Basic introduction Chinese name: jurgen habermas mbth: jurgen habermas (German original name) Nationality: German nationality: Germanic nationality birthplace: Cologne, Germany Date of birth: A.D.1June 929 18 Occupation: writer, scholar, graduate school: University of G? ttingen, University of Zurich, University of Bonn Major achievements: representative works of contemporary western Marxism: structure in the field of public affairs. Theory and Practice, Knowledge and Human Purpose, Communicative Behavior Education Theory: Doctoral degree: 2065438+ jurgen habermas (jurgen habermas,1June 929 18-) is one of the most important German philosophers. He has been a professor at Heidelberg University, a professor at Frankfurt University, director of the Institute of Social Studies at Frankfurt University, and director of the Institute of Living World of Max Planck Association in Germany. 1994 retired. He is also the backbone of the second generation Frankfurt School of Western Marxism. Habermas is recognized as "the most influential thinker in the contemporary era" because of his complex and profound thoughts and grand and complete system. wilby called him "the Hegelian school in the contemporary era" and "the greatest philosopher in the post-industrial revolution period", which occupies a decisive position in western academic circles. Characters experience was born in Dü sseldorf on June 1929. Cleft palate surgery in children. In his autobiographical speech, he said: "After 1945, the door was opened. We studied expressionist art, Kafka, thomas mann and hermann hesse, world literature written in English, Sartre's existentialism and French left-wing Catholicism, Freud and Marx and john dewey. His students had a far-reaching influence on German re-education. At the same time, movies also convey a lot of exciting information to us. The liberation spirit and revolutionary spirit of modernism are fully visually demonstrated through mondriaan's constructivist painting, the geometric style of Bauhaus School of Architecture and the uncompromising industrial modeling. " Habermas grew up in Nazi Germany and didn't become radical until the late 1950s. He worked as Adorno's assistant and went in and out of the Social Research Center of Frankfurt University. In his early years, he was famous for his critical theory in German philosophy. Theoretically, he inherited the great tradition of German rationalism, realized the extreme importance of Marx and Freud's theories to political science and social science, and deeply absorbed Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. 196 1 year completed the thesis of professorship qualification "structural transformation of public sector", obtained the qualification of university professor, and taught at Heidelberg University. 1964- 197 1, professor of philosophy and sociology at Frankfurt University, assisted Adorno in directing the Frankfurt Institute for Social Studies. 1972 transferred to Max Planck Institute in Steinberg, West Germany, and served as one of the two directors of Planck Institute for Living Conditions in the world science and technology. Later, he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. 1994 retired. Jurgen habermas's most basic contributions are: a historical discussion on the formation and disintegration of the public sphere (You Habermas: the structural change of public activities, German version 1962), and an investigation of the modern scientific and technological situation in capitalist society (You Habermas: knowledge and human interests (65438+). 197 1 English version), formulating the philosophical framework of critical theory (theory and practice (1963), 1974 English version; Towards a reasonable society (English version 1968), 1970), the development of action theory (German version 198 1), the analysis of crisis types in capitalist society (legitimacy crisis), and social evolution theory. Habermas, the basic theoretical viewpoint of controversial sociology, believes that the process of western rationalization is mainly manifested in the development of technical rationality and its all-round penetration in all fields of life. However, technical rationality itself cannot solve the problem of values in the life world, so Habermas put forward the concept of communicative rationality, trying to solve many crises faced by the late capitalist society through the rationalization process of communicative behavior. Therefore, his theory is called "communicative action theory". Habermas believes that knowledge comes from three kinds of interests of human beings, and accordingly there are three kinds of knowledge. He denied the dominant position of historical interpretation knowledge, empirical analysis knowledge and technical control purport, which led to the crisis of capitalist society. In order to overcome the crisis of motivation and trust, critical theory must attach importance to the process of interaction and communication. Only through communication can human beings be liberated from being ruled. Habermas's knowledge purport theory, technology domination theory and communicative action theory, as a comprehensive social criticism theory, have had a far-reaching impact. Scholars say, "The conflict between Habermas and Hawke Hamo about the understanding of' experience and norms' and' revolution' is only one of many contradictions within the Social Research Institute, and it is precisely because they are representatives of two generations of Frankfurt School that they are particularly eye-catching. In addition to the intergenerational conflict between them, there are also constant frictions and contradictions among the peers of Frankfurt School. First, Hawke Hammer and Fromm had serious differences around psychoanalytic theory, until they parted ways in the end. Otto Hammer and Franz Neumann's theory of "authoritative country" was marginalized in Hawke Hammer's overall research plan for the Institute of Social Studies (it is said that the reason for marginalization is that this concept is inconsistent with Hawke Hammer's good friend Pollock's research interest), and this theory is unknown and has not yet received due attention; Marcuse's radical philosophy completely deviated from the original theoretical premise of Frankfurt School' the identity of theory and practice'. " Habermas is the second generation representative of Frankfurt School, an important school of western Marxism. His works are rich and dozens have been published so far. The main representative works are: Structural Transformation in Public Affairs, Theory and Practice, Knowledge and Human Purport, Technology and Science as Ideology, Logic of Social Science, Crisis of Legitimacy, Culture and Criticism, Reconstruction of Historical Materialism, Communication and Social Evolution, Theory of Communicative Action and Theory of Communicative Action. 1 stage and pre-communication period (1959- 1968), the research topic is the historical analysis of the bourgeois public sphere and the historical reconstruction of epistemology. Habermas put forward the concept of critical science through critical positivism and historicism. 2. During the communication period (1969- 198 1), Habermas initially established a theoretical system of communication behavior as a social critical theory from the perspective of rebuilding historical materialism. 3. In the post-communicative period (1982- 1989), Habermas mainly devoted himself to the historical clearing of the category of modernity and the criticism of metaphysical thought, in order to resist postmodernism, expounded a "post-metaphysical thought" based on the linguistic turn, and made a meta-argument on the theory of communicative behavior from two angles: the longitudinal (ideological history) and the horizontal (metaphysical criticism). 4. During the period of reflection (1990-2000), Habermas began to consciously push the theory of communicative behavior into the fields of political philosophy and legal philosophy. By criticizing the political essence of liberalism and communitarianism, he advocated the establishment of a new discourse political model and the reconstruction of democratic system with formalism. Habermas' ideological characteristics are mainly manifested in the following aspects: 1. First of all, it is controversial. After Habermas entered the academic field, he constantly challenged various ideological lines and set off one academic debate after another. Worthy of attention: the methodological dispute with Popper and Gadamer; Debate with Foucault's modernity; The metaphysical dispute with Henrik; Historical dispute with Nolte; Debate with Ruman's social theory, Rawls' normative democracy, and Slote Dijak's genetic technology. 2. Secondly, it is comprehensive. Habermas is an outstanding master of synthesis. He organically combined different ideological lines and theoretical categories, such as Marxism with spiritual lines and theoretical categories, such as Marxism with psychoanalysis, German idealism with American pragmatism, and philosophical transcendentalism with philosophical empiricism. 3. Furthermore, it is systematic. Habermas attaches great importance to the construction of his own theoretical system. For a long time, he gradually established and improved his theoretical system of communicative behavior from the perspectives of methodology, epistemology, philosophy of language, sociology, aesthetics, politics and law, and tried to systematically reconstruct Marxism, especially the critical theory of Frankfurt School, from a normative perspective. 4. Finally, it is practical. Although Habermas is an academic thinker, he attaches great importance to the practicality of his thoughts. Since 1968, Habermas has actively participated in the "student movement" and has been exerting great influence in the field of German political practice. For example, in the German election of 1998, Habermas made a lot of stationery for the Social Democratic Party at a critical moment, which provided theoretical support. In addition, in the 1990s, Habermas led his disciples to form a political club with a group of politicians represented by Fischer, then Minister of Environment of Hesse (now German Foreign Minister), and held political salons regularly to discuss major issues at home and abroad from the perspective of political philosophy, which laid a theoretical foundation for Fischer's foreign policy. For example, Fischer's package proposal on EU reform has certain internal relations with Habermas's discourse and political model. Since the early 1980s, Habermas's works have been translated into Chinese and published, which has a great influence on the academic circles in China. Up to now, Habermas' published and forthcoming works in China mainly include: Collected Works of Habermas by Shanghai People's Publishing House (six volumes), Communicative Behavior and Facts and Value Theory by Sanlian Bookstore, Post-Metaphysical Thought by Yilin Publishing House, Structural Transformation of Public Sphere and Cognition and Interest by Lin Xue Publishing House, etc. Undeniably, Habermas' communicative behavior, as a post-Marxist theory, does have problems of universalism, eclecticism and western centralism, which deserves our in-depth analysis and criticism. However, Habermas's attempt to develop Marxism, especially his attempt to combine classical Marxist theory with the practice of late capitalist society, deserves our serious attention. For example, his thorough analysis of the legitimacy crisis of late capitalism, the reconstruction of historical materialism, the historical carding of the category of nation-state, and the serious thinking on the arrangement of democratic system and the confirmation of citizenship in the context of globalization are all enlightening. Evaluation Although his business is repeated with Frankfurt School, his thoughts are developed in a very different framework from that adopted by the main representatives of this school (Adorno, Hawke Hamor and Marcuse). For example, Adorno thinks that knowledge and value have no ultimate foundation, while Habermas insists that the basic problem (that is, the problem of providing a reliable and standard foundation for critical theory) can be solved, and he is also very concerned about the development of the philosophical pillar of critical theory. This involves the reconstruction of some central propositions of classical Greek philosophy and German philosophy, the inseparability of truth and morality, the inseparability of facts and values, and the inseparability of theory and practice. His ultimate goal is to establish such a framework, which can absorb many obviously competitive methods in social science research, including ideological criticism, action theory, social system analysis and evolution theory. For Habermas, the necessity of re-formulating critical theory is determined by the historical development of the 20th century. The Russian revolution degenerated into Stalinism, the failure of popular revolution in the West so far, the proletarian people's lack of revolutionary class consciousness, and the frequent disintegration of Marxist theory-either deterministic objective science or pessimistic cultural criticism-are all regarded by Habermas as important features of the present era. In addition, he also asserted that many fundamental changes are taking place in capitalist society. State intervention is strengthening, the market is being maintained and restored, capitalism is becoming more and more organized, the rationality of tools (this rationality only refers to taking appropriate measures to achieve the predetermined goals) and bureaucracy threaten the "public sphere" (referring to the field where political life is openly discussed by citizens), and the new crisis tendency is threatening the legitimacy of social and political order. In order to solve these problems, Habermas developed a theoretical policy, which can be linked with social science and humanities. Up to now, his most basic contributions are: historical discussion on the formation and disintegration of the public sphere, investigation on the modern scientific and technological situation of capitalist society, philosophical framework of critical theory, development analysis of action theory, crisis types of capitalist society and reconstruction of social evolution theory. Communicative behavior theory 198 1 year, Habermas put forward the theory of communicative behavior, which aroused widespread concern in western academic circles. Its purpose is to establish a "normative basis" to analyze and criticize the structural transformation of capitalist society. Habermas believes that the critical theory of the early Frankfurt School has three weaknesses: First, it fails to take seriously the achievements of modern philosophy and social sciences, refuses to use them to enrich its own theory, indulges in instrumental rational criticism, sticks to cultural and ideological criticism, and fails to make an empirical analysis of this complex real society. Therefore, this criticism has little contribution to the study of social experience. Second, he failed to sublate Hegel's concept of rationality, and still regarded rationality as a transcendental force, unable to grasp its true meaning. Third, it failed to take capitalist democracy seriously, so it was impossible to objectively evaluate the achievements made by the late capitalist society in adopting welfare policies. He believes that the direct result of the structural transformation of the public sphere is unreasonable communication behavior and the resulting colonization of the living world. Unreasonable capitalist communication behavior is mainly manifested in three aspects: first, the communication relationship between people presents a morbid situation, such as the generalization of material interests in communication, obstacles in communication understanding and so on. Second, the risk of communication has increased. As Baker said, modern society is already on the "crater of civilization". Giddens also pointed out that modernity or modern society has led to the increase of risks, such as the threat of nuclear war to human survival and the expansion of risk environment. Third, the scope of communication is shrinking, and specialized fields such as production, science and politics with thematic and differentiated features are gradually forming a specialized world with utilitarianism as its value orientation, thus devouring the basis of people's communication behavior-the life world. Habermas believes that there are three types of the whole world of human life: the subjective world, the objective world and the social world, which have become the focus of three cognitive interests. Among them, the social world includes the institutional world and the life world: the institutional world refers to those institutionalized, organized and bureaucratic worlds, that is, modern state organs and social market systems; The life world refers to the "original world" where verbal communication can be carried out and discourse knowledge can be pursued. It includes the public sphere of discourse knowledge and the private sphere of safeguarding private interests. Due to the contradiction between private sphere and public sphere in capitalist society, capitalist society will be totally alienated. Therefore, only by standardizing and reconstructing the structural transformation of the capitalist public sphere and returning to the life world can the capitalist society continue to develop. Therefore, there is only one task left for Habermas, that is, "rebuilding historical materialism", building an ideal communicative behavior model and establishing his communicative behavior theory. Types of communicative behavior In the theory of communicative behavior, he divided human behavior into four types. One is purposeful behavior. Mainly concentrated in the field of production, it engages in the work of transforming the objective world with the help of instrumental rationality. However, restricted by objective conditions, this kind of action not only can not give full play to human subjectivity, but also becomes a means to suppress people, so it is not reasonable. The second is to regulate behavior. This kind of behavior aims at the same value orientation of actors, which is mainly reflected in people's subjective world and social world in terms of value identification and norm compliance. The third is dramatic behavior. Similar to Bacon's theater illusion, he thinks that society is a stage, and each individual has to perform himself in front of the audience or objects, recite the "lines" that have already been prepared, and let the audience understand his "subtext", so this is not a reasonable behavior. But society needs this kind of behavior, because it is a way of people's social interaction. The first three behaviors either suppress human subjectivity or make people become a social symbol and alienated into a tool, so they are all unreasonable behaviors, so he put forward communicative behavior. The fourth is communication action. Communicative behavior uses verbal or nonverbal symbols as a tool to understand their actions, so as to reach an agreement on how to coordinate their actions effectively. It is the synthesis and sublation of subjective world, objective world and social world, so it must be a rational behavior. The Function of Communicative Behavior Habermas thinks that his concept of communicative behavior has four functions: first, the function of understanding is helpful to master knowledge; Second, the function of cooperation makes the society form an organic whole to achieve social goals; Third, the socialization function, that is, it can make individuals identify with social norms and value orientations, thus helping to form a certain value orientation; Fourth, the function of social transformation, because the general purpose of the first three functions is to rebuild historical materialism, reproduce the proper function of capitalist countries, and realize the structural transformation, structural change and social evolution of capitalist society. Because of this, Habermas always insists that modernity is still an "unfinished business". Generally speaking, Habermas's communicative behavior theory tries to solve the following problems. First of all, it provides a new perspective for understanding and grasping the practice of contemporary capitalist society. After World War II, especially since 1970s, new changes have taken place in western capitalist society, with the middle class generally increasing and the living conditions of the working class improved. Capitalist society is no longer a society full of class contradictions and class struggles described by Marx and Lenin. Then, how to understand the essence and characteristics of pulse capitalism has become a topic of concern to scholars. Habermas not only saw the alienated essence of capitalist society with his unique perspective, but also regarded this alienated social phenomenon as the only way for the structural transformation and social change of capitalist society. In other words, he regards this alienated social reality as an inevitable process of the development of capitalist society. Secondly, it puts forward its own unique interpretation principle for integrating subjectivism and objectivism in sociological tradition. Since modern Descartes, western philosophy and social sciences have been influenced by the bipolar thinking mode of empiricism and rationalism, and sociology, as a discipline differentiated from philosophy, is no exception. On the one hand, as an empirical science, sociology should seek the objectivity of "social facts". However, all "social facts" are purposeful and conscious activities of the subject, so they inevitably have subjective value. In this way, how to unify subjective and objective issues and realize the unity of subjective and objective, instrumental rationality and value rationality has become a major theoretical issue that sociologists generally pay attention to. Habermas takes "interest" as the logical starting point and "original", "undifferentiated" and "untitled" life world as the end result, which should be said to have its unique value in solving the binary opposition between subject and object. Third, it provides its own "prescription" for solving the problem of social structure transformation in the West, avoiding human alienation and realizing human liberation. Facing the new situation of total alienation of capitalist society, a large number of western social thinkers have started their own thinking. Giddens believes that modern society is a "risk society" from the perspective of "structural duality"; Bell insists that the society represented by the United States has undergone profound social changes and structural transformation, which he optimistically calls "post-industrial society"; Lyotard, Rorty and others believe that the current capitalist society has entered a "post-modern society". Habermas believes that in order to avoid alienation in the structural transformation of public sphere in contemporary capitalist society, we must play the role of communicative rationality, "return to the life world" again and realize the evolution of society. Of course, Habermas's theory of communicative behavior still has great limitations. This is mainly manifested in three aspects: First, the limitations of methodology. He tried to integrate subjectivism and objectivism, metaphysics and metaphysics, but fundamentally speaking, it is unrealistic to abandon or bypass Marx's view of practice, so he can only return to dualism or replace the original dualism with a new dualism. The second is the limitation of perspective foundation. He takes interest as the basis of understanding, but where does human interest come from? If Habermas's "interest" is questioned ontologically, we can easily find that no matter how perfect his argument is, his so-called "interest" is still a Cartesian "natural concept". The third is the limitation of the theoretical foothold. He is more interested in returning to "life world" than "the future of capitalism", and puts forward "rebuilding historical materialism" to realize "social evolution" through "communicative behavior theory". However, his so-called "life world" is actually another form of "utopia". Universalism Thought In the late 1980s, the great changes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union made the international situation of the Cold War history, followed by a rapid and profound globalization change. This includes the globalization of economic process, that is, the rapid expansion of free market economy; It also includes the globalization of politics, that is, the global expansion of values dominated by American liberal and democratic ideas. The United States has always been the leading force behind this wave of globalization. However, promoting markets and democracy has not been smooth sailing. Although it has successfully entered the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other countries, it has encountered obstacles in other regions, so American policymakers turned to armed intervention. In view of American globalism foreign policy, some international political thoughts have emerged, including Habermas' universalism thought, the main representative of contemporary western Marxism. Habermas demonstrated his universalist international political thoughts through his comments on 1999 Kosovo War and the Iraq War launched by the United States in 2003. Habermas expressed different views on these two seemingly similar wars, from which we can see the connotation of universalism he advocated. 1After NATO bombed Yugoslavia on March 24th, 999, world public opinion was in an uproar. Habermas published the article "* * and humanity: a war on the border of law and morality" in Time magazine, an important German newspaper, and clearly expressed his support for this war. The basic point of this paper is that at the end of the 20th century, the international community should generally respect basic human rights, which is the bottom line of the legitimacy of any country's rule. The modern international community should not be bound by the supremacy of national sovereignty within its power to prevent large-scale humanitarian tragedies. Habermas believes that the Kosovo war is legal. First of all, although NATO, led by the United States, was not authorized by the UN Security Council, "its intervention was carried out as an emergency rescue for a persecuted minority (and religious minority)". In other words, although war is not desirable, it is justified as a last resort in an emergency and there is no other better choice. He pointed out that in the months before the air raid, about 300,000 people in Kosovo were brutally killed, intimidated and driven away. There are signs that Yugoslavia is carrying out ethnic cleansing, and the United States and politically responsible EU member States have the obligation to protect the human rights of ethnic Albanians from being violated. He recognized the motives of American intervention and denied any benefits behind the war. It is believed that Yugoslavia has seriously trampled on people's human rights, and the international community can directly intervene beyond its national sovereignty. Secondly, he put forward the second legitimate reason for the war, that is, the "air strikes" of the allied forces are different from previous wars, and the "surgical precision" air strikes can effectively protect civilians from harm. But it is obviously unconvincing to use these to defend the war, because the war will inevitably cause people's suffering. In addition, he is also worried that world powers will arbitrarily violate other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of human rights. Therefore, he needs to prove the legitimacy of this war in theory and make clear the political premise and conditions of human rights he advocates. Award-winning 20 15 won the Kruger lifetime achievement award in humanities and social sciences;