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Communicative Rationality And Its Reconstruction Of The Life World

Posted on:2018-07-23Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:F XuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1366330515996185Subject:Political science, political theory
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The modern reason in the western countries awakens the consciousness of the individual subjectivity through the reform of religion,the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.And so the individuals are liberated from the traditional slavery politics and the benighted religion,realizing the disenchantment of the world view and the politics.From then on,the individual subjectivity,dignity and freedom have become the core concepts of modern politics,and promote the forming of modern democracy,which is used to protect the rights of individuals.It can be said that there is no modernity without rationalism.However,under the influence of natural science,the "reflection" factor of the modern reason is gradually eliminated by positivism.The modern reason which has lost the ability to reflect has degenerated into instrumental reason.This kind of reason has caused a serious crisis of capitalism.First,it regulates human behavior through science technology,resulting in the loss of personal freedom.Second,the traditional social integration power was broken,but the new social integration mechanismit has not been established.This situation results in the disorder of society.Third,the politics relying on the rule of technology,covers up the political problems by economic ones.It causes a bad consequence of the ideology extension.Facing these crisises,Habermas points out,just by changing the paradigm of reason,we can resolve them.Therefore,based on the critique of instrumental rationality,Habermas constructs a new kind of reason which is "communicative rationality".Communicative rationality increases the factor of reflection.rt can overcome the instrumental reason's feature of means and purpose.At the same time,Habermas sets the norms of dialogue and language in communication.He is committed to reach a consensus,and to eliminate social chaos caused by the divergence of the world.In this way,the crises of capitalism can be solved.Communicative rationality is not concept which divorced from reality.It has a specific practical situation.In Habermas' opinion,the public use of reason in the public sphere is the practice of communicative rationality.The public sphere absorbs the public from the civil society.However,compared to the pursuit for personal interest of the civil society,the public sphere pays attention to the public interest.In the process of running,the public sphere ensures the realization of the public interest by means of the criticism and supervision of the public opinion.Habermas attributes the security for public to the public use of reason.The public use of reason,essentially,is the practical application of communicative rationality in the public sphere.Therefore,the public sphere provides a platform for the practice of communicative rationality.In the public sphere,communicative rationality was put into practice,but Habermas formally puts forward the communicative rationality in the process of constructing the life world.The being materialized of the social development and taking the social behavior as tools led to that the modern social life is colonized by money and power.This colonization is surfacely caused by the excessive development of liberalism and state interventionism.Therefore,social development is facing a transition to fade the role played by the state and the market trend,that is to take language as the media of the life world development.The construction of the life.world,in Habermas's view,is dependent on the communicative rationality.Communicative rationality can promote the rationalization of the world view,provide a kind of discourse ethics for the people,and lay the basis of moral and legal for discussion political practice.It can be said that communicative rationality is an important prerequisite to provide legal basis for the living world.In addition,communicative rationality as a way of thinking,it has a direct effect on people's behavior.Under this way of thinking,the instrumental behavior is replaced by communicative behavior.Communicative behavior is a universal kind of social behavior.It is in the practice form of discourse communication and discourse consensus.Habermas hopes that the social change is promoted by the change of people's social behavior.Just by doing so,the"life world" as a rational life forms can be realized.Although Habermas' thought is influential,It suffers a lot of criticisms.Pluralism and postmodernism think that it is impossible to make the communicative action universal under the situation of lacking common values just because the culture is of diversity in current times.The new pragmatism considers that the communicative reason could not achieve the unity of a priori concepts and the social practice,so the communicative rationality is to be skeptical in practice.At the same time,the social groups pursuit collective interests,and pay attention to "power" of social life.It is opposite to the way of Habermas,trying to eliminate the power on people's behavior.So the social groups is against to Habermas's views.In addition,feminism and the new liberalism criticize the thought of Habermas for the perspective of different reasons.Despite of the criticism of the thought of Habermas,we can not deny its practical value.The communicative rationality and the lifeworld can be put into practice,and provide some help to solve the social problems.Firstly,communication rationality fosters a deliberative politics,and constructs deliberative democracy.It provides a reliable procedure for democratic decision-making,which is to make up for deficiencies of the electoral process of a liberal democracy.In addition,communicative rationality promotes the practice of public governance.It arouses the motive of public participation.Public participation in common affairs can effectively stops power intervening in the social public life.Communicative rationality is committed to reach consensus.The consensus is essentially based on common interests.Therefore,it can realize the goal of public governance.In summary,Habermas's analysis about the two opposite consequences of modern reason,brings a new concept named communicative rationality which is used to rescue the modernization crisis.Then,on the basis of Habermas's thought,we discusses the practice of communicative rationality,namely,how does communicative rationality critique by public opinion in the public sphere?After it,we show Habermas's effort to solve the colonization problem of modern life,which is by the construction of lifeworld.Habermas's communicative rationality and the thoughts of life world,gain much admiration and praise,but they also suffer some questioning and challenge.Such as the new liberalism,the Pluralism and Communitarianism,critique the effectiveness of communicative rationality and the idealismof the lifeworld.At last,we explore the transcendence of the thoughts,and discuss their practical value to deliberative democracy and public governance.
Keywords/Search Tags:Habermas, Communicative Rationality, Lifeworld, Public Phere, Deliberative Democracy
PDF Full Text Request
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