The Habermasian Public Sphere: Women’s Work within the Critique of Instrumental Reason

Abstract

As a tradition that understands public and private spheres as absolutely exclusive of one another, the liberal philosophical tradition relies on a metaphor of the social contract, where the strengthening of public decisions and collective life should happen at the expense of individual freedoms: Individuals trade a portion of their private liberties in exchange for public security protections to their person and property. Against such liberal tenets, however, the diminishing of powers in the public sector has not led to increased personal freedoms but rather the contrary. The privacy of citizens promised under liberalism—civil liberties and private expression, for example—has been compromised as much as the functionality and existence of the public sphere. The reduction of power, confidence, and investments in public regulatory and institutional bodies—for example, from welfare to education, from the overturning of the Glass-Steagull Act to the failure of the Federal Reserve system and the Security and Exchange Commission to enforce mechanisms of disclosure and accountability, from media consolidation to the squelching of public media sponsorship for minorities and local broadcasting on the public airwaves—has not led to the elevation of power in private initiative and responsibility.