Oskar Reinhard Negt (; 1 August 1934 – 2 February 2024) was a German philosopher and critical social theorist. He was a professor of sociology in Hanover from 1972 to 2002, regarded as one of Germany's most prominent social scientists.

A member of the Socialist German Students' Union, Negt studied philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt with Theodor Adorno, and was an assistant of Jürgen Habermas. He was one of the mentors of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, and when the protest movement fragmented, tried as leader of the Sozialistisches Büro in Offenbach to establish an "over-factional consciousness". the son of a small farmer When the camp doors were finally reopened, Negt and his sisters were reunited with their parents in Soviet-occupied Berlin after having been placed in quarantine near Rostock on their return to Germany. Negt's childhood was deeply affected by missing out on early development, with no exposure to schooling. In 1951, with rising political pressure on Negt's family due to his father's involvement in the SPD, the family fled to West Berlin, where they would spend six months as asylum seekers. In 1955, the Negt family settled into Oldenburg in Lower Saxony. He was emerited in 2002. Negt's work with Kluge has been described as "highly unconventional" but significant in "an attempt to reinstate the human body to its rightful place in critical theory."

Personal life

Negt died in Hanover on 2 February 2024 after a long illness, at age 89. These include Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, and some of the major Western Marxists. He drew on work in labour sociology, organizational theory, political journalism and more. Negt's primary concerns relate to labor, teaching, and politics. These experiences led him to feel that while standard education for union members in metal working factories in Germany was sufficient for teaching legal questions, it was insufficient in political education. Negt thus understood genuine education to be inherently political, because democracy must be learned, making education existential for a democratic society. Negt was thus suspicious of the ideology and logic of capital and the market replacing all other forms of social reality. This informed his views on education as the holistic development of the person, limited not only to "processing knowledge and information" but also the ability to deal with emotions, to compromise, negotiate, and share with others. Thus for Negt, "good political education" means that the students can "think for themselves." Their seminal work Public Sphere and Experience was an analysis of the limits of the bourgeois public sphere, which shaped public opposition.

Awards

In 2011 Negt was awarded the for his political work.

  • (with Kluge) Public Sphere and Experience: Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, Verso; Reprint edition (2 February 2016) Originally issued as Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere (Theory & History of Literature) by Univ of Minnesota Pr; First edition (1 December 1993).
  • Adult Education and European Identity. Policy Futures in Education. 6 (6): 744–756. (2013)
  • (with Kluge) History and Obstinacy, Zone Books (11 April 2014)

In German

Negt's complete works were published by Steidl Verlag in twelve volumes in 2016.