Jürgen Habermas: biography of this German philosopher.

A summary of the life of Jürgen Habermas through a short biography of his career.

Jürgen Habermas is one of the best known and most influential living philosophers. He is the main representative of the second generation of the Frankfurt School and his life is characterized by being critical of society, deepening in advanced capitalism.

His thinking about how language is a fundamental tool in the construction and maintenance of society, especially enhanced by the idea of public opinion, is among the most relevant in the field of philosophy of language.

In the following we will take an in-depth look at the life of this philosopher by means of a biography of Jürgen Habermas in which we will learn about his career, his works, the prizes he has won and his thoughts.

Brief biography of Jürgen Habermas

We will now take a closer look at the life of this great thinker, who despite his advanced age is still very active in philosophical circles and specialized media in the field.

Early years

Jürgen Habermas was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, on June 18, 1929, into a Protestant family.He grew up in a Protestant family. His grandfather was the director of the seminary in Gummersbach, the town where the family lived. His father, Ernst Habermas, was executive director of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce and, according to Jürgen himself, a Nazi sympathizer. He continued to live in Gummersbach until he graduated from the gymnasium (German high school).

His childhood was hard, given that from birth he had to deal with a cleft palate, which made it difficult for him to speak, a reason why other children rejected him. Although he received corrective surgery on two occasions, this defect would mark him, making him reflect on the importance of communication from an early age. In addition to this, in his childhood and adolescence he would witness the social changes in Germany, times when the Nazi party would take control of the country.The Nazi party would take control of German society.

University education and Frankfurt School

But the hard times passed and, after World War II, Habermas was able to study at the universities of Göttingen (1949-1950), Zürich (1950-1951) and Bonn (1951-1954).. In all of them he would learn about history, psychology, German literature, economics and philosophy, obtaining his doctorate in the latter discipline in 1954. He would present his dissertation "Das Absolute und die Geschichte. Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken" (The Absolute and History: From the discrepancies in Schelling's thought).

In 1953 he published his first article, a critique of Heidegger's "Introduction to Metaphysics", which he entitled "Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken" (Thinking with Heidegger against Heidegger), being especially harsh against Heidegger's position on nationalism. During the following years he would also publish other articles in the press.

In 1955 he was invited by Theodor Adorno he was invited by Theodor Adorno to join the reopened Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.. There he would come into contact with empirical social research, reorienting his studies towards a critical theory of society and rubbing shoulders with the Frankfurt School.

From then until 1959 he was Adorno's assistant and, with the passage of time, he would become the main representative of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, and he would become the first representative of the Frankfurt School. becoming a leading figure in "critical theory", the philosophical current advocated by this school.. This current would fascinate the youth of the student movements of the sixties.

Teaching years

Between 1964 and 1971 he was a professor at the University of Frankfurt, and it would be in that period, specifically in 1968 that he would achieve great interest and international projection thanks to the publication of his book "Knowledge and Interest".

After his professorship in Frankfurt he worked as professor of philosophy in Heidelberg. Between 1971 and 1980 he was director of the Max Planck Institute in Stamberg. In 1983 he became Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, where he remained.He remained at the university until his retirement in 1994, when he became a professor emeritus.

He is still very active as a teacher, holding the title of "Permanent Visiting Professor" at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) and the "Theodor Heuss Professor" at The New School (New York). He has also been granted numerous interviews and, even at the age of 91, he continues to speak on many aspects of philosophy in the 21st century..

Acknowledgements

In 1986 he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the highest distinction offered in German territory in research. In 2001 he received the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Booksellers and, in 2003, he was honored to receive the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. He later received the Holberg received the Holberg Prize for his contributions to philosophy and sociology..

He holds honorary doctorates from several universities internationally, including Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Northwestern University Evanston, Utrecht, Tel Aviv, Athens and the New School for Social Research in New York. He is also privileged to be a member of the German Academy of Language and Poetry.

• You may be interested in, "How are Psychology and Philosophy similar?"

His works

The main works published by Jürgen Habermas are: History and Critique of Public Opinion (1962), Theory and Practice (1963), The Logic of the Social Sciences (1967) Knowledge and Interest (1968), Science and Technology as Ideology (1968), Culture and critique (1973), The crisis of rationality in evolved capitalism (1973), The reconstruction of historical materialism (1976), Theory of communicative action (1981), Moral consciousness and communicative action (1983) y The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985).

Philosophical thought

Habermas' thought is heir to the "dialectic of enlightenment" of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, with whom he shared a philosophical and sociological project of moral reflection on the development of advanced capitalism.with whom he shared a philosophical and sociological project of moral reflection on the development of advanced capitalism. Habermas proposed an unorthodox Marxism, which abandons the idea of an exclusively productivist organization of society and which, in his opinion, would be the cause behind the impoverishment of the vital sphere.

Although he would find himself within the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, his work adopts profiles divergent from those of his masters. Habermas tries to recover the contact between the theoretical and the practicalHe confronts the supposed neutrality of scientific knowledge, so mistakenly always seen as undoubtedly positive and synonymous with progress. According to the philosopher, an objectivity alien to values and interests is not possible, since they are based on a purely instrumental reason.

The thought of Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx play a prominent role in his work. One of the characteristics of Kant's thought is to see that there is a close link between the philosophy of reason, very ambitious in normative terms, and an empirical theory of society. Even so, he will make an important criticism of Karl Marx, who, in his opinion, reduces human praxis to a techne, in the sense that Marx gives fundamental importance to work as the axis of society, ignoring a fundamental aspect for Habermas: interaction mediated by language.

For Habermas, and in contrast to Marx, social change must take place in a symbolic sphere, in the sphere of communication and in the sphere of language.in the sphere of communication and understanding between subjects. For Habermas there have been three crises: the crisis of the philosophies with a theological or metaphysical basis, the crisis of the legitimization of the contemporary State and the crisis of legal positivism. To overcome them, he proposes the theory of communicative action, with Kant's own foundations, in which he proposes not to impose a law, but to propose a theory of universal aspiration.

Although Habermas makes use of the philosophical concept of reason, using it explicitly in terms of the philosophy of language, he does so in order to develop a social theory. His first major work History and Critique of Public Opinion (1962) makes an analysis of the structural transformation of the public sphere, criticizing the idea of public opinion and recovering a democratic vision of this concept. of this concept. He tries to make a distinction between manipulated public opinion and critical public opinion.

It must be said that Habermas has often been misunderstood in Germany. To make matters worse, some of his positions were vindicated and exaggerated by extremist movements, an example being the case of the "Red Army Group" which was partly inspired by Habermas' social critique. Ironically, Habermas has been denouncing on numerous occasions since 1967 what he called left-wing fascism, i.e., movements that are supposedly social and in favor of progress but with a fascistic air.

In 1968 he made a critique of positivism and its technique in Science and Technique as Ideologyin which he raised a series of questions about the possible forms of coexistence between advanced industrial societies and democratic regimes. His critical approach had, as its main objective, to recall that freedom and justice are the indisputable pillars of common democratic values.

Bibliographical references:

• Habermas, J. (1962): History and Critique of Public Opinion. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1981. ISBN 978-84-252-2015-9
• Habermas, J. (1963): Theory and practice; Theory and praxis. Estudios de filosofía social. Tecnos, Madrid, 1987. ISBN 978-84-309-1423-4
• Habermas, J. (1967): La lógica de las ciencias sociales. Tecnos, Madrid. ISBN 978-84-309-4522-1
• Habermas, J.(1968): Conocimiento e interés. Taurus, Madrid, 1981. ISBN 978-84-306-1163-8
• Habermas, J.(1968): Science and technique as ideology. Tecnos, Madrid, 1984. ISBN 978-84-309-4520-79
• Habermas, J. (1971): Perfiles filosófico-políticos. Taurus, Madrid, 1984. ISBN 84-306-1249-1
• Habermas, J. (1973): Problemas de legitimación en el capitalismo tardío. Amorrortu, Buenos Aires, 1975. ISBN 978-84-376-1753-4.