Hans Joas

Not to be confused with Hans Jonas.

Hans Joas
Hans Joas (2014)
Born	(1948-11-27) November 27, 1948 Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Pragmatism
Main interests	Sociology

Hans Joas (born November 27, 1948 in Munich) is a German sociologist and social theorist.

Hans Joas is Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at Humboldt University of Berlin. From 2011 until 2014 he was a Permanent Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS); from 2002 until 2011 he was the Director of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt. He is also Visiting Professor of Sociology and Social Thought and a Member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Hans Joas is Ordinary Member of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Non-resident Long-term Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala.

Life

• 1968–1971 studying sociology, philosophy, history, German literature at the University of Munich
• 1971–1972 studying the same disciplines at the Free University of Berlin
• 1972 “Diploma” in sociology
• 1973–1977 “Wissenschaftlicher Assistent” (Research and teaching fellow), Department of Sociology, Free University of Berlin
• 1979 “Dr.phil.”
• 1979–1983 Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education, Berlin (1980–1981 Visiting Professor, University of Tübingen)
• 1981 “Habilitation”
• 1984–1987 Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)
• 1985 (Spring quarter) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
• 1986 (Summer quarter) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
• 1987–1990 Professor of Sociology, University of Erlangen‐Nuremberg
• 1990–2002 Professor of Sociology, Free University of Berlin
• 1993–1995 Executive Director, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Berlin
• 1992 (Spring semester) Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences and Visiting Professor, University of Uppsala
• 1994 (Fall semester) Fellow, Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study, Bloomington, Indiana
• 1996 (Fall semester) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin at Madison
• 1997 (Spring semester) Theodor Heuss Professor, Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research, New York
• 1998 (Spring semester) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (Fall semester) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin at Madison
• 1999–2000 Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
• since 2000 Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Member of the Committee on Social Thought
• 2002–2011 Director, Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany
• 2002 (Fall semester) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, Austria
• 2004–2005 Ernst Cassirer Professor, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
• 2005–2006 Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
• 2007 (Spring semester) Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology and Faculty of Catholic Theology, University of Vienna, Austria
• 2010 (Spring semester) Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden
• 2011 (Spring semester) Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), Stellenbosch, South Africa
• 2011–2014 Permanent Fellow, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg, Germany
• since 2014 Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion, Faculty of Theology, Humboldt University of Berlin

In 2012 Joas was the first scholar to be Visiting Professor of the Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedikt XVI. Foundation at the University of Regensburg. The topic of his lecture was “Sacralization and Secularization”. Since November 2015 Joas is a member of the advisory board of the Federation of German Scientists (Vereinigung Deutscher Wissenschaftler e. V.).

Research

Hans Joas’ research focuses on social philosophy and sociological theory, mainly American Pragmatism and Historism; the sociology of religion and the sociology of war and violence; as well as value change in modern societies. The emergence/formation of values is a core theme of Hans Joas’ work. He developed a theory of “Affirmative Genealogy” of values, especially with regard to human rights. According to Joas values originate in experiences of self-formation and self-transcendence. He developed a phenomenology of experiences of self-transcendence. Joas emphasizes that his account of the contingence of value-formation is not to be seen as a plea against the claims of a universalistic morality.

Work

Hans Joas is Ernst-Troeltsch-Honorarprofessor at the Faculty of Theology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He was a Permanent Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) (University of Freiburg) in Germany and Visiting Professor of Sociology and Social Thought and a Member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was the Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt from 2002-2011. Joas has taught at many institutions, most recently at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and has published several books on social theory, most notably The Creativity of Action.

Joas' work has focused primarily on reconstructing the tradition of American pragmatism, defending its philosophical interest and explicating its significance for social theory.

For Joas, pragmatism offers a novel solution to the problem of value, bridging between the normative concerns of philosophy and the sociological investigation of norms. Starting from an early study of George Herbert Mead (G.H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought, 1983), Joas has gone on to explore the European reception of pragmatism in Pragmatism and Social Theory (1993) and to reconstruct the sociological theory of action based on the pragmatist conception of creativity (The Creativity of Action, 1996). A wide-ranging examination of ideas about The Genesis of Values (2000) draws heavily on William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Academic awards

• 2010: Bielefelder Wissenschaftspreis („Niklas-Luhmann-Preis“).
• 2012: Werner Heisenberg medal of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.
• 2012: Doctor honoris causa, University of Tübingen.
• 2013: Doctor honoris causa, Uppsala University.
• 2013: Hans-Kilian-Award.
• 2015: Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, American Sociological Association, Section History of Sociology.
• 2015: Max-Planck-Research-Award.

Books in English

• George Herbert Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought (MIT Press 1985, ISBN 978-0-262-10033-5).
• Social Action and Human Nature (with Axel Honneth) (Cambridge University Press 1988, ISBN 978-0-521-33935-3).
• Pragmatism and Social Theory (University of Chicago Press 1993, 978-0-226-40042-6).
• The Creativity of Action (University of Chicago Press 1996, ISBN 978-0-226-40044-0).
• The Genesis of Values (University of Chicago Press 2000, ISBN 978-0-226-40040-2).
• War and Modernity (Blackwell 2003, ISBN 978-0-745-62644-4).
• Social Theory (with Wolfgang Knoebl) (Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-87063-4).
• Do We Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence (Paradigm 2009, ISBN 978-1-594-51439-5).
• War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present (with Wolfgang Knoebl) (Princeton University Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-691-15084-0).
• The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Georgetown University Press 2012, ISBN 978-1-589-01969-0).
• The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Belknap Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-674-06649-6).
• Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity (Stanford University Press 2014, ISBN 978-0804792776).
• The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead (with Daniel R. Huebner) (University of Chicago Press 2016, ISBN 9780226376943).

Recent books in German

• Was ist die Achsenzeit? Eine wissenschaftliche Debatte als Diskurs über Transzendenz (Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2014, ISBN 978-3-7965-3360-0).
• Die lange Nacht der Trauer. Erzählen als Weg aus der Gewalt? (Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8379-2267-7).
• Sind die Menschenrechte westlich? (Kösel, München 2015, ISBN 978-3466371266).
• Kirche als Moralagentur? (Kösel, München 2016, ISBN 978-3-466-37175-4).

External links

• Literature by and about Hans Joas in the German National Library catalogue
• Homepage Ernst-Troeltsch-Honorarprofessur at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Hans Joas in the central informationsystem of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Action Is the Way in Which Human Beings Exist in the World An interview with Hans Joas, Freie Universität Berlin, September 21st 1999