If we are to believe what many sociologists are telling us, the public sphere is in a near terminal state. Our ability to build solidarities with strangers and to agree on the general significance of needs and problems seems to be collapsing. These cultural potentials appear endangered by a newly aggressive attempt to universalize and extend the norms of the market. For the past four decades the social theorist Jürgen Habermas has explored the relevance and meaning of the public sphere, as well as diagnosing its on-going crises. In the contemporary climate, a systematic look...