The concept of legal public sphere: the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth

Abstract

The objective of this work is to carry out the reconstruction of the debate about legal public sphere in Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, to obtain an understanding about the meaning of the concept of legal public sphere and struggle for recognition taking place inside. For the analysis of the concept of legal public sphere, we believe that it will be possible to reach an update of the first concept by appropriating Habermas researches on this subject and, in a second moment, confronting them with the criticism developed by Axel Honneth, one of best known and current theoretical and publishers of intellectual tradition of Critical Theory. Thus, analyzing the proposed concept, we aim to find an innovative contribution and allow lead to Habermas' theory on, solving the sociological deficit diagnosed by Honneth. Finally, in a last moment of the research, relating the theoretical research with the legal reality and also assisting in the possibility of discovery of problems arising, we plan to conduct an analysis of a typical case of affirmative action in which there was participation of civil society through public hearings and extensive media coverage, which resulted in the granting of recognition of a right to a historically oppressed minority. Thus, we would put in motion the ultimate goal of Critical Theory: the critique of reality that is imposed in the name not of ideal or abstract principles of justice, but existing emancipatory potential and not properly harnessed in social reality, leading to investigations leading us to the nature of these potential, his most characteristic blocks and the type of social action able to overcome them. (AU)