Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher and leading representative of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, was born in Düsseldorf. After World War II he studied in Göttingen, Zürich, and Bonn, where he submitted a dissertation on Friedrich von Schelling in 1954. From 1955 to 1959 he was Theodor Adorno's assistant at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. After habilitating at Marburg University in 1961, he taught philosophy and sociology at the universities of Heidelberg and Frankfurt before becoming codirector of the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg. In 1983 he returned to the University of Frankfurt, where he was professor of philosophy until his retirement in 1994.

Habermas's life and work have remained deeply influenced by the traumatic events of his youth under National Socialism. From the time of his involvement with the German student movement in the 1960s he...