Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans Joas

• The Power of the Sacred. An Alternative to the Narrative of Disenchantment (Oxford University Press 2021)
• War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present (Princeton University Press 2013 , with Wolfgang Knöbl)
• The Sacredness of the Person. A New Genealogy of Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: Goegetwown University Press 2013)
• Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures (Cambridge University Press 2009, with Wolfgang Knöbl)
• Im Bannkreis der Freiheit. Religionstheorie nach Hegel und Nietzsche (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2020, English translation forthcoming with Oxford UP 2023)
• George Herbert Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of his Thought (MIT Press 1985)
• Social Action and Human Nature (with Axel Honneth) (Cambridge University Press 1988)
• Pragmatism and Social Theory (University of Chicago Press 1993)
• The Creativity of Action (University of Chicago Press 1996)
• The Genesis of Values (University of Chicago Press 2000)
• War and Modernity (Blackwell 2003)
• Do We Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence (Paradigm 2009)
• War in Social Thought. A History (with Wolfgang Knoebl) (Princeton University Press 2012)

“Sacralization and Secularization” (2011-2014)

After completing in 2011 a book on the history of human rights as the sacralisation of the “person”, I have since then concentrated my efforts on developing an alternative to the conventional understanding of secularization and disenchantment as the necessary corollaries of processes of modernisation. The first steps in this project were: a, a book “Faith as an Option”, published in German in 2012 and forthcoming in English in 2014, that treats the emergence of the “secular option” not as a cause of inevitable religious decline, but as a new challenge for believers who have to define their faith now as one option among many. b, an edited volume on the Axial Age as the historic breakthrough to conceptions of transcendence and moral universalism (published in 2012). An extended version of my own chapter in this volume will be published as a small book in German in 2014.

I am now mostly working on a book manuscript – tentatively titled “Sacralisation or Disenchantment” – in which I will present the basic features of a theory of the dynamics of sacralisation processes and their interchange with processes of the formation of power. This book also situates this theory in the context of the history of the historical-comparative study of religion.

Having just finished a study on the history of human rights as the sacralisation of the “person” I am now mostly interested in developing an alternative to the conventional understanding of secularization as the necessary corollary of processes of modernization. The coming steps in this project are:

1. The finalization of a book manuscript “Faith as an Option”. As Charles Taylor has demonstrated, the emergence of the “secular option” does not mean that religions must decline, but that even believers have to define their faith now as an option. The book spells out some of the consequences this has for contemporary religion. (published in German, June 2012)
2. The edition of a collection on the “Axial Age” as the breakthrough to moral universalism (together with Robert Bellah, forthcoming October 2012, Harvard University Press)
3. A study of the history of the scientific study of religion between the project of secularization and the attempt to find new foundations for religious faith, simultaneously an attempt to develop the theoretical alternative mentioned at the beginning.