The philosophical discourse of modernity

Jürgen Habermas (18 June 1929 – 14 March 2026) was a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addressed communicative rationality and the public sphere. He held professorships at Heidelberg University and Goethe University Frankfurt and directed the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focused 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, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. His major works include The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), a social history of the emergence and decline of bourgeois public discourse, and The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), which advanced a theory of rationality grounded in interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in instrumental or strategic reason.