In his writings, Jürgen Habermas has rarely mentioned developing countries in general and China in particular, except in his discussion of Max Weber's conception of occidental rationalism (see Habermas 1984: 209-210; Tong 2000a: 94-100).2 This essay tries to show, however, that his theory of modernity and modernization based on his theory of communicative action is, compared with other current social theories, more relevant to China. It supplies a better conceptual basis on which we can get a new and rewarding interpretation of the Chinese discourse of modernity and modernization. At the same time, Habermas's theory, which both claims universality and admits fallibility, can also be better understood in a context other than the one from which it was developed. The first section gives an overview of the Chinese discourse of modernity. The discussion in the ensuing four sections is largely around the following questions respectively: (1) how to find an internal connection between value rationality and instrumental rationality; (2) how to overcome the possible tension between science and democracy; (3) how to understand the idea of socialism in our times; and (4) how to offer a critical defense of the project of modernity. The final section is devoted to the question of what a theory with discourse as a key word would mean to the Chinese discourse of modernity in general and the Chinese political culture in general.

I. Major Themes of the Chinese Discourse of Modernity

The Chinese discourse of modernity may be understood in four major themes. At its first stage in late 19th century, the major problem was what should be regarded as ti 体 (substance) and yong 用 (function) if China wanted to modernize itself; in the first decades of the 20th century, the project of modernization in China was more widely understood as one to implement science and democracy in the country; the second half of the 20th century was a period in which a socialist mode of modernity was searched for and experimented with; and, finally, at the turn of this century, debates are going on between the leftist critics and the liberal defenders of the project of modernity characterized first of all by market economy and by the modern legal system.

Literally meaning "body" and "use," ti and yong, as philosophical categories, also mean "ground" and "manifestation."3 Closely related to these two categories are Dao 道 and Qi 器literally meaning instrument ). In traditional Chinese philosophy, corresponding to the understanding of ti and yong as ground and manifestation, there is a tradition regarding dao as ti and qi as yong or the tradition of daoti qiyong 道体器用; corresponding to the understanding of ti and yong as body and use, there is a tradition of regarding qi as ti and dao as yong or the tradition of qiti daoyong 器体道用. A major characteristic of traditional Chinese philosophy is a wide consensus among Chinese philosophers that ti or dao is inseparably connected with, even identical to, yong or qi.

These categories entered the Chinese discourse of modernity when a group of Qing 清officials, the so-called yangwupai 洋务派(Westernizers) advocated the thesis of "Chinese learning as ti or substance and Western learning as yong or function" in the second half of the 19th century. Within this thesis of "Chinese-ti with Western-yong 中体西用," the categories themselves underwent a fundamental change: the emphasis now is turned from "the nature of things" to "the nature of cultures." Ti and yong were separate in objective embodiments and fused only in mind. And the relation between ti and yong was not only the relation between ground and manifestation and that between body and use. It was also the relation between what is regarded as a value in itself and what is regarded as an instrument in service of the value.

The advocates of this thesis were criticized from two sides, both on the grounds that they had separated ti from yong. While the traditionalists thought that the Western yong could not support the Chinese ti and could only damage the Chinese ti, the reformers thought that the Western yong could not be transplanted to China and survive there when it was uprooted from the Western ti. Theoretically speaking, the attack made by the traditionalists against the Westernizers was a frontal one: the Westernizers thought that the Chinese ti could be served with the Western yong, but the traditionalists thought that this point of view was groundless. But the criticism made by reformers of the Westernizers misses the main point: while the Westernizers thought that it was possible to combine the Chinese value with the Western instrument, the reformers thought that it was impossible, within Western learning itself, for the Western yong to be separated from the Western ti, the basis on which it had been developed.

There were two reformist criticisms of the thesis of Chinese-ti and Western-yong connected with taking dao as ti and qi as yong (daoti qiyong) and that of taking qi as ti and dao as yong (qiti daoyong). A major contribution of reformers to the Chinese discourse of modernity is their role as the forerunners of two major theoretical approaches to modernization among Chinese thinkers later in this century. The first regards modernization as a learning process of reaching ti through yong 由用以得体, seen from the perspective of a participant, which belongs to the tradition of daoti qiyong. The second regards modernization as an evolutionary process of "dao changing together with qi 器变道亦变," seen from the perspective of an observer, which belongs to the tradition of qiti daoyong. According to the former, the fact that China's modernization proceeds from the technological level through the institutional level to the cultural level is interpreted as a process in which cultural modernization is finally found to be the ground for a successful modernization of technology and institution. According to the latter, the same fact is interpreted as a process in which cultural modernization came as a result of technological and institutional modernization.

Though regarded as being decidedly refuted by reformist criticisms, the thesis of Chinese ti with Western-yong, especially the question it posed about the relation between value and instrument and that between tradition and modernity, greatly influenced the later development of the Chinese discourse of modernity. Because these two modern problems were posed in a pair of important categories in traditional Chinese philosophy, it became possible for the Chinese to think about these problems with the help of a philosophical tradition which is long, rich, and itself in the process of modernization in this century. The key point is to understand the relation between value and instrument and that between tradition and modernity in such a way that these relations are at the same time also the relation between ground and manifestation-their relations are thus not external, but internal. Different attempts to accomplish this made by thinkers from Liang Qichao 梁启超 and Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 to Mo Zongsan 牟宗三 and Li Zehou 李泽厚 have been a major part of the Chinese discourse of modernity in the last century.

Since the early 20th century, science and democracy have been widely regarded as two major elements of modernity by almost all participants in the Chinese discourse of modernity. This is especially true of those who claim to be inheritors of the New Culture Movement of 1919, Chinese liberals, and Chinese communists. Three conceptions of science among Chinese thinkers in 20th century have greatly influenced modern Chinese society:

1. The conception of science as the foundation of technology.

2. The belief in science as a system of well-justified beliefs about the objective and necessary laws of the world.

3. Science is characterized first of all in terms of its methods, procedures or attitudes and "spirit."

On the whole, Chinese Communists tended to emphasize the technological application and substantial content of science, while Chinese liberals tended to emphasize the procedural aspect of science. When considering the prospect of China's modernization, however, some famous Chinese liberals seemed to move to the other two conceptions of science. In the debate on "science versus Weltanschauungen" in the 1920s, for example, they emphasized the ability of scientific theories to unify people's ideas not only about the natural world, but also about their own lives. In the debate on modernization and that on democracy versus dictatorship in 1930s, moreover, most of them regarded science and technology as more relevant to China's modernization as a "problem" instead of a "project." The same arguments were made in 1980s not only by the official theorists who opposed "scientific socialism" to "democratic socialism" on the basis of the conception of science as a system of true reflections of reality verified through instrumental activities; they were also by liberally-minded intellectuals who did not base their ideas on the official ideology of socialism.

Socialism is, of course, one of the key words in the Chinese discourse of modernity, both before and after 1949. The major problem is what kind of collective identity the Chinese nation hopes to build in the modern world. Various forms of nationalism (ethnic nationalism, political nationalism and cultural nationalism) and cosmopolitanism in the first half of the 20th century can be seen as efforts to answer the question how to build a national identity that is both modern (universal) and Chinese (particular). In order to accomplish this task, two problems must be solved: how to combine the universal institutional order with the particular cultural value; and how to keep a balance between individual freedom and collective order. With regard to the first problem, Confucianism, with a sophisticated argument preferring the rule of virtue, or rule of "rite" to the rule of law, forms a major cultural background. Its influence is quite clear among major political and intellectual leaders. With regard to the second problem, as a result of the overwhelming influence of Confucian rationalism (compared with voluntarism), and the urgent tasks of national salvation, leading thinkers in the Chinese discourse of modernity typically subordinated individual freedom to legal orders (see Liang Qichao: 228), moral orders (see Liang Shuming: 298) or something in between (see Liu Shaoqi刘少奇: 258-9). In this regard, Li Dazhao李大钊 is an important exception, since he argued for mediating between the freedom of the individual and the order of society, and tried to combine the republicanism of Rousseau with the liberalism of J.S. Mill. He agreed with Rousseau in basing democracy on la volonte generale versus la volonte de tous, on the one hand, but he explained the formation of the "volonte generale" or the "general will" of the people according to Mill's idea of liberal public sphere, on the other (see Li Dazhao: 128).

Socialism is concerned not only with the relationship between society and the individual, but also with the relationship between civil society and the state. In the two non-governmental forces beyond the unified political power in traditional China, the so-called "lineage of (Confucian) Dao" is universal but has no institutionalized base, while the "lineage of blood (families and sib associations) is deeply rooted in the existing social structure but is particular. Xiang-yue乡约 (village-covenant) and shu-yuan 书院 (academy) originating in the Song dynasty were two attempts to give the "lineage of Dao" an institutionalized base and the "lineage of blood" a universal ground. But neither of them was successful in breaking through the framework of Confucianism and that of the traditional society. This shows that "society" in traditional China is much weaker than its counterparts in medieval Europe. This phenomenon was reinforced after 1949, when the state comprehensively integrated society into itself in the name of society. Liang Shuming had seen this danger of staticism quite clearly as early as the 1930s (see Liang Shuming: 573-4). But his project of rural reconstruction failed not only in practice, but also in theory, because his Confucian moralism prevented him from seeing the importance of institutionalization of the borderline between the state and society through a modern legal system.

Since the late 1970s China has entered a new period of modernization. The rapid changes of Chinese society thereafter forced Chinese intellectuals to rethink the real meaning of the project of modernity. One of the major debates at this stage of the Chinese discourse of modernity was that between the New Left critiques of modernity and the liberals' defense of modernity. Among the three types of leftist critiques in China toward the end of the 20th century, the New Left critique is different from the other two in that while the New Maoist critique is mainly interested in defending socialism (against what is seen as a "capitalist restoration") and the post-modern critique is mainly interested in criticizing modernity, the New Left critique is mainly interested in defending socialism by criticizing modernity. Defending socialism by criticizing modernity, this kind of critique does not aim to return to the type of socialism defended by the New Maoists. Instead of being a relativist deconstruction, this criticism is meant to be a radical refutation of anything unjust seen in the project of modernity. Modernity is a complex project full of tricks, pains and injustices, according to New Left thinkers. They argue that we should not make our judgments on the basis of a series of conceptual dichotomies and along the temporal line from pre-modern through modern to post-modern, or endorse anything just because it is modern, or because it has already been implemented universally in the modernized Western countries.

As a reaction to the New Left criticism, those who are called or claim themselves to be liberals attack the New Leftist thinkers for being totally unrealistic. According to liberals, New Leftists apply critical theories meant to address problems in the over-modernized Western society to problems in the under-modernized Chinese society. They also seek to replace the urgent tasks of developing a market economy and liberal institutions in China with utopian ideas of distributive justice and mass democracy.

II. Internal Connection Between Value Rationality (ti) and Instrumental Rationality (yong)

A major theoretical background for Habermas's theory of modernity is Max Weber's conception of Occidental rationalism. Habermas's idea is that the development of modern Western society is a process of rationalization, the kernel of which is the concept of purposive rationality (Zweckrationalit?t) or instrumental rationality vis-à-vis the so-called "value rationality" (Wertrationalit?t). Habermas's theory of modernity can be understood as his effort to explicate the internal relationship between value rationality and instrumental rationality neither in purely normative terms (decisionism) nor in metaphysical terms (philosophy of history).

The basic conceptual framework in which Habermas works out his theory of modernization is his theory of communicative action, in which Weber's idea of instrumental action is regarded as only one dimension. While instrumental action is concerned only with the relation between the subject and the object, communicative action is not only an interaction between at least two subjects, but also a comprehensive type of action related to all the worlds (the objective, the social, and the subjective worlds) at the same time. If instrumental rationality is concerned with the success of the instrumental agent in bringing about a desired state of affairs, communicative rationality is concerned with the understanding reached among actors concerning their validity claims (truth, rightness, and authenticity) brought up in their speech. In order to be able to reach this kind of understanding, the actor must have already mastered a language shared with his or her dialogue partners, and possess the ability to give reasons for what he or she says before possible criticisms. This in turn means that he or she must have already got the world-concepts and validity-perspectives necessary for the action of giving and taking reasons.

At the same time when the actor faces the "worlds" before him or her, he or she un-problematically presupposes a "life-world" behind him or her, which is composed of the structural components of culture, society, and personality. The life-world is not only the precondition for communicative action, but also the achievement of communicative action: it is renewed and reproduced through communicative action in the latter's functions of reaching understanding, coordinating action, and socializing actors. Habermas continues his Frankfurt School predecessors' critique of instrumental rationality in action-theoretical terms with a critique of functional rationality in systems-theoretical terms. At the same time, he also expands Weber's thesis of modernization as instrumental rationalization into a thesis of modernization as communicative rationalization and interprets the latter in sociological terms as rationalization of the life-world.

Corresponding to the differentiated structure of communicative rationality consisting of world-concepts and validity perspectives, the process of rationalization of the life-world, according to Habermas, is a process of differentiation at different levels. First, it is a process of differentiation within the life-world of the components of culture, society, and personality; within each of these components, it also differentiates between everyday communication and professional discourses; and finally, it differentiates between the public sphere and the private sphere. Secondly, it is a process of differentiation of the media-steered functional systems from the linguistically structured life-world. Thirdly, it is also a process of differentiation of the subsystems of economy and administration from each other. These differentiations have what Habermas called "evolutionary advantages" in the sense that collective learning is more fruitful and problem-solving abilities are better improved when different domains of action are allowed to follow their own autonomous logic.

From the perspective of societal modernization, the most important step is the differentiation of the system from the life-world. Habermas discusses the difference between the life-world and the system at different levels. Firstly, on the methodological level, it is derived from the difference between the perspective of participants in the life-world and the perspective of observers of systems; indirectly, it is also derived from the difference between the material production and symbolic reproduction of the life-world. Secondly, on the theoretical level, it is derived from the difference between the so-called "social integration" (action coordination through processes of reaching understanding) and "system integration" (action coordination through functional interconnections that are not intended by actors and are usually not even perceived within the horizon of everyday practice). Thirdly, on the empirical level, it is derived from historical facts, especially prominent in the process of modernization in Europe, of the rise and development of an economic mechanism and a state apparatus differentiated both from the life-world and from each other. Systems of economy and administration differentiated and developed from the life-world because in the course of social evolution society itself and its relation with the natural world become too complex to be intuitively grasped from the participant's perspective alone, and to be dealt with by the medium of language alone. In order to solve problems in the material reproduction of the life-world, consensus reached through linguistic communication is very often neither possible nor necessary, and money and power turn out to be more efficient as action-steering media.

Yet, understood in the context of Chinese discourse of modernity, the life-world as "ti" keeps its importance to and priority over systems as "yong," in two senses. On the one hand, the development of systems presupposes that the collective learning in the life-world has reached a certain level so that the rationality potential4 thus accumulated can be released and realized at institutional level. On the other hand, the life-world, mediated and reproduced ultimately by means of everyday language, is the only source one can resort to for meaning, solidarity, and identity. According to Habermas, a balanced mode of modernity is one in which system integration is achieved at no cost to social integration, and the life-world is given normative priority without the autonomous logic of the systems being interfered with.

However, the existing mode of modernity in the West has been, in Habermas's view, a selective and pathological one: the life-world, which is supposed to keep its normative as well as developmental-logical priority over systems, is to a large degree dominated by the imperatives from the systems of economy (especially in the 19th century) and administration (especially in the 20th century). This is the main idea of Habermas's thesis of "internal colonization of the life-world by the systems." First comes the process of "mediatization of the life-world," in which the tasks of materially reproducing the life-world are fulfilled via the media of money and power instead of through communicative action. Then follows the process of "cultural impoverishment and fragmentation of everyday consciousness," resulting from the growing autonomy for sectors (of science, morality, and art, for example) being dealt with by specialists, and from the splitting of these sectors from a stream of tradition continuing on in everyday practice in a quasi-natural fashion. These two processes lead to a situation in which the imperatives of autonomous subsystems,

when stripped of their ideological veils...make their way into the life-world from the outside-like colonial masters coming into a tribal society-and force a process of assimilation upon it. The diffused perspectives of the local culture cannot be sufficiently coordinated to permit the play of the metropolis and the world market to be grasped from the periphery. (Habermas 1987: 355)

With this thesis, Habermas interprets the same phenomena that Weber diagnosed as "loss of meaning" and "loss of freedom," Lucacs exposed as "reification," and Marcuse criticized as "one-dimensionality" in contemporary industrialized societies.

With regards to the Chinese discourse of modernity, the following remarks could be made in this connection. First, traditional culture is the "ti" of modernity in two senses. On the one hand, everyday life and culture-value spheres compose the reservoir of meanings and values even in modern society, and meaning and value rely on cultural traditions for their reproduction and renewing. On the other hand, self-reflection and self-critique of traditional culture is not only the key to a rationalized life-world, but also the precondition for development and "mooring" of systems of modern economy and administration. In this sense, it is not the "Chinese learning" in its traditional form, but the "Chinese learning" on the "post-traditional" level-the level of self-reflection and self-critique-that is the ti of a Chinese mode of modernity.

Second, with the Chinese categories of ti and yong, the Chinese discourse of modernity can make a unique contribution to the discourse of modernity at a global level because they can help us succinctly bring to light the priority of the life-world over the systems both in the development-logical sense and in the normative sense. To my knowledge no existing pair of categories in Western traditions can play this role.

Third, the traditional Chinese thinking, as shown especially clearly in the case of the ti and yong debate, where almost everyone claims a certain form of the thesis of "integration of ti and yong 体用不二," is characterized by its emphasis on integration vis-à-vis differentiation. In his description of the process of modernization, Habermas stresses the importance of differentiation: differentiation of world-concepts, validity, and value spheres; differentiation of systems from the life-world; and differentiation within each of them. In his normative critique of the existing mode of modernity, however, he seems to stress the problem of how the differentiated categories can be prevented from simply splitting from each other (see, for example, Habermas 1990a: 17). In this sense, the Chinese tradition of dialectical logic is close to Habermas's theory of modernity, or at least can be taken as a perspective from which this theory is understood.

III. Possible Tension Between Science and Democracy.

Both as an important part of the process of colonization of the life-world and as its theoretical reflection, scientism in the West attracted Habermas's attention from the early stage of his theoretical career. Among Chinese intellectuals, this has also become a topic of much discussion. Coming to front first during the debate of science versus Weltanschauungen in the 1920s, scientism in modern China has often been noticed and criticized only for its worship of science versus metaphysics as the panacea for solving all social and personal problems (see, for example, Kwok 1965; Yang 1999). The Chinese discourse of modernity shows, however, that it is equally important to understand scientism in modern China in terms of the relation between science and democracy.

The key to this understanding is the awareness that, if not understood properly, science and democracy can easily become opposed to each other. Take, for example, the ideas of Auguste Comte and Paul Feyerabend. Comte, whose positivism was one of the Western schools of thought introduced to China in the early part of the last century. His philosophy stressed the fact that only a few specialists have the ability to inquire, and argued for the importance of science as the basis of technological applications and the unity of minds. It is true that science had played an important role in emancipating people's minds from the rule of theology and metaphysics. Yet this emancipatory potential is exhausted as soon as the positive spirit becomes institutionalized in society. At this period, science is no longer critical; it becomes exclusively "positive" (see Comte 1975: 204). If Comte defended science at the cost of democracy, Feyerabend defended democracy at the cost of science.5 While Comte asked for the scientization of politics, Feyerabend asked for the politicization of science. Although they may seem different at first glance, their positions with regard to the relation between science and democracy are in fact almost identical: both regarded science and democracy as different and mutually opposing entities, and considered science as an authoritarian enterprise and democracy a process of will-expression and will-formation lacking any rational ground. Ironically, a large part of modern Chinese history seems to have proven their views.

Seen from this perspective, Habermas's conception of the relation between science and democracy is especially relevant to the Chinese discourse of modernity. Both science and democracy are forms of discourse or communication in special fields. Science is a form of theoretical discourse, while democracy is a form of practical discourse. Which the former aims at reaching consensus over what is really the case in the objective world, the latter aims at reaching consensus over what should be done normatively in the social world. Both are rooted in everyday communicative action. Communicative action does not necessarily exist in pure form; on the contrary, it is very often systematically distorted by various coercive forces. Yet communicative action presupposes a rational structure both as a regulative and constitutive element: the rational structure is hypothetically presupposed in our everyday communicative action. Science and democracy, as forms of theoretical discourse and practical discourse, are results of the same process-communicative rationalization or rationalization of life-world. What is important is that, considered in this perspective, you cannot accept science without at the same time accepting democracy, and vice versa, because they are based on the same idea of communicative rationality. Moreover, you cannot oppose science and democracy without committing a contradiction-a so-called "performative contradiction." First, your argument against science and democracy itself necessarily presupposes what you are against, namely, communicative rationality. Second, if you insist on your position by abstaining from argument, then your life as a human being also presupposes what you want to deny through this abstention because the most important distinction between human beings and other animals is not labor or work, but interaction or communicative action.

According to Habermas, there three types of science conditioned by three human interests. The first type is natural science, which is conditioned by the human interest in the technological control of states of affairs; the second type is hermeneutic science, which is conditioned by the human interest in historical understanding; the third type is the Marxian critique of ideology and Freudian psychoanalysis, which is conditioned by the human interest in emancipation. With this typology of sciences in mind, we can understand more clearly Habermas's discussion of the following three positions or models of the relation between science and politics, and hence the relation between science and democracy.

The first one is the "decisionistic model." On this model, there can be no rational discussion and argumentation of values and convictions presupposed by political actions. Here we can only make a decision that is basically irrational. Rationality does not lie in the choice of values, goals and, needs, but rather in the choice of means with which they are implemented and realized. With this model, democracy and science are not actually connected with each other: democracy is a procedure of choosing political leaders whose will is supposed to be implemented as general will, while science and technology serve as the means for implementing it.

The second model is the "technocratic model." On this model, science and technology are not only the basis of means and choice. In the form of system analysis and especially decision theory, they become the basis of decision-making itself. While the decisionist model makes a deep division between technical problems concerned with means and strategies and practical problems concerned with values and norms, and denies the latter rational resolutions, the technocratic model cancels this division, identifies practical problems with technical problems, and thus treats practical problems as technical problems. This model reduces democracy to an even larger degree in the name of the scientization of politics. According to Habermas, the difference between technical and practical problems cannot be denied. What is important is to mediate between them so as to transcend the decisionist model.

Then, there is the third model: the "pragmatistic model" advocated by John Dewey. The starting point of this model is the interdependence between values that proceed from interest situations and techniques that can be utilized for the satisfaction of value-oriented needs, or simply, the interdependence between the value and fact. Thus,

in the pragmatistic model the strict separation between the function of the expert and the politician is replaced by a critical interaction. This interaction not only strips the ideologically supported exercise of power of an unreliable basis of legitimation but makes it accessible as a whole to scientifically informed discussion, thereby substantially changing it." (Habermas 1971: 66-7)

Of the three models, Habermas thought that only the pragmatic model is necessarily related to democracy, and to a correct means of the scientization of politics. Habermas's own conception of the relation between science and democracy or between expertise and politics is an expansion and revision of Dewey's pragmatistic model. Therefore, a comparison between Habermas's and Dewey's conceptions between science and democracy would be of special interest, especially in light of Habermas's recent visit to China.

According to Habermas, the main problem with the pragmatic model is that

Dewey did not take into account the difference between the control of technical recommendation by means of their results and the practical confirmation of techniques in the hermeneutically clarified context of concrete situations. (Habermas 1971: 66)

Dewey rightly argued for free communication between experts and agencies of political decision, and for a scientifically enlightened public sphere as their mediation. However, he did not see that an enlightened public sphere cannot result from only the application of and education in natural science that aims at controlling objective state of affairs. Habermas's criticism of Dewey can be explicated as follows.

Of crucial importance is the idea that information provided by the strictly empirical sciences is not on the same level as the action-orienting self-understanding of social technical problems and practical problems: "The capacity of control made possible by the empirical sciences is not to be confused with the capacity for enlightened action" (Habermas 1971: 56). Dewey, in his philosophy of society and education, was actually interested in practical problems rather than in technical problems. He demanded a critical review and modification of the existing value beliefs against the background of the technical application of natural sciences. But his instrumentalist methodology of science leaves no room for a distinction between technical problems and practical problems. This is perhaps the most vulnerable side of Dewey's idea of the relation between science and democracy.

Dewey rightly noticed the fact that, although empirical sciences have greatly changed society, people in the society are still occupied with pre-scientific consciousness. Habermas basically shared with Dewey the demand to change this situation, but he understood the term "pre-scientific consciousness" in a new light. On the one hand, practical problems are, by their nature, always connected with "the tradition-bound self-understanding of practical needs," a sort of "pre-understanding" which is "on the pre-scientific level." By "pre-scientific level" here Habermas means not only a level prior to empirical science, but also a level prior to theoretical activity in general (a Husserlian idea). In this sense you can never replace this pre-scientific understanding with scientific understanding, just as you can never replace everyday life with professional activities. On the other hand, there is a question of whether this "pre-scientific understanding" is systematical, critical, and self-reflective or not. What worries Habermas is not the fact that pre-scientific problems are solved on the basis of people's pre-understanding, but the fact that this pre-understanding takes place without being enlightened by systematic and critical self-reflection. To change this situation, it is irrelevant to resort to empirical sciences; what we should do is not simply to bring empirical scientific knowledge into people's everyday life, but bring into full play sciences on other models-hermeneutic sciences and critiques of ideology. With hermeneutic sciences, citizens' pre-scientific self-understanding can be clarified and thus be raised to a self-reflective level. With critiques of ideology, the dogmatic core of traditional, historically generated self-understanding is destroyed, and social needs and declared goals are reoriented. Given the "structural transformation of the public sphere," the task of critique of ideology becomes more important and urgent than ever before.

The relation between empirical scientific knowledge and practical problems can thus be understood in new light. These two sides need to be mediated, since empirical scientific knowledge is not directly concerned with practical problems; in Habermas's view, it can be incorporated in the social life-world only through its technical utilization. So what is at issue is how to translate technically exploitable knowledge into the practical consciousness of a social life-world. Translation presupposes interpretation. Habermas stressed that technology and its underlying empirical science cannot be interpreted on the model of rationality implied in them. Thus, hermeneutic sciences can play an important role in this interpretation.

A hermeneutic task is needed not only because of the categorical distinction between technically exploitable knowledge and practical pre-understanding, but also because of the specialization of empirical sciences themselves. The internal development of sciences, Habermas argued, "have made a basically unsolved problem out of the appropriate translation of technical information even between individual disciplines, let alone between the sciences and the public at large" (Habermas 1971: 69). Therefore, a hermeneutic effort is needed to make possible "a reliable translation of scientific information into the ordinary language of practice and inversely for a translation from the context of practical questions back into the specialized language of technical and strategic recommendations"(Habermas 1971: 69).

Habermas, then, defends a sort of scientization of politics that does not lead to scientism in politics. The most important condition for the mediation between science and democracy is a free and enlightened public sphere, and this in turn presupposes not only an important role played by experts in natural sciences, but, to a larger degree, by experts in fields other than natural sciences, namely, in the humanities, Of course, these fields have to be reconstructed according to the conception of scientific rationality as communicative rationality instead of instrumental rationality in the first place, or at least in the course of its involvement in development of a free and enlightened public sphere.

IV. New Meaning of the Idea of Socialism in Our Times

An enlightened public sphere is a key element in Habermas's conception of socialism, or his version of "socialist modernity." In contemporary China, a socialist mode of modernity is not only the goal of the official program of modernization, but also a widely shared ideal among ordinary people and intellectuals who do not necessarily all agree with the official program. In an article written in 1990, Habermas posed the question "what [does] socialism mean today?" (see Habermas 1990b). This is also a question that forces itself upon every Chinese who still seriously cares about the idea of socialism.

The basis of "socialism" is the idea of "social" or "society." In Habermas, there are four concepts of "society." The first one is an usual one, referring to the community composed of human beings in contrast to the natural world. When he talks about the "evolution of society," the "modernization of society," "the two-level concept of society," indeed the "theory of society," he refers to society in this sense. The second concept of society refers to what he called "life-world." In his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he uses the term in this sense when he writes about "the separation of the state and society," "societalization of the state," and "statification of society" (see Habermas 1989: 142). From the perspective of participants in communicative action, society is construed as a life-world (see Habermas 1987: 150). And this is not only a conceptual strategy; the identification of society with life-world is a basic feature of archaic societies (see Habermas 1989: 156-7). The third concept of society is one of the three structural components of life-world itself, the other two being culture and personality. Society in this sense refers to legitimate order, institution, or collective identity. The fourth concept refers to one of the "three worlds," the social world as the totality of all legitimately regulated interpersonal relations (see Habermas 1984: 100).

Among these concepts of society, the most important one is the concept of the life-world. First, it is more important than the conventional concept of society at large because Habermas's theory of society is in a sense his theory of the life-world: the life-world is the "base" of society, normatively as well as historically. Second, it is more important than "society" as a structural component of the life-world because the latter is only one structural component of the life-world. Differentiated both from systems and from culture and personality, society in this narrow sense is only one of the many points of reference in a theory of modern society that has become so rationalized and complex. Third, the concept of the life-world is more important than the concept of society as a "world-concept" because the latter refers to only one of the three spheres to which a participant in the life-world takes corresponding attitudes, and its function is therefore limited in a comprehensive theory of society.

With his interpretation of society as the life-world, Habermas's conception of socialism can be understood as his conception of the relation between the life-world and the subsystems of the modern economy and the modern state. On the one hand, since the differentiation of the systems from the life-world and from each other has evolutionary advantages, socialism should be understood neither as deleting these differentiations nor as abolishing the autonomous mechanisms of market economy and bureaucratic administration. On the other hand, the normative priority of the life-world over the systems should not be denied and a colonization of the life-world by the systems as the root of major pathologies found in modernized societies should be overcome. Therefore socialism should be a society free from domination either by market mechanism or by administration apparatus. In the past socialism was characterized first by its opposition to individualism, and then by its opposition to capitalism; in our times socialism should be characterized first of all by its opposition to economism and statism. Habermas understands socialism in this sense from the following perspectives.

First, he understands socialism in terms of its overcoming the one-sidedness of the capitalist mode of modernization:

What constitutes the idea of socialism, for me, is the possibility of overcoming the one-sidedness of the capitalist process of rationalization (to use Weber's terminology). One-sidedness, that is, in the sense of the rise to dominance of cognitive-instrumental aspects, which results in everything else being driven into the realm of apparent irrationality. (Habermas 1986b: 91)

Second, Habermas understands socialism in terms of its overcoming the one-sidedness and "wretchedness" of bureaucratic socialism. The gap of democracy in it should be filled through the introduction of the "logical socialism" in the tradition of American pragmaticism (Habermas 1986b: 193). The so-called "pseudo-politicization" of the life-world should be replaced by sufficient development of self-organization in autonomous public spheres. The systems draped out as the life-world should be turned into legally regulated and formally organized domains of action which, in turn, should be brought into dependence on the imperatives of the life-world in the real sense. Finally, the state apparatus (plan) and the economic system (market) should be coordinated with each other (see Habermas 1987: 386; Habermas 1986b: 187).

Third, Habermas understands socialism not only (negatively) in terms of the overcoming of the one-sidedness of both of the capitalist and "real" socialist modes of modernization, but also (positively) in terms of his conception of the Utopia of a communication community. From this perspective, Habermas says:

One should only speak of socialism in the sense of an attempt, in the historical conditions in which one finds oneself, to indicate the necessary conditions which would have to be fulfilled in order for emancipated life-forms to emerge-whatever they may be." (Habermas 1986b: 146)

Here Habermas is opposing the so-called "Utopia of a communication community" to the so-called "Utopia of a labor community." This is an opposition between the Utopia in procedural sense to the Utopia in substantial sense and between the Utopia of pluralism to the Utopia of totality. The Utopia of labor community understands social progress mainly in the field of instrumental action and the subject-object relation, whereas the Utopia of communicative community places more emphasis on un-coerced, inter-subjective communication. Utopia in the substantial sense tells how people in the future would live, whereas Utopia in the procedural sense tells how people in the future would decide how they would live. The Utopia of totality prescribes a uniform way of life for future generations, whereas the Utopia of pluralism does not "confuse a highly developed communicative infrastructure of possible forms of life with a specific idea of a successful life" (Habermas 1986a: 17).

Habermas pays special attention to the role played by the modern legal system. The modern legal system occupies a position between the life-world and the systems. It is both the institutionalization of achievements of collective learning in the aspect of normative regulation of collective life; it is also the institutional precondition for the media-steered systems of economy and administration. It is through the legal system that the systems imperatives are channeled to the life-world, and it is also through the legal system that the life-world can set limits to and exert influences upon the systems. Both are conceivable: institutions that anchor steering mechanisms such as power and money in the life-world could serve as a channel either for the influence of the life-world on formally organized domains of action or, conversely, for the influence of the system on communicatively structured contexts of action. In the one case, they function as an institutional framework that subject system maintenance to the normative restrictions of the life-world; in the other, they function as a base that subordinates the life-world to the systemic constraints of material reproduction and thereby "mediatizes" it (see Habermas 1987: 185) Herein also lies what Habermas finds important in the idea of socialism.

If...one conceives 'socialism' as the set of necessary conditions for emancipated forms of life about which the participants themselves must first reach an understanding, then one will recognize that the democratic self-organization of a legal community comprises the normative core of this project as well. (Habermas 1996: xii)

V. Normative Foundation for a Critical Defense of Modernity

In the recent years, there has been a post-modern debate between New-Leftists and Liberals among intellectuals. To those who belong to the camp of "liberals," the idea of socialism is theoretically mistaken, historically polluted, and practically dangerous. To the New Leftists, however, socialism is valuable at least as an antidote to global capitalism. Although Habermas would say that this is basically his position too, many people in China now see him as at least a defender of the project of modernity rather than as a critic of the "modernized" Western societies, if not as an apologist for the hegemony of the modern Western culture. Philosophically speaking, Habermas's supposedly unhistorical pleading of the project of modernity is considered to be a result of his theoretical position of universalism and his conceptual framework composed of numerous conceptual distinctions (see Wang Hui 2000: 15). A clear understanding of these two points is then needed in order to make it clear what Habermas's critical defense of modernity really means in the context of the Chinese discourse of modernity.

There are various versions of universalism in theories of history and society. Universalism can be based on the distinction between the universal and the particular, as in the case of Hegel, where the universal "World Spirit" develops through a series of particular moments successively in different regions. Universalism can also be based on the distinction between the unilinear process of evolution and its different stages, as in the case of Condorcet, Comte and evolutionists in the 19th century and their inheritors in the 20th century. According to them all societies, including non-Western ones, have the potential, indeed an inherent tendency, to move toward the highest stage of the universal process of social evolution. Hegel's philosophy of history was attacked by the rationalist, positivist, and evolutionist theories of history, but the latter were in turn attacked by historicism, which in different degree implies particularism, relativism, and contextualism. Yet even Dilthey, a major representative of historicism, had a version of the universalist conception of history, which is based on the distinction between the possible and the actual. In terms of actuality, there are different cultures and systems of values of which no generalizations can be made; in terms of possibility, however, hermeneutic efforts could help break the barriers between different cultures and systems of values, to arrive at mutual understanding, and to approach a universally valid value and goal. This view is shared by Max Weber. Also opposing metaphysical and positivist philosophies of history and evolutionism and trying to avoid the relativist and skeptical result of historicism, Weber adopted, in Habermas's words,

a cautiously universalistic position.... He did not regard rationalization processes as a phenomenon peculiar to the Occident, although the rationalization demonstrable in all world religions led at first only in Europe to a form of rationalism that exhibited both particular, Occidental features and general features, that is, features characteristic of modernity as such. (Habermas 1984: 155)

Habermas's universalism, on the whole, is also a "cautiously universalistic position" or "cautious universalism" based on the distinction between the possible and the actual (see Habermas 1986b: 169). What is universal is neither actual nor is historically inevitable. In a way close to Herbert Marcuse, Habermas refuses to accept what is actual as the only possible dimension. In a way close to Karl Popper, he refuses to make diagnoses of historical trends. Indeed, there is a relatively large range of alternatives within which a society and its various parts can move or change. While possibilities are many, the range of possibilities is one. This is what Habermas calls "structure" or "logic," which displays a limited range of possibilities. With regard to societal evolution, the distinction between the range of possibilities and actualities is the distinction between what he called "the logic of societal evolution" and "the dynamics of societal evolution." With regard to cultural differentiation and multiplicity, the distinction between the range of possibilities and actualities is the distinction between the structure or form of cultures and their contents. In Habermas's view, the problem of societal evolution and the problem of cultural differentiation and multiplicity are closely connected with each other. He claims to "reconstruct" historical materialism in the following two ways:

1. Abstracting the development of cognitive structures from the historical dynamic of events.

2. Abstracting the evolution of society from the historical concretion of forms of life. (see Habermas 1987:383)

Habermas's universalism is a result of this two-fold abstraction. It is universalism because he recognizes as universal the range of possibilities or the logic of societal evolution in all societies and the structure or formal properties of all cultures. It is a cautiously held universalism because he allows broad room for different, multiple mechanisms of social change and cultural contents. "Range of possibilities" in the sense of both societal evolution is ultimately the same thing as cultural differentiation and multiplicity. It is the structure of rational communicative action to be disclosed through "reconstructive sciences" such as the history of science, the pragmatics of natural language, and the psychology of moral development. Habermas is convinced that

there is no form of socio-cultural life that is not at least implicitly geared to maintaining communicative action by means of argument, be the actual form of argumentation ever so rudimentary and the institutionalization of discourse consensus building ever so inchoate." (Habermas 1990a: 100)

Thus, Habermas's universalism is characterized on the one hand by its effort to include rather than exclude particularism, and on the other hand by its effort to justify itself through empirical studies rather than through metaphysical speculation. To criticize Habermas's universalism, one has to prove that either his effort to mediate universalism with particularism, or his effort to justify his universalism by empirical evidences, or both, have failed. Yett to my knowledge, no substantial work has been done on these two facets by Habermas's Chinese critics.

The same can also be said with regard to criticisms directed at Habermas's conceptual strategy of making conceptual distinctions. Both in the process of individual learning and in the process of collective learning, dichotomies or conceptual distinctions are very often important achievements to be appreciated rather than intellectual evils to be expelled. That does not mean that they must always be kept as they are. Typically, Habermas operates in the following way. First, he makes a conceptual distinction between two sides or two levels and criticizes the fallacy of conceptually mixing these sides. Then, he tries to see whether these two conceptually different sides or levels have nevertheless historically or empirically co-existed or mixed in some form. In addition to this factual ascertaining, he often makes a normative suggestion to find something that can mediate between these two sides so as to overcome the conflict between them or the tendency of one side to overwhelm the other. He follows this method in the case of law. It is somehow a middle term between the system and the life-world in his idea of modern society based on his theory of communicative action; it is also a middle term "between facts and norms" in his recent work on a discourse theory of law and democracy. This kind of conceptual operation also applies to the major dichotomy in his social theory as a whole, that is, the conceptual distinction between the empirical and the normative.

Time and again, Habermas emphasizes the evolutionary importance of the differentiation between the three world-concepts of the objective world, the social world, and the subjective world, and the differentiation between the validity claims of truth, rightness, and authenticity. The conceptual distinction between the empirical and the normative is just a result of these differentiations. But he also tries hard to overcome the positivist understanding of sociology as a purely empirical discipline. The important thing is not simply to mix the empirical and the normative together, but to find a foundation for a critical theory as a self-reflection with an interest in emancipation, or a normative theory with empirical supports. This foundation Habermas sees in a set of preconditions everybody engaged in communication has already shared with his partners in communication. These preconditions are regarded by Habermas as being "counterfactually presupposed" because they are neither purely constitutive nor merely regulative to communicative action (Habermas 1993: 164). Without them no communication is possible, but in no case they have been fully realized. Actual processes of communicative actions are more or less coerced and distorted. Rationalization in the sense of communicative rationalization is just the process of gradual realization of rationality potentials inherent in everyday communications.

In the final analysis, the main theoretical motivation behind Habermas's universalistic position and two-fold conceptual schema is to provide a normative foundation for his critical theory of contemporary society. As is noticed, a major weakness in the New Leftist thinking in contemporary China is its lack of a theoretical framework for justifying its own normative position (see Zhao Gang). When they argued for the so-called "political democracy, economic democracy, and cultural democracy" (Wang Hui 1998), for example, they gave neither clear explications of the meaning of these terms, nor theoretical justification for these grand goals. This fact, though surely not a reason for accepting Habermas's theory, can nevertheless be a good reason for taking this theory quite seriously.

VI. Cultivation of a Political culture on the Basis of Discourse Rationality

Compared with the points discussed above, what deserves more attention is perhaps a problem at a meta level: to what degree a theory with discourse as a key word would mean to the Chinese "discourse" of modernity as an ongoing discourse? The idea of communicative rationality or discourse rationality6 is shared by many contemporary Chinese thinkers, even those who are arguing for opposing positions and criticizing their opponents for distorting facts, violating norms, and concealing their real intentions. Strictly speaking, no criticism of this sort is possible without an idea of defending one's own differentiated validity claims (of truth, rightness, and authenticity) on the basis of reason.

The importance of this idea is especially clear if we make a critical reflection on the nation-wide debate on the criterion of truth in 1978, which is widely seen as paving the way for Chinese reform. While the historical importance of the debate should be in no doubt, its theoretical importance is quite problematic, since the conclusion of the debate, "practice is the sole criterion of truth," could be easily found in the party's documents long before the debate. Yet this does not mean that the proposition itself is a either philosophical nonsense or a philosophical common sense. In my point of view, this proposition is true in a limited sense. On the one hand, just as Jin Yuelin 金岳霖, one of the most important Chinese philosophers in 20th century, pointed out, it is important to make a distinction between the problem of the meaning of truth and the problem of the criterion of truth. It makes no great sense in real situations if we have only a definition concerning the meaning of "truth" and do not go further to clarify by what criteria a particular proposition can be known as truth in the defined sense (see Jin 1983: 909). From this perspective, Jin argued that different theories of truth in the history of philosophy could be accepted at the same time because they actually address different problems concerning truth, or emphasize different but equally important criteria of truth.

On the other hand, as we can learn from Habermas's theory of truth, one is still left halfway unless the problem of the acceptability of the truth claim concerning a certain proposition is adequately addressed. As the Chinese experience of the Cultural Revolution shows, a monopolized use of the criterion of practice can easily lead to the justification of any idea as true by any practice. If it makes no sense in real situations where we have only a definition of "truth" and do not have a criterion to know whether a particular proposition is true or not, it equally makes no sense in real situations where we have a criterion of truth but do not know how to apply it. Jin Yuelin does no see the importance of the consensus theory of truth. Though sometimes mistakenly regarded as an answer to the question concerning the meaning of truth as in Habermas's case as well (see Habermas 1995: 137), the consensus theory of truth developed on the basis of Habermas's theory of communicative rationality provides a promising answer to the question of the acceptability of the truth claim by emphasizing the importance of free and rational discussion among participants motivated solely by the force of better reasons (see Tong 2000b). One might say that free and rational discussion is merely an ideal that can never be realized at any particular moment. This is certainly the case, but this should not prevent us from seeing the other side of the fact: each side of the liberal-New Leftist debate accused the other of distorting facts, violating norms, and concealing its real intentions. This is exactly one of the ways in which the idea of a free and rational discussion and the validity claims built in it play their role in real situations. It is true that we have no ontological guarantee for the realization of this idea. But it is also true that we have no theoretical reasons to give up our efforts to approach this idea by giving it its due in our academic discussions as well as in our everyday lives. We need, in other words, to cultivate a "critical culture" oriented to the norms of critique.

A "critical culture" in this sense, as an embodiment of communicative rationality, is the kernel of what Habermas calls "a liberal political culture" (Habermas 1996: 499). In recent years, Habermas has been paying increasing attention to the problem of political culture, as a result of his growing sensitivity to the importance of culture vis-à-vis politics and particularism vis-à-vis universalism (see Tong 1999). Yet in Habermas, political culture is not only a "politically-relevant culture" (as is the case of political culture studies in the conventional sense) but also is a "politically-formed culture." It is political, so that it can become the basis of a political identity in an increasingly multicultural society. It is a culture, so it that has links with citizens' motives and attitudes, and can foster a kind of "supportive spirit of a consonant background of legally noncoercible motives and attitudes of a citizenry oriented toward the common good" (Habermas 1996: 499). On the one hand, this kind of political culture should be disconnected from the majority cultural tradition so as to become equal to as many cultural traditions as possible (see Habermas 1998: 146). On the other hand, this kind of political culture should have a strong enough integrating force to keep a multicultural political community together (see Habermas 1998: 175). Surely, political culture in this sense is also a politically-relevant culture; but more importantly it is a politically-formed culture. It is not only different from non-political culture, but also different from pre-political culture. That is to say, it is a culture formed as a result of citizens' participation in political activities within a common framework defined by a common constitution (Habermas 1998: 189). As long as the constitution is a freedom-guaranteeing one, citizens will gradually become accustomed to freedom as a result of their activities or co-activities of defending and practicing their freedom.

The situation in China, of course, is quite different from that in West Europe and North America, with reference to which Habermas elaborated his conception of political culture. However, two points can be made here with equal, if not stronger, validity. On the one hand, a political culture in this sense is not necessarily something culture-specific or culture-eccentric; there is no a prior reason to say that no political culture can be developed on the basis of non-Western cultures. On the other hand, in order to cultivate a political culture, a self-conscious and self-reflective effort, especially among intellectuals, is of crucial importance. These are perhaps the most pertinent aspects in Habermas's critical theory as seen from a Chinese perspective.

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2( Professor of Philosophy, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. E-mail: [email protected].

Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy December, 2001, Vol. I, No 1, pp XX-XX.

(c) Global Publications, State University of New York at Binghamton.

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2 In The Theory of Communicative Action, Haberams criticizes Weber for observing Chinese culture only from the perspective of ethical rationalization, and suggests that we also observe it from the perspective of cognitive rationalization, and compare it with the Greek tradition instead of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In doing so Habermas refers to Joseph Needham's study of the history of science and technology of ancient China.

3 In Confucianism, it refers to, first of all, the so-called "Heavenly Principle."

4 Differentiations, for example, not only between factual and normative problems, but also between norms and values and between norms and principles

5 Feyerabend praised China under Mao for being a society in which both science and anti-science were tolerated, even encouraged by the Government (see Feyerabend 1978: 77-8).

6 Habermas not only develops it into a sophisticated theory, but also practices through his life-long involvement in discourses both with major thinkers of other positions and traditions and with his more sympathetic critics.

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