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Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world's most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in Germany, has died at the age of 96 in Starnberg, near Munich.
Habermas frequently intervened in political issues over several decades. His extensive writings crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, offering a vision of modern society and social interaction. Among his best-known works was the two-volume book "The Theory of Communicative Action".
Habermas, who was 15 years old at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of a new era in 1945 and his confrontation with the reality of Nazi crimes as something without which he would not have found his way into philosophy and social theory. He recalled that “you suddenly realized that it was a politically criminal system in which you had lived.”
He had an ambivalent relationship with the left-wing student movement of the late 1960s in Germany and beyond, engaging with it but also warning at the time about the danger of what he called “left-wing fascism,” a reaction to a fiery speech by a student leader that he later said was “a little inappropriate.” He would later acknowledge that this movement had fostered a “fundamental liberalization” of German society.
In the 1980s, Habermas was a prominent figure in the so-called “Historians’ Debate,” in which Berlin historian Ernst Nolte and others sought a new perspective on the Third Reich and German identity. They tended to compare what happened under Adolf Hitler to atrocities committed by other governments, such as the deaths of millions in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Habermas and other opponents argued that conservative historians were trying to minimize the extent of Nazi crimes through such comparisons.
Habermas supported the rise to power of center-left Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 1998. He was critical of the “technocratic” approach and lack of political vision that he perceived in Schröder’s conservative successor, Angela Merkel, complaining in 2016 about the paralyzing effects on public opinion of what he called “the foam blanket of Merkel’s politics to put people to sleep.” He was particularly critical of the “limited interest” that, in his view, German politicians, business leaders, and the media showed in “shaping a politically effective Europe.”
In 2017, he praised newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron for presenting plans for European reform, saying that "the way he talks about Europe makes the difference."
Habermas was born on June 18, 1929, in Düsseldorf and grew up in nearby Gummersbach, where his father ran the local chamber of commerce. He became a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk, a section of the Hitler Youth for younger boys, at the age of 10.
He was born with a cleft palate that required multiple surgeries during childhood, an experience that later influenced his thinking on language.
Habermas said that he had experienced the importance of spoken language as “a common ground without which we as individuals cannot exist” and recalled the difficulties of making ourselves understood. He also spoke of the “superiority of the written word” and said that “the written form conceals the shortcomings of speech.”
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