JÜRGEN HABERMAS, THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE: A FEMINIST INQUIRY.

The article presents a discussion on the book "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society," by Jürgen Habermas, a renowned philosopher. This book is a translated version. Habermas's philosophical-historical critique of the concept and function of the public sphere in England, France, and Germany from the Renaissance to the twentieth century served as a direct inspiration for the German New Left and opened up new lines of scholarship and political debate in Germany and Western Europe. The 1989 translation coincided with a series of events (radical transformations in Eastern Europe, the bloody suppression of the democracy movement in China, and the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution) which once again pointed to the pertinence of Habermas's diagnosis of civil society for democratic theory and practice. The book deserves to be celebrated as a classic: It has stood the test of time, surviving the fortunes of mercurial literary tastes and changing intellectual seasons; and its new translation has widened markedly the author's circle of readers.