Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 50, 2008

Social and Political Philosophy

Setting up a new model of the democratic theory ‐ research on Habermas’ theory of public sphere

Public sphere is an important idea of Habermas in the early research, which guided his latter research, especially in political philosophy field. According to Habermas’ research on public sphere, this paper researches public sphere’s significance in solving the legalization crisis of capitalism and remedying the democratic theory of bourgeoisie. Public sphere idea set up a new model of the democratic theory, deliberative democracy, which is better than democracy of both liberalism and republicanism, and become the most important theme of Habermas in theory and practice.