哈贝马斯之后 After Habermas

 

那天早上，我在手机上刷到消息：哈贝马斯（Jürgen Habermas, 1929–2026）走了。

我呆了一下。不是因为意外——他96岁，已是长寿，而是有一种说不清楚的感觉，像是什么东西跟着他一起，悄悄离开了。

我想到的，不只是世界少了一位大哲学家，而是：那个相信人类还能通过讨论、说理、思辨来支持共同生活的时代，好像也在慢慢收尾了。

哈贝马斯提出的重要概念之一，是"公共领域"(public sphere)。他认为：在家庭、市场、国家机器之外，社会该还有一个中间地带，让人们可以围绕共同关心的事情，好好地交换意见、形成舆论。在公共领域，不是比谁的声音大、权力大，而是人们彼此理性沟通，愿意把话讲清楚，也愿意听别人讲清楚。

这听起来简单朴素，做起来却很难,而且越来越难。

我有时候浏览手机，刷着刷着，会有一种空虚的疲倦感——信息源源不绝；影音眼花缭乱。人人都在急切地表达，却不一定有人在倾听。人人都在转发，却不一定有人会仔细看。

哈贝马斯担心的“公共领域的衰落”，以一种令人始料未及的方式发生着。公共讨论没有消失，只是被算法和流量悄悄改变了状态。

然后，AI来了。

现在不只是人在说话，机器也在生成内容。一段文字、一张图、一段声音，可以在几秒内被产出、改写、包装、扩散。我们的公共空间，已经不再只是"谁在讲话"的问题，而是"谁在生成""谁在分发""谁在决定什么会被看见"的问题。

这正是我这几年一直在研究和教学AIGC文图学（Text and Image Studies on AIGC）的原因。

每次提到AIGC（人工智能生成文本），很多人第一反应是便利的工具。但我更在意的，是另一个方向：当文本和图像越来越容易被机器生成，人要怎么理解这些内容？怎么判断它们？怎么看出它们背后藏着什么样的结构、情绪、立场？

这其实和哈贝马斯在意的事情十分接近。

他关心的是：人如何通过语言沟通，建立共同的理解。我关心的是：在一个图像泛滥、内容爆炸、AI无处不在的时代，人还有没有可能维持共同理解的基础。他那个时代，公共讨论的主要战场是报纸、辩论、演讲；今天，这个战场已经延伸到了互联网、充斥短视频、表情包、AI生成的各种多模态文本。

这也让我重新省思，我为什么要创立文图学会。

创立文图学会，是希望通过多模态文本与跨媒介表达，促进公共理解与文化对话。换句话说，文图学会不只是学术团体，也是一个把学术研究、文化传播、媒介表达与社会沟通连接起来的平台。文图学会推动的，不只是扩充知识，分享艺文，还要理解知识如何被生产、被继承、被诠释。让复杂的论述可以被更多人知晓，让不同背景的人能够参与，让学术不只停留在专业圈里，而能够转化为公共语言，普及于社会。

如果借用哈贝马斯的眼光来看，文图学会所做的事情，某种程度上正是在今天新的媒介环境里，努力为营造公共领域的空间。这个空间并非传统意义上“坐下来辩论”的场所，而是经由文字、图像、影音、课程、讲座、出版，以及现在的 AIGC 实践，让我们重新学习“万物皆文本，文本可生成”，重新认识真实与人工智能生成的世界。

哈贝马斯去世，对我来说不只是一个新闻，而更像一种提醒：哈贝马斯之后，真正重要的，不是怀念过去那个哲学思考的光华，而是在这个人人都在表达，连机器也在表达的时代，我们还愿不愿意，也还能不能理性交流——真正听见彼此。

 

2026年6月6日，新加坡《联合早报》“上善若水”专栏

 

After Habermas

I Lo-fen

That morning, I saw the news on my phone: Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026) had passed away.

I paused for a moment. Not because it was unexpected—he was ninety-six and had lived a long life—but because of an indefinable feeling, as though something had quietly departed along with him.

What came to mind was not merely that the world had lost a great philosopher. It was also this: the era that believed human beings could still sustain a shared life through discussion, reasoned argument and reflection seemed to be drawing slowly to a close.

One of Habermas’s most important concepts was the “public sphere.” He believed that beyond the family, the market and the machinery of the state, society should have an intermediate space where people could exchange views on matters of common concern and form public opinion. In the public sphere, what mattered was not who had the loudest voice or the greatest power, but whether people could communicate rationally, explain themselves clearly and be willing to listen as others did the same.

This sounds simple and straightforward. In practice, however, it is difficult—and becoming increasingly so.

Sometimes, as I scroll through my phone, I feel a hollow weariness. Information flows without end; images and videos flash before the eyes. Everyone is eager to express themselves, but not necessarily to listen. Everyone is forwarding content, but not necessarily reading or watching it carefully.

The “decline of the public sphere” that Habermas feared is taking place in a way few could have anticipated. Public discussion has not disappeared; rather, its condition has been quietly transformed by algorithms and traffic.

Then AI arrived.

Now it is no longer only human beings who speak. Machines generate content as well. A piece of writing, an image or a voice recording can be produced, rewritten, packaged and disseminated within seconds. Our public space is no longer concerned merely with “who is speaking,” but also with “who is generating,” “who is distributing” and “who decides what will be seen.”

This is precisely why I have spent the past several years researching and teaching Text and Image Studies on AIGC.

Whenever AIGC—AI-generated content—is mentioned, many people first think of it as a convenient tool. What concerns me more, however, is another question: when texts and images can be generated by machines with increasing ease, how should people understand such content? How should they judge it? How can they discern the structures, emotions and positions concealed behind it?

This is, in fact, very close to what concerned Habermas.

He asked how human beings could establish mutual understanding through linguistic communication. I ask whether, in an age flooded with images, overwhelmed by content and permeated by AI, it is still possible to preserve a basis for shared understanding. In his time, the main arenas of public discussion were newspapers, debates and speeches. Today, that arena has expanded to the internet, crowded with short videos, memes and all manner of multimodal texts generated by AI.

This has also prompted me to reflect anew on why I founded the Text and Image Studies Society.

The Society was established in the hope of promoting public understanding and cultural dialogue through multimodal texts and cross-media expression. In other words, it is not merely an academic organisation, but a platform that connects scholarly research, cultural communication, media expression and social dialogue. What it seeks to promote is not only the expansion of knowledge and the sharing of arts and culture, but also an understanding of how knowledge is produced, inherited and interpreted. It aims to make complex arguments accessible to more people, to enable those from different backgrounds to participate, and to ensure that scholarship does not remain confined to professional circles but can be transformed into a public language and disseminated throughout society.

Seen through Habermas’s perspective, the work of the Text and Image Studies Society may, in a certain sense, be understood as an effort to create a space for the public sphere within today’s new media environment. This space is not a conventional setting in which people simply “sit down and debate.” Rather, through writing, images, audiovisual media, courses, lectures, publications and now the practice of AIGC, it allows us to relearn that “everything is text, and texts can be generated,” and to understand anew both the real world and the world generated by artificial intelligence.

For me, Habermas’s death was not merely a piece of news. It was more like a reminder. After Habermas, what truly matters is not nostalgia for the brilliance of a past age of philosophical thought. What matters is whether, in an era when everyone is expressing themselves and even machines have begun to speak, we are still willing—and still able—to communicate rationally and truly hear one another.

Originally published in the “Shang Shan Ruo Shui” column of Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao, 6 June 2026.