Professor Jürgen Habermas, who has died aged 96, was widely celebrated. Many obituaries read like academic papers; I offer here a personal tribute, a glimpse of a life truly lived.

In 1998, as a student in London, I learned that Jürgen Habermas would be giving a lecture at the Royal Institute of Philosophy. By coincidence, at almost the same hour, my father was due to land at Heathrow Airport from Athens to visit me. What was I to do? In a world before mobile phones, I made a choice that shaped me. I asked my father to wait at the airport for three hours so I could witness, firsthand, a man who defined our era. I was 24 at the time. My father, understanding the “what and the why,” agreed. It was worth the wait. Life is made up of thousands of days, most of which fade. Thus, that day has never left me.

The Guardian’s recent coverage of Habermas’s “politics of the human” rightly honors his rupture with Nazi inhumanity. Yet, looking back at........

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