The philosopher who questioned the scale of values leaves us at the age of 96.

Jürgen Habermas, philosopher, sociologist, and university professor who passed away at the age of 96, embodied like few the will of Germany to redeem itself from its tragic past, recovering the universalist values of dialogue and reason. A leading figure of the Frankfurt School, he was the most influential German intellectual of his generation: a protagonist in all the major post-war debates, he identified Europe as the only antidote to the resurgence of nationalism.

A convinced supporter of a federal project for the continent, he considered engagement in the public sphere to be the most important task of philosophy. Settling in Starnberg, Bavaria, where he lived for decades, he continued to give lectures regularly until the end. In two opinion pieces published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he argued for the necessity to negotiate with Moscow.

Europe was the common thread of his interventions, warnings, and reflections: alongside the push for unification, he did not spare criticism of the political elites of the European Union, calling for broader citizen involvement in the integration process.

Born on June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, although he was too young to participate actively in the conflict. Born with a cleft lip, he underwent two surgeries that left him with a speech defect, causing him to be marginalized by his peers. From that experience, he gained an awareness of the intrinsically social nature of human existence and a lasting interest in communication, the core of his research.

The other pillar of his thought matured in the political climate of the time: "The society and regime under which we had lived with a sense of semi-normality were unmasked for what they were: a pathological and criminal society and regime." From that fracture arose the unease that guided the first twenty years of his studies: could democracy take root in Germany?

Starting in 1949, he studied philosophy, history, economics, psychology, and German literature in Göttingen, Zurich, and Bonn. He had three children. In 1956, Theodor W. Adorno invited him to the Institute for Social Research, the heart of the revived Frankfurt School. An heir to that tradition, Habermas surpassed it by integrating elements of American pragmatism and language theory.

By the end of the 1970s, he formulated the cornerstone of his work, the “theory of communicative action”. For Habermas, the principle of authority is unacceptable, which is why he constantly rejects the power of “experts”. No less problematic, in his eyes, is the discourse on values when it is reduced to an expression of pure cultural subjectivity.

Throughout his career, he succeeded Max Horkheimer in the chair of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt (1964-1971), directed the Max Planck Institute for the Social Sciences in Starnberg (1971-1983), and then returned to teaching in Frankfurt until his retirement in 1994.

He participated in the student protests of the 1960s, only to become the target of criticism three decades later for denouncing the risks of “left-wing fascism” to the rule of law. In the mid-1980s, he was among the most determined opponents of the conservative historian Ernst Nolte, accused of trivializing Nazi crimes.

In 1989, he contested the methods of German reunification, which he believed were driven by market forces. He ultimately developed the idea of “constitutional patriotism,” arguing that belonging should not be tied to the nation-state, but rather to democratic institutions.