and newspapers).

The bourgeois sphere of publicity in its classical form is characterized by a sharp distinction between "public" and "private". State and political issues are "public", whereas civil society, the market economy and the family are "private". The participants of the bourgeois public sphere are private entities, they enter into rational communication with each other about public affairs. Habermas proceeds from the presumption that these individuals are oriented towards rationality and critical arguments. It also followed, Habermas later shows, that these participants in the public sphere were almost exclusively male, had an education and were not poor. However, formally, the social status of communication participants was put out of brackets, the main condition for participation in the public sphere was literacy. The structural transformations of this "classical" sphere of bourgeois publicity come with the society of "mass democracy". Having expanded beyond the educated wealthy individuals, the sphere of publicity could no longer exclude issues of economic inequality. Now public communication and debate have gone far beyond critical argumentation, becoming an expression of the opposing interests of various social groups. Government intervention, the invention and extensive use of public opinion manipulation technologies have made significant changes in the field of publicity.

We have said that the symbolism of two books on the same topic, separated by more than half a century of time distance, is itself partly a media gesture. A closer look will make it possible to see that publicity is the theme not only of these two books, but also of a significant number of Habermas's works in general. For example, he addresses the issue of publicity in the collection of articles "Facticity and significance".

3. "New structural changes" in the public sphere. "Publicity 2.0"

In comparison with all the ideas expressed by Habermas regarding publicity in the 1960s and 2010s, his latest attempt to identify the changes that have occurred with publicity does not seem so revolutionary and radical. A researcher of deliberative politics will find "a lot of familiar and little new in the texts" ^[8], media theorists will find that most of the criticisms of new forms of publicity have been voiced more than once in connection with criticism of Facebook and Twitter.

One of the main ideas of the 2021/22 publication is that modern media has reached a qualitatively new level, and this new quality creates a number of threats to modern liberal democracy. One of these threats is the segmentation of publicity, its transformation into a series of closed and isolated "worlds" – Habermas calls this phenomenon "fragmentation". Two other phenomena of new publicity influenced by the media are disinformation and polarization. Disinformation, which has been talked about especially a lot in the last seven years, using the phrase "fake news", uses a two-pronged strategy: on the one hand, the persecution of the "false press", on the other – the deliberate dissemination of false information. All these three phenomena of new media are tearing apart the unified space of civil society, whereas in order for democracy to function, it is necessary that the population be in agreement with at least some minimal core of beliefs. So, Habermas associates the new structural changes of publicity precisely with the fundamentally new role of the media. However, neither in the theory of new media, nor in recognizing the new media role of social networks, which began to become noticeable only from the 2008-2010's, Habermas is not a pioneer. After Marshall McLuhan, an absolute pioneer in the field of media theory, one of his greatest theorists was an equally famous compatriot of Habermas, Niklas Luhmann ^[24]. The problem of publicity and digital media has been widely discussed in the previous decade. ³

Publicity is a key topic for Habermas's problem of democracy. (In turn, the theory of democracy, along with the constitutional and legal structure of modern society, is the core of Habermas' political theory). But it would be even more accurate to say that at the center of the German philosopher's political theory are three interrelated themes: reason, discourse and publicity. Each of them corresponds to an important block within the Habermas legacy. With the rejection of the philosophy of subjectivity (in particular, Husserl's phenomenology), "reason" symbolizes communicative rationality. The medium and method of manifestation of this rationality is discourse. Various systems of discourse are a form of communicative clarification of claims to significance in the context of post-metaphysical thinking in pluralistic societies. That is why discourse is inherently public (?ffentlich). Habermas proceeds from the presumption of dialogue partners focused on mutual understanding. By coordinating their political goals with each other, participants must present to each other the grounds for the significance of their goals and be able to argumentatively defend them in the process of exchanging opinions. The purpose of this is the recognition of these goals by other communication participants as well. The special complexity of this discursive justification of claims is formed by the fact that the right is only partially justified in the process of argumentation. On the other hand, it is established and supported by the administrative authority, so the actual law (geltendes) does not necessarily have rational legitimacy either ^[10].

It is the need to connect the "actual" and the "significant", the normative, that determines the role that the topic of publicity plays for the whole philosophy of Habermas.

Notes

¹ However, today it is no less common to find designations hinting at the achievement of new stages in the development of publicity, for example, "Publicity 3.0".

² For the history of this term, see, in particular: ^[15]; ^[20].

³ Cf., in particular: ^[25] (here, in the most structured form, various types of digital media are given: online publications, blogs and microblogs, corporate platforms, home pages and, finally, social networks. The concept of "digital publicity" is defined, respectively, as "the totality of freely available digital communication media, the content available there, as well as all individuals enriching and consuming these media as authors, commentators or readers.

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