The Pursuit Of Ideals: The Public Rationality In Deliberative Democracy

In 1980s, as the focus of political science, the theory of democracy has ushered in "a deliberative turn". Attention to deliberative democracy means that more attention to the authenticity of democracy. The research has also experienced the transition from the normative orientation to the experience orientation, and then to the combination of the both. There is still a considerable difference between scholars due to the limited researching time. Deliberative democracy is considered as a form of government, a governance mechanism, a form of democratic politics, a decision-making mechanism and so on, because of the different perspectives. The theory is orientated from: liberalism, republicanism and critical theory. The concept of deliberation, legitimacy, consensus and some related one are also sorted out.Reason is one of the foundations of democracy, and it is Rawls's public reason and Habermas's communicative rationality that are the most closely connected with the deliberative democracy. The former one is the concern in this dissertation. The public reason has experienced the evolution from Hobbes, Rock and Rousseau to Kant. Finally, it has become an important concept in the study of the principle of justice in the hands of Rawls. This dissertation attempts to link the deliberative democracy with the public reason, examining the public reason in it.Based on this, in this dissertation, we build the model of deliberative system embarking from the System Theory as a decision-making mechanism. We regard decision-making mechanism through the deliberative process as a system consisted of the Deliberative Beginning, the Deliberative Process and the Deliberative Result. The understanding of public reason is also included in this system. Finally we get a clear look in understanding public reason of deliberative democracy by analyzing the above three parts.From the final Deliberative System Model, the Deliberative Beginning is the inputting part in the whole system. The demand of the input is pluralism and legitimacy; and the support is citizen's "Ability to Start". The public reason in the Deliberative Beginning is "the public reason as citizen's ability". the Deliberative Process is a "black-box" of the whole system. We conclude that public reason in the Deliberative Process as a public thinking, through normatively orientating the deliberative as a mechanism before discussions on decision-making and experientially orientating it as a method promoting the conversion of preference. The Deliberative Result is the output of the whole system. It soundly responses pluralism and legitimacy based on the overlapping consensus of reasonable pluralism and public reason. Public reason in The Deliberative Result is "as the public value of public reason".