Communication action theory and reconstruction of modern social order

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的paper代写范文- Communication action theory and reconstruction of modern social order，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了交往行动理论与现代社会秩序的重构。现代社会发展过程中，社会变革的常态化必然会对社会稳定性构成挑战。社会的这种常态性的变化与时尚的发展类似。在时尚中，人们实际上是确立了一种等级秩序，人们赶时髦就是要表明自己在这种等级秩序中的地位。然而，当新时尚出现的时候，等级秩序就被破坏了，就需要进行新的等级秩序更替。在《交往行动理论》中，当代资本主义社会的危机是系统入侵了生活世界。行政系统对公共领域的干预。同时，由于生产过剩情况的出现，广告宣传对企业的生存来说也越来越重要，企业对大众传媒的干预也日益突出。

According to baudelaire, modernity is transient and transitional. In the words of Marx in the communist manifesto, "the constant revolution in production, the perpetual convulsion of all social conditions, the perpetual uncertainty and change -- this is what distinguishes the bourgeois age from all previous ages. All fixed and rigid relations, with their concomitant and exalted ideas and opinions, are removed; all newly formed relations become old before they are fixed." This is Marx's description of modernity in a capitalist society. That is to say, a new situation has emerged in modern society, when a social order has not been fixed, it becomes old and outdated. Society is developing so fast that it constantly challenges the old order and calls for the establishment of new rules and new orders. So how can new rules be established and thus new order established? For modern Chinese society, reform has become a normal state, and such a normal state of reform is bound to constantly change the original order. Then what kind of reform is justified and should be accepted by the society? This is actually a question of modernity. This is a long - term problem in the process of social modernization. If this problem is not well solved, the achievements of modernization are easily aborted.

Faced with this problem of modernity, since the enlightenment, people have tried to solve it from different perspectives. Generally speaking, since the enlightenment, the answers to this question of modernity mainly include the following theoretical orientations: individualism, contract theory, functionalism and cultural conservatism.

The idea of individualism actually starts with Descartes. He established the principle of subjectivity in modern philosophy. It can be said that the principle of subjectivity is a fundamental principle of modern society since the enlightenment. This fundamental principle is summarized to some extent in the basic proposition "I think therefore I am". In a social sense, Descartes' "I think therefore I am" means that each person's own rational thinking is the ultimate criterion for making all judgments. Since man can doubt everything and can only trust his own rational judgment, all established social orders and norms can be reconsidered. With the continuous expansion of market economy, protecting individual rights and interests has become the core idea of capitalism. When the conflicts of interest between individuals are increasingly intensified, people do not give up the priority of individual rights, but stress to discipline themselves with rules. So how did these rules come about? According to Hobbes' conception of the state of nature, man in the state of nature is an individual who thinks only of his own interests. There is no other perspective in his private interests. These individuals in a state of war cannot make a contract if they do not have a perspective of the other. So they relied on external forces, the power of the state, to end this state of war. Unlike Hobbes' model, Kant believes that legitimate social rules are not imposed from outside, but the result of people's self-legislation. In his view, all men should legislate themselves, limit themselves, and distance themselves from their material interests. If individuals keep their material interests at a distance, then people can obtain a social norm that can be generalized. However, people in a capitalist society are self-interested individuals, and it is only a moral expectation that it is impossible for them to restrain themselves in reality. According to Hegel, these are two different ideas of natural law. However, natural law, whether in the sense of empirical research or formal research, although different in appearance, is essentially the same, that is, it assumes that "individual existence" is absolutely "first and highest". One-sided emphasis on the priority of individuals will inevitably face the problem of social integration, and ultimately rely on external compulsion to achieve social integration.

In the face of such difficulties, Hegel proposed a completely different way of thinking, that is, everyone already exists in a certain social community. Such communities are not the result of mutual contracts between isolated individuals. Everyone will improve their relationship with each other through the continuous improvement of their own self-consciousness. As one's sense of self grows, one can tolerate others in consciousness. As long as the consciousness of people continues to improve, a legitimate social order will be formed. However, with the development of people's self-consciousness, instrumental rationality has become the most fundamental way of thinking in modern society since the enlightenment. This so-called instrumental rationality is actually Hegel's understanding. This kind of intellectual thinking centers on usefulness. For Hegel: "usefulness is a fundamental concept of enlightenment." Hegel expected to use the further improvement of human's rational ability to overcome the limitations of intellectual thinking. However, the development of modern society was not integrated by the improvement of rational ability as Hegel expected. On the contrary, the development of instrumental rationality became more and more intense. With instrumental rationality, society is integrated in a systemically functional way.

According to habermas, there are two ways of social integration: system integration and social integration. System integration is functional integration, while social integration is the social connection between people based on certain cultural values. In the process of modernization of traditional society, society is increasingly divided into a series of functional subsystems. Structural functionalism emphasizes that the society is a functional system. As long as the functional system can work well, the society is stable. The theory of functionalism only emphasizes the mutual cooperation and coordination among various functional subsystems of the society, and emphasizes the function combination relationship within the system. Of course, the problem of social integration can be solved by system integration to some extent. This ensures that the social system works well, but weber's problem of "loss of freedom" and "loss of meaning" arises. The capitalist cultural contradiction mentioned by bell shows that modernism culture displays its individuality, which is a challenge to this loss of freedom. It's as if people in everyday life often ask themselves, what is the purpose of working hard in a system without freedom? Of course, habermas has his own understanding of this loss of freedom and meaning. In his view, this was caused by systems invading the living world. According to his analysis, there is a cultural field independent of economic system and administrative power system in daily life. In this field of culture, people discuss with each other issues of common concern. Through this discussion, the cultural sphere is reproduced, and the social connections between people are reproduced. Cultural reproduction is also the reproduction of social integration in a certain sense. However, for habermas, the reproduction of the living world was difficult due to the invasion of the system to the living world.

Of course, in order to realize the integration of social functions, people need to formulate various social rules and systems. Because various rule systems are the most effective means to achieve social integration, various forms of social contract theory appeared. In his hypothesis of natural state, Hobbes assumed a supreme authority beyond the scope of contract to guarantee the justice of contract, Rousseau assumed a general will to guarantee the justice of contract, and rawls in modern society constructed a just system with the assumption of ignorance. Obviously, these scholars have noticed that a just social system is the key to a stable social order. Rawls's theory of justice captures this crucial problem. In his design, all participants jointly choose the options he proposes, namely the two principles of justice, in their own rational evaluation. In rawls's theory of justice, the alternative objects are predetermined. So where do these choices come from? In fact, rawls's whole argument process has set up a process that will inevitably make people choose two principles of justice. The central problem with these contract theories is that they all assume a state of nature, but in fact, contracts in human history do not occur in the state of nature they assume, but under certain social conditions.

In the face of the problem of social integration, thinkers in the history of ideas have advocated returning to tradition. For example, bell puts forward a concept of cultural conservatism in the cultural contradiction of capitalism. According to his analysis, since modernism culture promotes individualism and eventually leads to nihilism, then the culture of modernism cannot meet the needs of modern social integration. Bell envisioned a new religion that could be transformed and used to integrate this divided social world. This is just like some people in our modern society are often fond of talking about things in traditional culture, and they hope to make things in traditional culture play a role again in modern society and change the phenomenon of public morality. In practice, this is futile. This is because the development of modernization is to break away from traditional things and break the existing order. The reconstruction of social order must take place on the basis of existing social culture. In the words of habermas, modernity has to prove itself, it has to justify itself. So how does modernity justify itself?

In the development of modern society, the normalization of social change will inevitably challenge social stability. This normal change in society is similar to the development of fashion. In fashion, the death of something new is predicted as soon as it appears. New things are soon replaced by newer ones, and the replacement of old and new is accelerating. In fashion, people actually establish a hierarchical order, and people follow fashion to show their status in this hierarchical order. However, when the new fashion appears, the hierarchical order is broken, which requires the replacement of the new hierarchical order. In this sense, baudrillard argues, "fashion is immoral." Of course, this substitution of fashion is spontaneous in a market economy. The market system can justify itself because, according to the capitalist system, the market system is a voluntary participation of everyone, and it is at least formally just. This form of justice is still accepted by most people in the development of capitalism. However, economic crises occur frequently in spontaneous market systems. In response to the economic crisis, the state intervened in the market. At this point, the state faces the question, why is state intervention in the economic system justified? For example, the state redistributes the income of one part of the population through taxation, thus transferring it to another part of the population. What justifies the state doing this? The state must justify itself. "The economic crisis has been transferred to the political system because the government has acted aggressively to avoid it," habermas said. If the state cannot justify these practices, it will face a crisis of legitimacy. For habermas, the crisis at the core of modern capitalist society is not an economic crisis, but a crisis of legitimacy.

From the previous discussion, we can see that the legitimization crisis of capitalist society is caused by the process of state intervention in the economy. Then how can we prove the legitimacy of state intervention? According to habermas, the so-called crisis of legitimacy is a crisis of national identity, which means that the citizens of the country generally disapprove of the policies adopted by the country. So the way to solve the problem is to get the citizens of the country to agree with the policies of the country. How can the citizens of a country agree with its policies? If these policies are ones that the citizens of the state themselves endorse in public discourse, then this crisis of legitimacy is resolved. That, of course, is the problem. In the contemporary western society, the public sphere is interfered by the economic system and the administrative power system. In the structural transformation of the public sphere, habermas described it as the "re-feudalization" of the public sphere. Since the public sphere is manipulated, it is impossible to discuss the problems of public policy in the public sphere, and it is impossible to solve the crisis of legitimization in the capitalist society with the help of the public sphere. In the theory of communicative action, habermas modified this statement in his structural transformation of the public sphere. He believes that the crisis of modern capitalist society is the systematic invasion of the living world. Why the problem? This is because, when a country faces a crisis of legitimacy, it will gain legitimacy by manipulating the media. That is to say, the state's demand for legalization leads to the "re-feudalization" of the public sphere. This is the intervention of the administrative system in the public sphere. At the same time, due to the emergence of overproduction, advertising is becoming more and more important for the survival of enterprises, and the intervention of enterprises in mass media is also increasingly prominent. For habermas, the public sphere was part of the living world, the sphere of daily interaction. When people encounter problems in the life world, they will communicate in the public sphere. According to the theory of communicative action, the intrusion of the system into the living world will actually make the reproduction of the living world difficult. This difficulty makes it difficult to solve the crisis of legitimacy in modern countries.

Therefore, for habermas, the reconstruction of the living world, so that people in the living world can communicate with each other smoothly, so that they can communicate with each other on the major problems in life, is the primary problem that needs to be solved in modern society.

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