Abstract

The validity of legal norms，as the core of Habermas' philosophy of law，is intrinsically related to its standpoint of legal philosophy. Instead of focusing on the existing research “fact and validity” in the Chinese scholar field，this paper tries to interpret the orientation，change and development of the core issue based on the internal process of Habermas' philosophy of law.Instead of paying attention to a certain subject of Habermas' philosophy of law in a piecemeal way，based on “social communicative action”，this paper attempts to grasp the mutual criticism and absorption of Habermas' philosophy of law and critical theory，sociology of law and positivism of law with the logic of theme evolution，in order to reveal the purport and significance of his philosophy of law in a comprehensive and systematic way.

The main method used in this paper is to elucidate his legal philosophy according to Habermas' “Architektonik der Diskursdifferenzierung”，and thus generalize his overall thinking of reconstructing the normative basis of the law into three aspects：first，Habermas' discussion on the validity of law begins with his reflection on critical theory and criticism of sociology of law. He points out that the critical theory underestimates the democratic tradition，and he criticizes the sociology of law，especially the system theory of sociology，which dispels the normative basis of law. Second，after completing a series of basic clean-up work，Habermas turned his attention to the construction of communicative action theory，so as to reconstruct the normative conditions of action. Third，by constructing a dialogue principle which can accommodate the normative differences and complementarities of morality，law and politics，we try to re-understand the normative validity of law on this new basis.

Key Words：Habermas；Communicative action；Validity of law