A Study On Habermas' Theory Of Communicative Action

Habermas'study turned to the communicative theory in the 1980s. He was deeply affected by linguistic turn of Western philosophy and the theory of Husserl, Lovitz, Heidegger and Gadamer. He criticized Weber's instrumental rationality, opposed the philosophy of consciousness which makes the separation of subject and object. He analyses and criticizes the colonization of life world resulted from instrumental rationality and the phenomenon of dissimilation of communicative action which includes the loss of meaning, the loss of freedom, and so on. He tried to make a rational society through rationalizing the communicative action. Habermas'theory of communicative action has an important theoretical value for creating an equal, free and conscious practice of communication in today. It also has a practical significance for resolving the issue of communication between different countries, different nationalities, different culture in the era of globalization.This article is divided into four parts to study Habermas' theory of communicative action. The first part briefly discusses the social background and the theoretical origin of Habermas' theory of communicative action. The second part discusses the philosophical foundation of Habermas' theory of communicative action from the theory of "three worlds" and the relationship between life world and system. The third part analyzes the main contents of Habermas' theory of communicative action which includes the concept of action, the colonization of life world, universal pragmatics, the rationality of communication and discoursive ethics. The fourth part studies the feature of Habermas' theory of communicative action. The fifth part delivers an evaluation on the contribution, limitation and practical significance of Habermas' theory of communicative action.