A Brief Overview of the Frankfurt School (Part 12)
A Review of Habermas’ Life, Works, and Thoughts
Jürgen Habermas was born on June 18, 1929, in Düsseldorf, Germany. Habermas spent his adolescence during the rise and fall of Hitler and Nazism. The phenomenon of Hitler’s rise made thinkers around the world ponder how it was possible for “Nazism” to emerge from the heart of democracy and freedom? Isn’t it because Hitler was a president and his name came out of the ballot box? Questions like these made people like Habermas think. How did a deep and thought-provoking culture pave the way for the emergence and development of a great, rich and enduring intellectual and philosophical tradition, from Kant to Marx; a tradition in which themes such as “critical emancipatory intellect” and the objective realization of freedom were at their peak, providing favorable conditions for the emergence of Hitler and the Nazis?
Habermas describes his teenage experiences as follows: At the age of 15 or 16, I sat by the radio and listened to the debates and controversies that were broadcast during the Nuremberg trials. When others, instead of remaining silent in horror, began to argue about the fairness of the trial, and to question the procedural issues of the court, the first intellectual rupture appeared in my thoughts; a rupture that is still breaking apart, because I was too sensitive and affected to approach this grim and inhuman reality, which had been proven to everyone, as my elders did. Habermas studied in Gumsbach and at the universities of Göttingen, Bonn and Zurich. In 1954, he completed his thesis entitled “The Absolute and History”, examining the contradiction between the absolute and history in Schelling’s thought. After that, he worked as a journalist for two years and in 1956 he joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. During this time, Habermas became an assistant to Theodor Adorno, one of the most prominent members of this school, and was strongly influenced by the thinkers of the Frankfurt School. He also taught philosophy at the University of Heidelberg for three years, and taught sociology and philosophy at the University of Freiburg from 1964 to 1971. From 1972 to 1981, he was the director of research at the Max Planck Institute and in 1981 he published his greatest work, The Theory of Communicative Action, in two volumes. He also taught at the Goethe University in Frankfurt from 1983. This teaching continued until his retirement.
He did not have any prominent professors during his studies; but he was able to use the books and writings of great theorists. Habermas says: When I entered the Frankfurt Institute, I learned something from Adorno. He opened my eyes to the fact that first one must study the primary texts systematically, from beginning to end. He applied this method to the works of many philosophers or social theorists, taking something from each of them, of course, criticizing them. Habermas is influenced by many figures, some of whom are mentioned:
He studied Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness with particular fascination and interest, he used the works of Karl Marx, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Young Hegelians, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schilling, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Immanuel Kant. He studied the young Marx and the Young Hegelians with Karl Elwitt. Habermas also turned to the works of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Hork -hy-mer), especially Dialectic of intellectualism.
Habermas can be considered the last survivor of the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School is a critical theory that criticizes capitalist structures. Since the early 1960s, this school has played an important role in examining and critically approaching scientific and educational hypotheses within the framework of neo-Marxism.
Among his most important works are: Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Theory and Application in the Logic of Social Sciences, Human Cognition and Interests, Towards a Rational Society, The Crisis of Legitimacy, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Reconstruction of Historical Materialism, Communication and the Evolution of Society, Communication Theory, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Theory of Communicative Action in 2 Volumes, Post metaphysical Thought, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action of Righteousness and Truth, Considerations on the Ethics of Discourse, Between Facts and Norms, Philosophical-Political Perspective, New Conservatism, Emancipatory Power, Symbols of Independence and Solidarity. These are in fact some of his works that have been translated into English.
Undoubtedly, Habermas is one of the most prominent and liberal-minded figures who is considered the heir of the Frankfurt School and its social philosophy and critical theory. In the previous sections, we learned this central point about the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, whose efforts focused on freeing Marxism from Stalinist orthodoxy and reformulating it in the form of a kind of ideological and cultural critique. From this perspective, Habermas can be considered a continuation of the path of Nefortians, because he combined the aforementioned concern with a deep preoccupation with the analysis and criticism of those cultural and political factors that distort, break, and block the paths of interpersonal communication between humans. In this way, he made a major contribution to the development and reconstruction of critical theory. His important contribution to the field of contemporary European thought can be seen in this underlying assumption: the perfectible structures of reasoning and rationality (rational arguments) and liberating insights in relation to the attainment of truth are tangibly accessible and have a clear presence; Because they are embedded in the context of our ordinary communicative practices. These structures and insights are neither embedded in external realities nor are they mere reflections of said realities, but rather they are to be found within the socially constructed discourses that constitute our worldly life.
