[Thor Joachim Haga]

Jürgen Habermas has died, at a whopping 96 years old. So good innings.

https://apnews.com/article/juergen-habermas-dead-germany-2b541721af6cb19abfaa923359d091b5

Habermas was a genius philosopher and sociologist, no doubt about it, but he was also a frustration point for me when I was at uni. Some of his texts were very difficult, especially because he had sentences that ran for almost half a page. But I got through his 1962 classic tome Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit nonetheless, and – in retrospect – have found some of his musings helpful.

Habermas was part of the socalled Frankfurt School and a pupil of Theodor Adorno. I’ve always found the School interesting as an idea and “movement”, although I disagree with many of their musings – especially in relation to film music (like Hans Eisler and Theodor Adorno’s seminal 1947 book Composing for the Films, where they dig into Hollywood film music as the enemy and Brecht-ian verfremdungseffects as the “ideal”….never understood why it had to be so black and white, despite a rightful call for critical attitudes).