This book revises the concept of the public sphere by examining opinion as a foundational concept of modernity. Indispensable to ideas like "public opinion" and "freedom of opinion," opinion-though sometimes held in dubious repute-here assumes a central position in modern philosophy, literature, sociology, and political theory, while being the object of extremely contradictory valuations. Kirk Wetters focuses on interpretative shifts begun in the Enlightenment and cemented by the French Revolution to restore the concept of "opinion" to a central role in our understanding of the political...