Similarities Between Appman And John Dewey

According to Jürgen Habermas, the public sphere is a “domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed,” and he believed that citizens could act as a public when they dealt with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion and without acting in their professional interests (Habermas 398). Habermas drew off of other authors’ theories, and there were many other theorists who voiced their opinions on the benefits and limitations of a single dominant political sphere. The two authors that I have chosen to compare are Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. Of the two, John Dewey provides the best and most concrete argument for how the public sphere should be and can be an effective vehicle for democracy.
Lippmann believed, the people, or rather the masses, were incapable of forming intelligent publics in which everyone were to come to a consensus and a decision that would benefit the common good. In Public Opinion, he said, “Distance alone lends enchantment to the view that masses of human beings ever cooperate in any complex affair without a central machine managed by a very few people” (Public Opinion 1). He goes on to say that “One mind, or a few can pursue a train of thought, but a group trying to think in concert can as a group do little more than assent or dissent” (Public Opinion 1). The havoc that Lippmann envisions in a mass-driven public sphere derives from the nature of the ‘mass.’ Therefore, the public should have an inactive role, with the only responsibilities to choose between few parties with few major differences, given choices of saying only “yes” or “no”. His distrust of a democracy of the masses formulates under his distrust of the masses, which he believes is due to their incompetence. In The Phantom Public, Lippmann stated that, “the socialist scheme has at its root the mystical fallacy of