What role does the normative play in different theorists’ attempts to formulate a notion of the public?What is the public interest and how can we know it?

1. What role does the normative play in different theorists’ attempts to formulate a notion of the public?

2. Are liberal individualist theories of the public the antithesis of other theories of the public, or can they be seen as complementary?

3.Habermas’s theory of the public sphere has more to offer than any of those that preceded it. Do you agree?


4. What is the public interest and how can we know it?


5. Feminist theorists agree on their diagnosis of the faults of other theories of the public, but not on what should be done to remedy them. Is this a fair characterization?


6. How is Sennett’s conception of the public as a realm of sociability related to theories of the public that view it as political?

What role does the normative play in different theorists’ attempts to formulate a notion of the public?What is the public interest and how can we know it?
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