Axel Honneth

Axel Honneth was born in Essen in 1949. He studied philosophy, sociology, and German philology at the Universities of Bonn and Bochum. In 1982, he earned his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. From 1982 to 1983, he worked closely with Jürgen Habermas at the Max-Planck-Institute. From 1991 to 1992, he taught at the University of Konstanz; in 1992, he was appointed Professor of Political Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, and in 1996, Professor of Social Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. In 2001, he became the director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. In 2011, he was appointed Professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University in the USA. He has been honored with the Ernst Bloch Prize, the Bruno-Kreisky Prize (for The Idea of Socialism), and the highest distinction of the University of Dublin, the Ulysses Medal.