Gal Beckerman in The New York Times:
Jürgen Habermas, a philosopher and public intellectual who was one of the most influential and cited thinkers in postwar Germany, died on Saturday in Starnberg, Germany, southwest of Munich. He was 96.
His publisher, Suhrkamp, confirmed the death.
For over a half-century and in dozens of books, Dr. Habermas bucked the prevailing trend of postmodern cynicism about truth and reason, offering a staunch defense of Enlightenment ideals and the possibility of individual and societal freedom.
He was best known for introducing in the early 1960s the notion of a “public sphere.” He theorized that democracy emerged and could continue to exist in a healthy form only if there was a space that was outside the control of the state, where deliberation and the exchange of ideas could freely occur. That concept has since swept through a number of academic fields, from political science and history to media studies, spawning thousands of papers and books.
Though a disciple and eventual leader of the famed Frankfurt School of critical social theory, Dr. Habermas had more faith in the promise of modernity than mentors like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, believing that the Enlightenment was an “unfinished project” that could be corrected through a focus on improved communication.
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