The German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas died at the age of 96, according to his publisher, informs DPA, taken over by Agerpres.
Jürgen Habermas died on Saturday in the Bavarian town of Starnberg, Suhrkamp Verlag reported.
Widely regarded as a leading European public intellectual of the 20th century, the German philosopher and sociologist conceived his main works in Frankfurt, where he began his career in the 1950s at the Institute for Social Research under the guidance of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno.
Habermas was born in Düsseldorf on June 18, 1929 and studied philosophy, psychology, German literature and economics in Gottingen, Zurich and Bonn.
His political analysis helped shape the intellectual climate in postwar Germany, beginning with the publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962.
His work “Theory of Communicative Action”, published in 1981, is also considered a fundamental work of philosophy.
His studies frequently examined the concept of the public sphere and explored the forms of discourse most suitable for the organization of democratic societies.
Habermas was considered the most prominent figure of the second generation of the “Frankfurt School”, a school of thought often labeled “neo-Marxism”. But Habermas' work was also influenced by neo-Kantianism and American pragmatism, among others
