Jürgen Habermas’s work on the public sphere, public opinion and its impact on liberal-democratic societies is of considerable relevance for disciplines as diverse as political science, sociology, communication sciences, media studies, and (state) philosophy. As usual, the Internet provides numerous resources, of which are some more and others less useful. In this post I have assembled a list websites I used for my own work on transnational political public debate in the European Union (English publications only).
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A brief yet comprehensive introduction into Habermas’s life and work. Summarizes his major theories and provides a useful bibliography.
2. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: Google books provides Habermas’ most important work as regard the sociological as well as political analysis of the phenomenon he designated the ‘public sphere’. In recent years it experienced a kind of renaissance, especially in branches of anglophone communication and media studies focusing online discourses.
3. The Theory of Communicative Action Vol.1: An English translation of another major work written by Habermas from 1984. Available as a pdf file.
4. Habermas – A Critical Introduction: A comprehensive introduction into Habermas’s theories available at Google books.
5. Habermas – The Key Concepts: Same as above.
6. Vancouver Island University: A very brief summarization of the Habermasian conception of the public sphere.
7. Carnegie Mellon University: This website provides a summarization of Habermas’ discourse ethics. The brief definitions of his quite complex key terms are especially useful.
8. Bent Flyvberg: An interesting article in which the author contrasts both Foucault’s and Habermas’s perspectives and relevance for the civil society.
9. FT.com: An interesting article and interview with Habermas from 2010. The article portrays Habermas’s philosophical background (quite cursory of course) and the Interview provides his perspective on the political future of Europe.
10. Marxist.org: A very brief account of his life and translations of Knowledge & Human Interest (1968) and Communicative Ethics (1998).
11. The Nation: An article written by Habermas on Germany and the Euro-Crisis.
12. New Left Review: In this article Habermas elaborately explains why Europe needs a transnational constitution in order to ensure its political survival in the 21st century.
13. Reset Doc: An article written by Habermas on the ‘post-secular’ society.
Additionally, here an interview with Habermas from 2007 on youtube (in English):
As I said, this is just a snippet of the tons of material available online. I will therefore regularly update this post.
Dennis Nguyen 