생활세계, 체계 그리고 법 ― 하버마스의 『의사소통행위이론』을 중심으로 ―

Habermas’s theory of communicative action fundamentally rests on two concepts of rationality and the two-level perspective of lifeworld and system. According to Habermas, the economic and political systems are formally organized domains of action that are no longer integrated through the mechanism of mutual understanding, that sheer off from lifeworld contexts into a kind of norm-free sociality; and the lifeworld has a twofold meaning: on the one hand, the horizon-forming contexts of culture, society and personality within which communitive action takes place, and on the other hand, the resources of possibilities from which participants in communicative action can transmit and renew cultural knowledge, establish solidarity and build social identity. Habermas assigns two important roles to law from the perspectives of the theory of communicative action. For Habermas, the first important role of law is to institutionalize the independence of economy and state from lifeworld structures; and the second important role of law concerns the thesis of the internal colonization of the lifeworld. Habermas claims that the present form of juridification in welfare states is markedly ambivalent. I would like to close by proposing that the legitimacy of law is on the basis of the communicative rationality, that normative claims of the lifeworld should be accepted in laws, and that the lifeworld dimentions of law should be analyzed from the perspective of communicative action aimed at mutual understanding.