Comments On Habermas' Deliberative Democracy Theory

After the Second World War, traditional Representative Democracy' gradually exposed its shortages, and the practice of democracy only means "vote"; In the meanwhile, politics began rapidly changing and became increasingly complicated, so that the traditional liberalism and republicanism democracy could not be applied to explain the phenomenon as well as they used to. Therefore, Habermas brought forth the deliberative democracy to overcome the conflicts between the liberty and the equality to combine the liberalism with the republicanism, and to reconstruct the philosophy of democracy. This thesis tries to analyze the Deliberative Democracy Theory from the following four aspects:Firstly, it explores for the source of the Deliberative Democracy. The birth of the Deliberative Democracy owes to several factors, including: inheriting and exceeding the doctrines of the school of Frankfort; reflecting the political reality of the modern Germany; criticizing the traditional democracy theory; and analyzing the dilemma of the late capitalism.Secondly, the thesis conducts a study on the theory and the political reality after Habermas' theory reconstruction. Habermas' Deliberative Democracy was based on the two theories: Communication Action Theory and Communication Ethics Theory. He tried to reconstruct the political life of the late capitalism.According to Habermas' theory, democracy theory and it's practice could be combined in many fields, such as law philosophy and public sphere. Faced with the reunification of the West and the East Germany, as well as of the immigration to Europe, Habermas applied his theory to explain the political reality, and put forward a concept of world citizen. Habermas' theory was like a bridge, connecting many contradictory values in the democracy theory, such as human rights and popular sovereignty; direct democracy and indirect democracy; procedure democracy and essential democracy.As a new model and idea of the democracy theory, Habermas' Deliberative Democracy developed the tradition of the democracy theory by overcoming the inherent shortages. On the other hand, however, Habermas' theory also faced challenges both form theory and reality. It has been too difficult for Habermas' theory to come true in the modern world.Nevertheless, Habermas' theory provided a new method for us to construct democracy. After all, it is significant as we push forward our democracy construction in today's China.