Hvis avisen var en ludobrik... ...var den så slået hjem nu?

Side 9 Hvis avisen var en ludobrik...
Jürgen Habermas der er forskeren bag den til dato mest toneangivende analyse af den offentlige
sfæres historie og udvikling (Habermas, 1962/1989), definerer begrebet således:
“The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private
people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from
above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the
general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere
of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation
was peculiar and without historical precedent: people’s public use of their reason”
(Habermas, 1989, p. 27).
Moderne stater henter deres legitimitet i den offentlige diskussion der fører til konsensusdannelse;
staten er kun legitim så længe dens beslutninger er i overensstemmelse med den offentlige mening.
Det normative grundlag for den parlamentariske styreform kan udelukkende sikres gennem
effektiv beskyttelse af individets rettigheder og succesfuld mediering af den offentlige debat. I
moderne stater er individets rettigheder grundlovssikrede på tre niveauer:
“A set of basic rights concerned the sphere of the public engaged in rational-critical
debate (freedom of opinion and speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly and
association, etc.) and the political function of private people in this public sphere (right
of petition, equality of vote, etc.). A second set of basic rights concerned the
individual’s status as a free human being, grounded in the intimate sphere of the
patriarchal conjugal family (personal freedom, inviolability of the home, etc.). The third
set of basic rights concerned the transactions of the private owners of property in the
sphere of civil society (equality before the law, protection of private property, etc.). The
basic rights guaranteed: the spheres of the public realm and of the private (with the
intimate sphere at its core); the institutions and instruments of the public sphere, on the
one hand (press, parties), and the foundation of private autonomy (family and property),
on the other; finally, the functions of the private people, both their political ones as
citizens and their economic ones as owners of commodities (and as ‘human beings,’
those of individual communication, e.g., through inviolability of letters)” (Habermas,
1989, p. 83).
Denne sikring af rettigheder er forudsætningen for at borgerne uhindret kan deltage i rationelle
diskussioner af offentlige anliggender.
“The discussion was to be open and accessible to all, merely private interests were to be
inadmissible, inequalities of status were to be bracketed, and discussants were to
deliberate as peers. The result of such discussion would be public opinion in the strong
sense of a consensus about the common good” (Fraser i Calhoun (red.), 1992, p. 113).
Offentlig mening i denne stærke forstand er det bedst tænkelige beslutningsgrundlag for de
folkevalgte politikere i repræsentative demokratier.
Opfattelsen af den offentlige sfære som et frit tilgængeligt rum for rationel diskussion
mellem ligeværdige samtalepartnere der fører til konsensus om almenvellet, er et stærkt normativt
begreb hvis fulde potentiale imidlertid aldrig er blevet realiseret. Især idealet om universel
tilgængelighed bliver i praksis undergravet af spørgsmål om indkomst og uddannelse, økonomisk