Sad news. An intellectual giant.
I remember him from his work on contradictions. Wikipedia lists performative contradiction among his contributions to philosophy.
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. This signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction past, present, future is a stubbornly persistent illusion” ~ A. Einstein
We explored some of his work briefly in sociology many years ago. Why was he important?
It’s the end of a generation. First MacIntyre, now Habermas. Charles Taylor is still with us at 94. Not sure who else from that era.
Theory of communicative action and critique of capitalism’s erosion of the public sphere. I’d guess he’s one of the most quoted thinkers in sociology. But he’s not a focus for what I’m doing at the moment, and I was never deeply familiar with him anyway, so I’m not the best person to ask.
(I should add that his broad themes are very relevant to my interests. But my bandwidth is fairly full already, which is more the reason he’s not a focus).
We’ve lost one of the greats. Habermas is dead, age 96. I believe he was one of the three or four most important philosophers of our time. I came to his philosophy rather late, and am still working on understanding his contributions to epistemology, communication theory, and pragmatism. But reading him has changed how I do philosophy. I believe it’s also made me a better person. He was extraordinary.
His final three-volume history of Philosophy, Also, a magnum opus. A giant, gone now to the place of giants. Pantagruel.