He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. He accepted the position of Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg (near Munich) in 1971, and worked there until 1983, two years after the publication of his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action. The philosopher Albrecht Wellmer was his assistant in Frankfurt from 1966 to 1970. In 1964, strongly supported by Adorno, Habermas returned to Frankfurt to take over Horkheimer's chair in philosophy and sociology. In this same year he gained his first serious public attention, in Germany, with the publication of his habilitation. In 1961 he became a Privatdozent in Marburg, and-in a move that was highly unusual for the German academic scene of that time-he was offered the position of 'extraordinary professor' (professor without chair) of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (at the instigation of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Löwith) in 1962, which he accepted. It is a detailed social history of the development of the bourgeois public sphere from its origins in the 18th century salons up to its transformation through the influence of capital-driven mass media. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (published in English translation in 1989 as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society). His habilitation work was entitled Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Adorno at the Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research, but because of a rift between the two over his dissertation-Horkheimer had made unacceptable demands for revision-as well as his own belief that the Frankfurt School had become paralyzed with political skepticism and disdain for modern culture, he finished his habilitation in political science at the University of Marburg under the Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth. įrom 1956 on, he studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. His dissertation committee included Erich Rothacker and Oskar Becker. Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken ('The Absolute and History: On the Schism in Schelling's Thought'). He studied at the universities of Göttingen (1949/50), Zurich (1950/51), and Bonn (1951–54) and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Bonn in 1954 with a dissertation written on the conflict between the absolute and history in Schelling's thought, entitled, Das Absolute und die Geschichte. He was brought up in a staunchly Protestant milieu, his grandfather being the director of the seminary in Gummersbach. Habermas himself was a Jungvolkführer, a leader of the German Jungvolk, which was a section of the Hitler Youth. His father, Ernst Habermas, was executive director of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and was described by Habermas as a Nazi sympathizer and, from 1933, a member of the NSDAP. Until his graduation from gymnasium, Habermas lived in Gummersbach, near Cologne. He grew up in Gummersbach.Īs a young teenager, he was profoundly affected by World War II. Habermas argues that his speech disability made him think differently about the importance of deep dependence and of communication. He was born with a cleft palate and had corrective surgery twice during childhood. Habermas was born in Düsseldorf, Rhine Province, in 1929. He has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and poststructuralism. Habermas was known for his work on the concept of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.Īssociated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of epistemology and social theory, the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, albeit within the confines of the natural law tradition, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Jürgen Habermas ( UK: / ˈ h ɑː b ər m æ s/, US: /- m ɑː s/ German: born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism.

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