Habermas, Rational View Of Research

Human being is essentially a rational and political animal. How a man becomes a rational person and how a society becomes a rational society, therefore, have become one of the themes of philosophical research in human history. Habermas, a famous philosopher in contemporary Western world, has a special "preference" on rationality. On the basis of his criticism of and learning from other results before him, Habermas constructs his own concept of rationality, and constantly puts to practical use. This paper tries to conduct an analysis in his view of rationality.In the Western philosophical tradition, the ancient Greek philosophy is in the philosophical period of ontology, and mainly discusses the world's "original" or "primordial" problems, from this kind of understanding to the world's primordial substances produces the first ideas of rationality. However, overall, the whole ancient view of rationality is a kind of rationality of entirety, which pursues a reasonable and orderly order, especially, for example, in Plato's theory of ideas, all things are divided into a strict hierarchical order, which also shows that through the exploration of primordial substances of the world human beings confirm their place in the world.Modern Western philosophy belongs to the philosophy of epistemology, which focuses the problems of knowledge. Problems, such as how do people access to knowledge, and how is possible for human cognitive ability begin to enter philosophers'field of vision. In the process to understand the world or objects in the world, human beings put themselves on a prominent position, thus promoting the development of subjective independence. However, modern philosophy is based on the way of thinking of subject-object dichotomy, then in this way of thinking objects are others outside of subjects, subjects are abstract human beings with rational ability, and rationality is an intermediary and bridge of human beings and objects. Descartes's "I think therefore I am" stresses the authoritative status of subject, which also embodies that modern rationality is a kind of subjective rationality, a kind of subjects'rational cognitive ability.As the linguistic turn, contemporary Western philosophy, in a certain sense, is referred to as the philosophy of language. At the same time the self-development rationality has found itself in a divided state, so people who cherish the dream of rationality have begun to reform and reconstruct rationality, and therefore it can be said that contemporary rationality is a kind of reconstructive rationality. Habermas's view of rationality is precisely a typical representative within this constructive rationality. Habermas also criticizes rationality, but he is not to negate and destroy it, but to rebuild it. Through his early theoretical exploration he puts rationality on the basis of public domain, and explains the rationality for the interest of liberation; by analyzing the prerequisites and effectiveness of the requirements in communication, he constructs his concept of rationality with communicative rationality as its core. Different from the ancient rationality of entirety and modern subjective rationality, communicative rationality is inter-subjective rationality, which is a blend of rationality, but also an inclusive rationality.After the construction of his view of rationality with communicative rationality as its core, Habermas's continues to apply this view to theoretical research and practice. First, beginning from the dimension of "reconstruction", he reconstructs the critical theory, historical materialism, and modernity by communicative rationality. For Habermas, the critical theory has necessarily led to failure because of its philosophical paradigm of consciousness, therefore, only a transformation of philosophical paradigm, namely a transformation from philosophy of consciousness to philosophy of communication with a replace of instrumental rationality by communicative rationality, can the critical rationality lay on a solid basis. Habermas then reconstructs historical materialism by his communicative rationality, which implies that he has deviated from the Marxist tradition. As to the problems of the modernity, through laying basis of modernity on his communicative rationality, Habermas puts the problem of modernity into an effective way. Secondly, on the dimension of discourse theory, he analyzes the roles of communicative rationality in the discourse of democracy, the discourse of nationality, and the discourse of transcendence. Based on communicative rationality, Habermas supposes a theory of democratic discourse, and his procedural democracy is a conjugation of liberal democracy and republic democracy. Habermas believes that to go toward the post-nation-state is an irreversible trend; he advocates establishing the internal world affairs without a world government. In the post-metaphysical era, he thinks, philosophy and religion can dialogue actively; communicative rationality does not exclude religion, but mutually tolerant with religion. The positive significance of Habermas's view of rationality is that it gives us a hope to remain alive, and provides reasons and effective ways for different nation-states to exist in today's multi-cultural society.