Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026) dominated post-war European liberal philosophy. He dedicated his life to the rational foundation of a global liberal order and the post-national European Union.
Loaded with philosophical terms, his writing does not invite the reader, yet there is pathos in the background. Habermas addressed the question of whether the Enlightenment was the cause of the German genocides and Germany’s own ruin. Postmodern thinkers levelled this charge, but Habermas’s biography told against it: “Since the age of 16, my political thinking has been nourished by the American ideals of the late eighteenth century thanks to the shrewd re-education policy of the Allied occupation administration.”
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