Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas was born in 1929, and grew up in Gummersbach, Germany. He was educated at the Universities of Gottingen, Bonn, and Zurich, after which he worked for a while as a freelance journalist. In 1956 he became Adorno's assistant at the University of Frankfurt. From 1961 to 1964 he taught philosophy in Heidelberg, and from 1964 to 1971, philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt. From 1971 to 1983 he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Research into the Life Conditions of the Scientific-Technical World, in Sternberg. Among his influential publications in English are: Knowledge and Human Interests (1971), Theory and Practice (1973), The Theory of Communicative Action (1984/1987), and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1990).