The influential German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas has died at the age of 96, his publisher has said. Habermas, a towering figure in the intellectual history of postwar Germany, is best known for his theory of political consensus-building. Widely considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, he also helped to shape the discourse around European integration and the formation of the EU.
His career, which spanned seven decades, focused on the foundations of social theory, democracy and the rule of law. His belief that the formation of public opinion was vital for democracies to survive explains why Habermas continued to write books and newspaper articles deep into old age. In a 2015 interview with the Guardian, he criticised the then chancellor Angela Merkel for “gambling away” Germany’s postwar reputation with her government’s hardline stance during the Greek debt crisis.
More recently, such interventions invited criticism from younger intellectuals. In 2022, he criticised Germany’s then Green party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, for her “aggressively self-confident” and “shrill” condemnations of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. His pronouncement that Israel’s war on Gaza following the 7 October Hamas attacks was “justified in principle” was met with disbelief by many philosophers following in the footsteps of the Frankfurt school’s “critical theory”, who published a condemnatory letter.
His most recent work, Things Needed to Get Better, was published in December last year. In it, he refuses to “let defeatism have the last word”, arguing it is possible to “confront the crises of the present aggressively and finally overcome them after all”. His publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. He is survived by two of his three children.
