ABSTRACT
A German philosopher, social theorist and leading intellectual, Habermas was a professor at the Universities of Frankfurt and Heidelberg, led the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg (1971-1983), and later directed the University of Frankfurt’s Institute for Social Research, from which he retired in 1993. Initially a representative of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, his work on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) became one of the leading statements on the importance of civil society institutions. Habermas describes civil society as made up of spontaneously created associations, organizations and movements, which find, take up, condense and amplify the resonance of social problems in private life, and pass it on to the political realm or public sphere.
