Jürgen Habermas: Social Theory And Epistemology

Jürgen Habermas

ON THEORY

Presentation by

Sunat Atun

• Born 18 June 1929. A German sociologist and philosopher.

• Associated with critical theory and pragmatism traditions.

• He is famous with his theories on “communicative rationality” and “the public sphere”.

• Habermas is accepted as one of the world 's best known intellectuals.

• Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas 's work focuses on:

• the structures of social theory and epistemology;

• the fundamentals of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy;

• The law in a critical social & evolutionary notion, and contemporary politics, (particularly German and British politics.)

• His theories concentrated to analyse the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational

It has been argued that he preferred writing over the spoken word as a medium.

• He was influenced by World War II.

• He was son of Ernst Habermas,who was executive director of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce. He was known to be a Nazi sympathizer.

• He studied at the universities of Göttingen, Zürich and Bonn and earned Ph.D. in Univesity of Bonn in 1954.

• He further studied philosophy and sociology under the theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.

• His most famous work is called “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”. It was mainly based on understanding about the development of the “bourgeois public sphere” based on its roots in the 18th century reaching to its transformation over the influence of so called “capital-driven mass media”.

• He achieved "extraordinary professor” of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1961.

• It’s a notalble fact that the later philosopher Albrecht Wellmer was his assistant in Frankfurt.

• He then became Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg in 1971.

• He then produced his world famous book:”The Theory of Communicative