Roots of Humanist Ethics. a Historical Perspective

Introduction Post World War II Germany was facing enormous problems caused by its immediate past: psychological, economical, social, political, moral. In addition it had to deal with an awkward situation of the country being split artificially into two diametrically different republics. It had to cope with its heritage and recent past and find a way out of the impasse to be able to function in the modern and increasingly integrated world. Habermas’s intellectual career reflects these problems, political climate, and tensions; his own views are a testimony to how people can seek various solutions to intricate issues. In fact he became an intellectual conscience of Germany. He wrote prolifically on almost every aspect of public life and inspired the democratic movement. Habermas was born in 1929 in Düsserldorf in a German family that uncritically accepted the Nazi reality without actively participating in the political process. He joined in 1945, as many other German youths, the Hitler jugend, the Nazi youth movement. After the war he became completely disillusioned with the Nazi past when he learned the extent of moral catastrophe perpetrated by the Nazis, especially by their attempt at eliminating ethnic and social groups they considered undesirable. Habermas studied philosophy in Göttingen, Zurich, and Bonn and obtained his doctoral degree in 1954 for his studies on the German idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling. He joined the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt where he became a research assistant to Theodore W. Adorno (1903-1969). He was influenced by Adorno and by Max Horkheimer (18951973), both of whom were of Jewish origin. In such a context Habermas discovered his