The Research On Habermas' Theory Of Rationalization

Since the industrial revolution in 19th century, the material civilization got its prosperity with the help of increments of science and technology which improved the productivity efficiently. The success of science and technology justified them as the only way to achieve the rational society. Therefore with the influence of the enlightenment movement the rationality of human society was connected with the development of science and technology. However with the dilatation and infiltration of the science and technology some evil consequences had appeared in the later capitalism. This kind of consequences had involved the aspects of culture, politics, economic, and idea of value etc, so we cannot solve the problems in the later capitalism depended on the sole role of technology, the problems need be examined synthetically and in the multi-dimensions of the whole structure of the social system.This thesis tries to study the theory of rationalization in Habernas's system, raises the question about in what kind of background Habermas invented his theory and tried to find out his clue along his criticizing and inheriting the traditional rationality theory.Habermas's rationalization is communicative rationalization which must rebuild on the communicative acts. In this new kind of rationalization, the communication is took in the style of discourse democracy. After building the basic frame of communicative rationalization, Habermas continued to argue that science and technology have the potentiality and possibility which can lead to the democracy communication. To prove his arguments, Habermas took his strategy which make his theory of discourse democracy as his basement and put the development of science and technology into the reference frame of the will to democracy politics. He tried to lodge the science and technology in the framework of communicative rationality, and unify the technical knowledge and the practice of social life-world. He wanted to verify that we need the science and technology, but we cannot be controlled and slaved by them. We can see the worth and necessary of his work but his theory of rationalization also ignored the laws belonging to science and technology , and his method is a very ideally way with an Utopian imagination.