Eighteenth-Century Europe

Chapter 6: Varieties of the Public Sphere To this point, we have encountered changes, as well as continuity, in European politics, economics, society, and thought. Each of these developments contributed to a transformation that some consider the most fundamental transformation of the century -the emergence, between the state sector and private economic sphere, of autonomous institutions of civil society, often described as the “public sphere”. This chapter discusses the public sphere as both a topic in eighteenth-century European thought and as multiple sites of social interaction. Traditional European forms of sociability in eighteenth-century Europe were corporate groupings, based on common birth (such as an order), trade (such as a guild), or religious belief (such as a confraternity). Yet voluntary association for mutual interest greatly expanded in the eighteenth century, as both formal structures -joint stock and limited liability corporations, scientific and literary academies, reading rooms and libraries – and as informal, convivial gatherings in private homes, coffee houses, and taverns. These gatherings allow us to view not only the new forms of eighteenth-century sociability but the cultural practices and transmission of knowledge that took place within them.