1. Human discourse and communicative
action can work "to limit the destructive
effects of the attacks on the public sphere,
civil society, and the lifeworld." (p. 247)

3.  Habermas defined the public sphere as being
"made up of private people gathered together
as a public and articulating the needs of society
with the state" (1991).

4.  Through acts of assembly and dialogue, the
public sphere generates opinions and attitudes
which serve to affirm or challenge--therefore,
to guide--the affairs of state. In ideal terms, the
public sphere is the source of public opinion
needed to "legitimate authority in any
functioning democracy" (Rutherford, 2000).

5.  Discussion
 What do you think are examples of the public
sphere?
 Is there a private sphere, and if so what are some
examples and how are the two related?

6.  Habermas did define the public
sphere as a virtual or imaginary
community which does not
necessarily exist in any
identifiable space.

7.  DeLuca and Peeples look at the transitioning
of the concept of public sphere with the onset
of new media. The transition is that public
opinion is formed out of a new, pseudo-
physical “public screen.” They talk about how
the way information is shared nowadays, that
you can’t really distinguish between public
and private spheres. The separation between
public and private is slimmer because of the
mobility of our technology, as you can carry
the “screens” with you. This new way of
information transfer is based around the
inception of new media.

8.  Discussion
 What are the implications of a blurred
line between (or an overlap of) the
private and public spheres?

10.  The idea of the Lifeworld was first
established by Edmund Husserl in 1936
 The lifeworld can be thought of as the
horizon of all our experiences, in the
sense that it is that background on which
all things appear as themselves and
meaningful. The lifeworld cannot,
however, be understood in a purely
static manner; it isn't an unchangeable
background, but rather a dynamic
horizon in which we live, and which
"lives with us" in the sense that nothing
can appear in our lifeworld except as
lived (1936).

11.  For Habermas, the lifeworld is more or less the
"background" environment of competences,
practices, and attitudes representable in terms
of one's cognitive horizon.

12.  Habermas says that the lifeworld
consists of social and cultural
linguistic meanings. It is the lived
realm of informal, culturally-
grounded understandings and mutual
accommodations.
 This understanding of the Lifeworld
is a reflection of Habermas’ social
theory which is grounded in
communication

13.  Discussion
 What do you think is the relationship between the
Lifeworld and the Public/Private sphere?

15.  Subjects capable of speech and action can not
help but learn (p. 252)
 We learn in communities as social beings, and
our development of knowledge depends on
our ability to understand what others are
telling and showing us (p. 251)

16.  When we act communicatively, we try to step
out of our normal frames of reference to see the
world as others see it (p. 253)
 What we agree to or decide on in a
conversation is based on our acknowledging
that what others say has merit (p. 253)

17.  Communicative action [occurs] when two or
more people trying to come to an agreement is
premised on good faith effort of those involved
to speak in the most truthful, best informed
way they can (p. 254)
 Discussion:
 Is this realistic? On what levels?
 What communication issues would help/hurt?

18.  Democracy resides in adults’ capacity to learn,
in particular to learn how to recognize and
expand the democratic process inherent in
human communication (p. 247)

19.  The ideal rules of discourse, embedded as they
are in the universal process of speech, offer the
best hope of keeping democratic forces alive
(p. 266)

20.  Habermas specifies the following rules
(p. 265)
1. all relevant voices are heard
2. the best of all available arguments,
given the present state of
knowledge, are accepted
3. only the non-coercive coercion of the
better argument determines the
affirmations and negations of the
participants.

21.  In other words, good discussion, and therefore
good democratic process, depends on everyone
contributing, on everyone having the fullest
possible knowledge of different perspectives,
and on everyone being ready to give up their
position if a better argument is presented to
them (pg. 265)
 Problems???

22.  Judgments as to which voices are relevant ,
how relevance itself is determined, how we
decide which are the best arguments , and
who estimates exactly what is the present
state of our knowledge are all highly
contentious. If we are not careful, we end
up asking those in authority to decide those
things (p. 266)

24.  As societies grow ever larger and more
complex, a domination-free consensus arrived
at through town meetings or other inclusive
community conversations becomes
increasingly impossible to achieve (p. 267)

25.  Contemporary political and economic
systems , and their various steering media,
attempt to foreclose the possibility of any
learning that challenges systematic
imperatives. Since learning involves asking
“why?” it is potentially very threatening to
the system and must be controlled (p. 247)

27.  System problems (affecting democracy) are
either caused by the actions of people in a
system run for economic profit or are
naturally occurring but are exacerbated to
crisis level by the desire of some for profit or
the refusal of those in power to admit the
problem exists.

28.  Habermas believes that we can not talk about
critically reflective learning until uncritical,
unreflective learning has occurred, usually at
earlier stages of life. (p. 271)

29. Non-Reflexive Learning is learning to submit
without resistance to rules of debate, argument
assessment, and decision-making process that the
dominant culture favors (p. 248)

31. Reflexive Learning is when we learn to question
and challenge everyday practices or social
arrangements by discussing with others the extent
to which these should be justified (p. 249)

32.  Without a capacity for critical reflection, we are
unable to separate our identity from the
steering mechanisms of money and power that
have invaded [colonized] the lifeworld.
 Adult learning is the most important hope that
we have for creating a just society.

33.  Learning democracy is a matter of learning to
live with ambiguity and contingency as much
as it is learning to apply deliberative decision-
making procedures (p. 268)

34.  People need to experience the contradictions
and tensions of democracy, and to learn how to
navigate through these while also learning the
truth that they are often unnavigable (p.268)

35.  Adult education must give plenty of
opportunity for people to learn about the
technical aspects of democratic procedures and
the typical predictable diversions and
blockages that arise when working within
these (p. 269)

36.  Adult education as part of a civil society could
constitute a mini-laboratory in which people
could learn and practice democratic
dispositions that could then be transferred to
the public sphere (p. 269)

37.  The Democratic Classroom?

38.  Everyday conversations represent [another ]
avenue for learning the democratic process.
Seeing things from another point of view,
taking different perspectives, suspending
judgment about something contentious- these
are all acts we engage in during conversations
about apparently nonpolitical matters.

39.  Habermas sees reflexive learning as the overall
lever for societal development (p. 249)
 Learning is the fundamental mechanism for
social evolution in general (p. 249)
 Without a socially sanctioned engagement in
learning, society remains in stasis [not
evolving] (p. 249)

40.  [Habermas’s] dream is clearly bound up with
the possibility of adults learning to speak to
each other in honest and informed ways so that
they can hold democratic conversations about
important issues in the revised public sphere.
(p. 256)

41. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois
Society. Trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick
Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
Rutherford, Paul. Endless Propaganda: The Advertising
of Public Goods. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2000.
Deluca and Peeples. “From Public Sphere to Public
Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the Lessons of
Seattle”. 2002.