H
Habermas, Jürgen (1929– ) German philo-
sopher
Named “the most powerful thinker” in Germany by
Der Spiegelmagazine in 1979, Habermas is the most
distinguished scholar of the second generation of the
FRANKFURT SCHOOL. Born in Düsseldorf, Habermas was
raised in NAZIGermany, an experience that had a pro-
found affect on his later work in moral and political
theory. After studying at several universities in Ger-
many, Habermas completed his Ph.D. in philosophy at
the University of Bonn in 1954. Shortly thereafter, he
became the assistant to Theodor Adorno at the Insti-
tute for Social Research in Frankfurt, serving in that
capacity until 1959. Since that time, he has been a pro-
fessor of philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg
and Frankfurt, as well as the director of the Max
Planck Institute in Starnberg. He is presently professor
emeritus at the University of Frankfurt and permanent
visiting professor at Northwestern University.
Following in the tradition established by the mem-
bers of the Frankfurt school, Habermas’s work em-
bodies a form of CRITICAL THEORY that combines
philosophy and social science. However, Habermas
is less dependent upon the writings of Karl MARX
than the early Frankfurt School, and he has been
receptive to the contributions of contemporary ana-
lytic philosophers. In his early writings, Habermas
criticized the instrumental-rationality characteristic of
modern science and the way science enabled CAPITAL-
ISMto dominate the everyday cultural environment, or
“lifeworld,” in which individuals interact. He also
described the “legitimation crisis” that the modern
state confronts when it is unable to protect citizens
from the negative effects of economic collapse under
capitalism. According to Habermas, critical theory
should illuminate the emancipatory potential of labor
and cultural activities that are able to carry out social
and political reform.
In The Theory of Communicative Action (1981),
Habermas developed an extensive account of social
interaction based on theories of language and commu-
nication. Following a critique of the traditional con-
ception of reason based on the paradigm of “isolated”
self-consciousness, Habermas built an alternative para-
digm based on the intersubjective relationships of
individuals within communities. In the lifeworld of
everyday experience, individual identity and con-
sciousness are shaped by various structures of beliefs,
values, and practices, generally mediated through the
activity of communication. For Habermas, communica-
tive actionrefers to the cooperative process whereby131