The Legitimation Crisis Of Contemporary Intellectual In China

Nowadays, Chinese intellectual who are in transitional stage of society encounter more difficulties and challenges than ever before. Commercialism word as predominant one has spreaded into every fields of society. Commercializing and its commutative and efficient principles have invaded spiritual area. The science and technology as the independent and self-organize system has started to control modern human's thought, emotion and will. The instrumental rationality increasingly has seeped into every layer of daily life. The occupation in professional society has specified more and more, the system of university(college) has systcmized more and more, the distance between knowledge and common sense has gone further and further. The enlightening function of intellectual who always have performed as versatile ones before have become weak gradually, and the value of its existence has aroused the common query by the strata. Therefore, intellectual have been in difficulties. The comparative marginalization of intellectual in post-ideology period, one-sideness based onthe over specialization and the loss of humanities spirit caused by politicizing of humanities have led to the crisis of self-identity of social role and the collapse of value system of traditional culture and the imperfection of position in contemporary culture. In a word, the legitimation of contemporary intellectual has headed into a crisis."Legitimation" refers not only the legitimation ofpolitical and economic system, but also the legitimation ofculture widely. Legitimation depends on truth. Because it is"reasonable" , that is to say, it suits for science andhuman rationality. The meta-narratives of scientificknowledge and liberation of mankind establish thelegitimation of modern society and bring the function oflegitimation into play. The meta-narrative knowledge islegitimated, because it bases itself on the future, or baseson the idea which can be realized in the future. The ideahas the value of legitimation, because it is universallyused. The hypothesis of knowledge being neglected and theuniversality of it being emphasized and magnifiedexcessively, the position of knowledge becomes moreimportant and it not only represents the truth in theknowledge field but also produce the impulse of programmingand designing the whole society. The final outcome ofuniversality is that the knowledge reigns everything.Intellectual are indispensable from knowledge, according to"power/knowledge" , they naturally transform the role of"intelligent elite" into "social elite". Intellectualare endowed with unique authority, supreme power,responsibility, so when they make a speech publicly, they become the symbol of "spokesperson of rationality and age" and "social conscience" . In one sense, the myth of modern intellectual is one of universal intellectual.However, following that meta-narrative has beendisintegrated, intellectual who are confronted withcommercializing of knowledge increasingly lose their basisof legitimation gradually. What kind knowledge of backgroundand structure should intellectual base on when they make aspeech publicly? They deeply feel that their behaviour oftraditional role has been outdated in the new culturalsituation. Eafh rethinks how to perform his behaviour ofrole. Therefore, the question on "what is an intellectual"is not only the confination of abstract definition, but alsoa practical rational problem which is relevant to a specificrole in the society. The understanding of essential ofintellectual determines directly the tendency of value andposition of culture, that is to say, "what should they do" .As far as intellectual being social existence isconcerned, the key of its notion does not only lie in"knowledge" . Intellectual who have different professionalknowledge can acquire different occupation, that is to say,professional intellectual should be "m...