Influential thinker shaped postwar debates on democracy, nationalism and the future of Europe.

German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has died at the age of 96, a spokesperson for the publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag said on Saturday.

He died in the town of Starnberg in southern Germany, the spokesperson said, citing information from his family.

CBI News reports that Habermas was widely regarded as the most influential German philosopher of his generation. He took part in many of the major intellectual and political debates in postwar Germany and argued that a united Europe was the only lasting remedy to the resurgence of nationalism.

In his later years, he strongly supported the idea of a federal European project, warning that deeper integration was necessary to prevent the continent from falling back into the nationalist rivalries that marked the 20th century.

Throughout his career, Habermas closely linked philosophy with politics, insisting that critical thought should inform democratic action. He first rose to prominence as a prominent voice associated with the German student protest movements of the 1960s.

Decades later, however, he also became a target of criticism from parts of the same political spectrum after warning about the dangers of what he described as left wing fascism.

In 1989, Habermas criticised the terms of German reunification, arguing that the process was driven largely by market forces and symbolised by the dominance of the Deutsche Mark.

Habermas was born on June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf. As a youth he was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, although he was too young to play any active role during the war. The collapse of Nazism deeply shaped his political and philosophical outlook as a teenager.