On the 95th Birthday of Jürgen Habermas

On 18 June 2024, the sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas turns 95. A major figure in the tradition of critical theory and a member of the Frankfurt School, Habermas is one of the most influential thinkers working today. He has taught at universities in Germany and the US, and his work is known right around the world. His work Knowledge and Human Interests was the very first title in the now iconic suhrkamp taschenbuch der wissenschaft series in 1973.

In September of this year, Suhrkamp will publish Things Needed to Improve…, a major new work produced in collaboration with Stefan Müller-Doohm, whose biography of Habermas was published in 2014, and Roman Yos, whose Young Habermas (2019) offered a detailed discussion of the origins and foundations of Habermas’s thought. Things Needed to Improve… takes the form of a series of conversations between Habermas and his two collaborators about the evolution of his ideas in his own words. Habermas reflects on formative encounters with other thinkers, and on the social developments in postwar German society that left indelible marks on his philosophical oeuvre.