Research On Hartmut Rosa’s Critical Theory Of Social Acceleration

This article,based on works of Hartmut Rosa and other literature related to social acceleration and critical theories,analyses the background and theoretical resources of Hartmut Rosa’s critical theory of social acceleration,the analysis of social acceleration and the critique of social acceleration.Meanwhile,the article contains the comment on Rosa’s theory based on Marxism,Frankfturt School’s critical theories and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristic for a New Era.This article mainly analyses and expounds the four parts of critical theory of social acceleration:the background and theoretical resources,the analysis of social acceleration,the critique of social acceleration and the comment on the theory itself.The first part is the exploration of the background and theoretical resources of Rosa’s theory.In the reality,there are a lot of phenomena related to social acceleration in different fields of society,such as in technology,in economic,in politic and in culture.As a lot of phenomena of acceleration are appearing in all fimlds,accleration has been an important characteristic of modern society.With thse acceleration of social development,there are some problem appearing in different fields.The demand of a theory to analyse acceleration has been raised.Besides,the debate of time and social acceleration,Frankfurt School’s critical theories and Marx’s theories of alienation influence Rosa’s theory in its theoretical frame,its topic and the important concept in it.The second part is Rosa’s analysis of social acceleration.He analyses three different types of social acceleration:technological acceleration,acceleration of the pace of life and acceleration of social change.He points out their characteristic and appearance,Meanwhile,he realizes it that social acceleration has affected human beings,relation with time and space,value system,communication with different generation,choice and action.What’s more,Rosa discusses three different kinds of motors of social acceleration.Competition is the economical motor,the belief of happy life is the cultural motor and the circulatory system of technological acceleration,acceleration of the pace of life and acceleration of social change is the inner motor.The third part is Rosa’s critique of social acceleration.In Rosa’s view,there are three types of critical theory:functional critical theory,moral critical theory and ethical critical theory.Functional critical theory is aimed at analysing social system,and moral critical theory is used to criticize social relation.While,ethical critical theory focuses on alienation.With these types of critical theory,Rosa brings the problem of social acceleration to light.In the functional critique,Rosa discusses the problem caused by the desynchronization of different social system.In the moral critique,Rosa tells the characteristic of modern time norm and its conflict with the belief of autonomy.In ethical critique,Rosa analyses the alienated relation between human and time,space,things,action,society and self.The forth part is the comment on Rosa’s theory.Rosa’s theory promotes the development of the debate of social acceleration since the 1970s and Frankfurt School’s critical theories.It solves the academic problem in the debate of social acceleration and emphasizes the importance of paying attention to social acceleration in critical theories.However in Rosa’s theory,its way to sublate alienation is compromised and abstract,and the reason why its theory is compromised is Rosa’s thought about the motor of social acceleration and his following the tradition of Frankfurt School.