Openness and the public sphere: notes on the history and translation of the concept

Abstract

This article examines the history of the modern concept of the ‘public sphere’ (Öffentlichkeit) in the German language and discusses the limits of its translation as ‘public sphere’. While the adjectives “öffentlich” and “public”, entwined in the same traditions, are semantically akin, the German word highlights a meaning that is not evident in other languages: the opposition between what is made visible and disguised, between what is open and accessible to all and what is barred from common knowledge. The translation of Öffentlichkeit as ‘public sphere’, relinquishes the claim and demand of ‘openness’ inscribed in the very form of German word.  This article revisits available work on the history and pre-history of the modern concept calling attention to the nexus between different words and their conceptual meaning, particularly to the association and dissociation between openness and commonality. These historical and philological observations serve to illuminate Hannah Arendt’s association between the sphere of the public and the political. The “space of apparition”, a key concept to Arendt’s reflections, is intimately linked to the semantics of visibility and openness expressed by the term Öffentlichkeit. By taking into consideration the linguistic means to express what is at once common and open we hope to approach the opacity of the networked public spheres in the present from a new perspective.