Habermas-Klautke Habermas Sage TEMPLATE

Klautke, E; (2013) Habermas, Jürgen. In: Claeys, G, (ed.
) Encyclopedia of Modern
Political Thought. CQ Press/Sage: Thousand Oaks.
BOOK CHAPTER
Habermas, Jürgen
Egbert Klautke
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London
Jürgen Habermas (born 1929) is one of the most influential German social
philosophers of the twentieth century. Besides his academic work, he regularly
contributes to political debates, often playing the part of the liberal ‘conscience’ of
Germany. A staunch defender of enlightenment principles, he sees modernity as an
‘unfinished project’ that needs to be protected from neo-conservative and postmodern
critics who attack and undermine Western liberal democracies. Habermas’s most
important works include Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962),
Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), The Theory of Communicative Action (1981),
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985), and Between Facts and Norms:
Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1992). In addition, he
regularly publishes his political opinions in newspapers and magazines.
The scion of a West German middle-class family, Habermas grew up in Gummersbach.

He was drafted into the Germany army in the later stages of WWII. The chaos of
postwar Germany and the revelations about Nazi atrocities left a lasting impression on
Habermas and determined his future political stance. From 1949 to 1954 he studied
philosophy, history, psychology and German literature at the universities of Göttingen,
Zurich and Bonn. In 1954, he graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy on Schelling,
supervised by the philosopher Erich Rothacker, and worked as a freelance journalist
before joining the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt in 1956 where he became
assistant of Theodor W. Adorno. Having lost the confidence of the institute’s director
Max Horkheimer, however, he moved to the University of Marburg where he defended
his Habilitation on the structural transformation of the public sphere, supported by the
political scientists Wolfgang Abendroth. In this historical-philosophical study, Habermas
developed a notion of free public discourse as the backbone of liberal society. In 1961,
he became professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, and in 1964 he
returned to Frankfurt when he succeeded Horkheimer in the chair of sociology and
philosophy. From 1971 until 1983 he was co-director, together with the physicist Carl
Friedrich von Weizsäcker, of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of the Conditions of
Life in the Scientific-Technical World at Starnberg, Bavaria. During this time, Habermas
underwent his own “linguistic turn”, absorbed the philosophy of language and
linguistics and produced his opus magnum, the two-volume Theory of Communicative
Action, in which he formulated a consensual theory of “discourse” and the “ideal
speech situation” as the foundation of society. In 1983 he returned to the University of
Frankfurt as Professor of Sociology where he taught until in 1994. After his retirement,
he continued to contribute regularly to political debates, most recently in a dialogue
with Pope Benedict XVI on the role of religion in a secularized world.
While working at the Institute of Social Research, Habermas had contributed to an

empirical study on university students’ attitudes to politics which criticized the apathetic
nature of the “skeptical generation” of the 1950s. In the 1960s, Habermas’s unorthodox
Marxism made him a popular figure with the West German student movement which he
in turn supported in their critique of the existing liberal order of the Federal Republic of
Germany. While Habermas grew increasingly concerned about the radicalism of the
left-wing students and accused them of ‘leftist fascism’, he kept defending “1968” for its
positive effects on the political culture of West Germany. In 1973, Habermas edited an
important study on the “crisis of legitimation” in capitalist societies. In the 1980s, he
started a much publicized debate about the singularity of the Holocaust when he
2
rejected attempts by “neoconservative” historians to “normalize” the official view of

German history. Instead, Habermas urged his fellow countrymen to adopt a “post-
national identity”. Borrowing a concept from the political scientist Dolf Sternberger,
Habermas presented “constitutional patriotism” as the only option open for postwar
Germans. Consequently, Habermas was an enthusiastic adherent of a unified Europe,
but remained critical of the unification of the two German states in 1990.
Habermas’s influences are as varied as his large œuvre: well-versed in the traditions of
philosophical idealism, he was much influenced, but also highly critical of Martin
Heidegger’s existentialism. In line with the tradition of the Frankfurt School and
mediated by Herbert Marcuse, he combined theories of the early Marx with Sigmund
Freud’s psychoanalysis. His focus on language and discourse are the product of his
reception of the philosophy of the late Wittgenstein, of American pragmatism (Charles
S. Peirce, George Herbert Mead, John Dewey) and the philosophy of language (J. L.
Austin, John Searle, Noam Chomsky). From the 1970s, Habermas critically reviewed
the systems theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, while in the 1980s he
was influenced, by way of critical reception, by French post-structuralism, notably
Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault. Translations and regular
invitations as guest professor to American universities have made Habermas one of
the best known and most widely discussed German social philosophers of the second
half of the twentieth century.
The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. Stephen K. White (New York and
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).
William Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 1993).
Matthew G. Specter, Habermas: An Intellectual Biography (New York and Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2010).

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Klautke, E; (2013) Habermas, Jürgen. In: Claeys, G, (ed.

The scion of a West German middle-class family, Habermas grew up in Gummersbach.

While working at the Institute of Social Research, Habermas had contributed to an

rejected attempts by “neoconservative” historians to “normalize” the official view of

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