A Study Of Habermas's Theory Of Discourse Democracy-From The Perspective Of The Public Sphere

It is through the diagnosis of theory and practice of modern democracy that Habermas brings out his question of discourse democracy. He examines the process that science and technology has been becoming "ideology" in capitalist society. Then he draws out the following conclusion: modern democratic politics which has been losing practical discourse can't take on the role of guardian of modern society and more, it has been degenerating into the form of rule of technological autarchy; The legitimacy of public power doesn't originate from the sphere of life any more, instead from the system itself which is controlled by tool-aim reason. The life world can only provide the formal popular loyalty for it. That is just the capitalistic crisis of legitimacy. To solve this crisis. The only way is to renew the public sphere .fully bring the potential of it into play.Viewing from the history of thought, there had been from the following ideas: the public sphere as political action, the public sphere as social opinion. the public sphere as economic action. And the public sphere as ideology. From the view of democracy. Habermas synthesizes these ideas of the public sphere and emphatically expounds political public sphere. He regards it as an absolutely necessary ideal category of capitalistic democratic politics and thinks that it contains the mechanism and purport of democracy. This kind of the public sphere is full of the tension between the private and the public and the public, and is the unity of practical discourse of ethic, moral and politics. It's democratic mechanism manifests itself as following: through communicative action. The public which are independent and autonomic posit the topics for discussion into the public sphere and freely discuss, defend, criticize them .they manage to general agreement which is the pubic opinion. However, Habermas's discourse democracy is not only the discourse communication in the public sphere and manifests itself as the reciprocity between the public sphere and the system of power .thus a kind of model procedural democracy whose basis is the practice democracy is constituted.