How well do you know Jürgen Habermas?

Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist who focuses on communicative rationality and the public sphere. He is associated with the Frankfurt School and his work addresses the foundations of epistemology and social theory, analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, and contemporary politics. Habermas is known for his work on the concept of modernity and has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and poststructuralism. He was born in Düsseldorf in 1929 and grew up in Gummersbach. Habermas was profoundly affected by World War II and his father was a Nazi sympathizer and a member of the NSDAP. He studied at the universities of Göttingen, Zurich, and Bonn, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy. Habermas studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and finished his habilitation in political science at the University of Marburg. Habermas has constructed a comprehensive framework of philosophy and social theory drawing on a number of intellectual traditions. He considers his major contribution to be the development of the concept and theory of communicative reason or communicative rationality. He introduces the concept of "reconstructive science" with a double purpose: to place the "general theory of society" between philosophy and social science and re-establish the rift between the "great theorization" and the "empirical research". Habermas argues that prior to the 18th century, European culture had been dominated by a "representational" culture, where one party sought to "represent" itself on its audience by overwhelming its subjects. In Habermas's view, the growth in newspapers, journals, reading clubs, Masonic lodges, and coffeehouses in 18th-century Europe, all in different ways, marked the gradual replacement of "representational" culture with Öffentlichkeit culture.Jürgen Habermas: A Summary of His Work and Engagements

• Habermas identifies the growth of commercial mass media and the welfare state as factors that led to the decay of the public sphere, which turned into a site of self-interested contestation for the resources of the state.

• Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action (1981) criticizes the inflexible direction of modernization, which rationalizes public life, disfranchises citizens, and deteriorates the boundaries between public and private, individual and society, and system and lifeworld.

• Habermas expresses optimism about the possibility of the revival of the public sphere, where the representative democracy-reliant nation-state is replaced by a deliberative democracy-reliant political organism based on the equal rights and obligations of citizens.

• Habermas offers criticisms of postmodernism, which he believes is inconsistent with the possibility of a rational, "scientific" understanding of the life-world.

• Habermas engages in dialogues with various scholars, such as Gadamer, Foucault, Luhmann, Apel, and Rawls, on topics such as hermeneutics, power, reason, ethics, modernity, democracy, civil society, and social action.

• The Positivism dispute was a political-philosophical dispute between the critical rationalists (Karl Popper, Hans Albert) and the Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas) in 1961 about the methodology of social sciences.

• Habermas and Derrida engage in a series of disputes beginning in the 1980s, culminating in a mutual understanding and friendship in the late 1990s that lasted until Derrida's death in 2004.

• Habermas criticizes German historians Ernst Nolte, Michael Stürmer, Klaus Hildebrand and Andreas Hillgruber for "apologistic" history writing in regard to the Nazi era and for seeking to "close Germany's opening to the West."

• Habermas's attitudes towards religion have changed throughout the years, with him seeing a positive social role of religion in the third phase, from the beginning of the 21st Century until now.

• In a dialogue with Pope Benedict XVI, Habermas rethinks the public role of religion and concedes some ground to the Pope's arguments, stating that even for self-identified liberal thinkers, "to exclude religious voices from the public square is highly illiberal."Jürgen Habermas: Key Points

• Habermas coined the term "post-secular" to describe the current age where faith and reason must seek peaceful dialogue and coexistence.

• Habermas critiqued Marx's overestimation of the emancipatory potential of the forces of production, siding with Hannah Arendt's concerns with totalitarianism.

• Habermas argued that the welfare state in the West had pacified class conflict and refuted Marx's theory of class struggle.

• Habermas defended NATO's intervention in the Kosovo War, which stirred controversy.

• Habermas argued that the United States should not go to war in Iraq.

• Habermas criticized Angela Merkel's leadership in Europe during the European debt crisis.

• Habermas clashed with Wolfgang Streeck, who argued that Habermas' European federalism was the root of the continent's crisis.

• Habermas has received numerous awards, including the Kyoto Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award, and the Holberg Prize.

• One of Habermas' major works is "The Theory of Communicative Action," which argues that communication is the foundation of society.

• Habermas has also written extensively on democracy, the public sphere, and human rights.

• Habermas was a member of the Frankfurt School, a group of critical theorists who sought to analyze and critique the capitalist system.

• Habermas remains a prominent figure in contemporary philosophy and social theory.