German philosopher Jürgen Habermas died this Saturday, aged 96, announced a spokeswoman for his publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag.
Jürgen Habermas died in Starnberg, in southern Germany, according to family information.
Jürgen Habermas was the most influential German intellectual of his generation, participating in all the main post-war debates and considering Europe as the only remedy for the rise of nationalism, reported the France-Presse agency.
In his last years, he dedicated himself to promoting a European federal project, to prevent the Old Continent from falling back into the nationalist rivalries of the 20th century.
Throughout his life, Habermas linked philosophy and politics, thought and action. His moral authority earned him numerous distinctions around the world.
After being the voice of German student protests in the 1960s, he became the target of the same thirty years later, when he denounced the risks of “left-wing fascism” for the Rule of Law.
In 1989, he criticized German reunification methods, which he considered to be driven mainly by market forces and which had “the German mark as its flag”.
Born on June 18, 1929, in Düsseldorf, Jürgen Habermas was a member of the Hitler Youth, but was too young to have actively participated in the war. As a teenager, he was deeply affected by the collapse of Nazism.
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