ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a solution to the puzzle through an analysis of his oeuvre as communication. It identifies a long-term structural transformation of premises, evidence, and conclusions as Habermas has been struggling to come to terms with two modes of thought and discourse, one historical-empirical, the other systematic-normative. In a keynote address to the annual conference of the International Communication Association, Jurgen Habermas took stock of the conditions of public communication at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The most remarkable moment of the keynote was an assessment of the internet that only appeared in a footnote of the published version, asking the reader to “allow in passing a remark on the Internet”. The mediating element of the model is the public sphere, comprising the main political and cultural institutions of modern society: parties, parliaments, and presses, but also cultural organizations and aesthetic movements.
