Bøger af Hans Joas

The anthology focuses on the major classical pragmatist theories of religion. It is unique in pointing out pragmatist concepts of religious individualization as alternatives to the common secularization discourse and by stressing the compatibility of religious individualism with a positive concept of community.

Many people these days regard religion as outdated and are unable to understand how believers can intellectually justify their faith. Nonbelievers have long assumed that progress in technology and the sciences renders religion irrelevant. Believers, in contrast, see religion as vital to society's spiritual and moral well-being. But does modernization lead to secularization? Does secularization lead to moral decay? Sociologist Hans Joas argues that these two supposed certainties have kept scholars from serious contemporary debate and that people must put these old arguments aside in order for debate to move forward. The emergence of a "e;secular option"e; does not mean that religion must decline, but that even believers must now define their faith as one option among many.In this book, Joas spells out some of the consequences of the abandonment of conventional assumptions for contemporary religion and develops an alternative to the clich of an inevitable conflict between Christianity and modernity. Arguing that secularization comes in waves and stressing the increasing contingency of our worlds, he calls upon faith to articulate contemporary experiences. Churches and religious communities must take into account religious diversity, but the modern world is not a threat to Christianity or to faith in general. On the contrary, Joas says, modernity and faith can be mutually enriching.

A modern discussion of religion that goes beyond the assumption that modernisation leads to secularisation.

One of the most important issues in public and academic debate is the concept of value and the difficulty in defining it. In this new book, the leading social theorist Hans Joas explores the nature of values in relation to some of the leading figures of twentieth--century philosophy and social theory.

Written by Hans Joas, one of Europea s leading social theorists. Asks how contemporary social and political thought can come to terms with the ongoing proliferation of war and state violence. Draws on a wide range of material, from World War I and Vietnam to the Gulf War and the conflicts in the Balkans.

Social theory is the theoretical core of the social sciences, clearly distinguishable from political theory and cultural analysis. This book offers a unique overview of the development of social theory from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the present day. Spanning the literature in English, French and German, it provides an excellent background to the most important social theorists and theories in contemporary sociological thought, with crisp summaries of the main books, arguments and controversies. It also deals with newly emerging schools from rational choice to symbolic interactionism, with new ambitious approaches (Habermas, Luhmann, Giddens, Bourdieu), structuralism and antistructuralism, critical revisions of modernization theory, feminism and neopragmatism. Written by two of the world's leading sociologists and based on their extensive academic teaching, this unrivalled work is ideal both for students in the social sciences and humanities and for anyone interested in contemporary theoretical debates.

This book, the first of its kind, provides a sweeping critical history of social theories about war and peace from Hobbes to the present. Distinguished social theorists Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knobl present both a broad intellectual history and an original argument as they trace the development of thinking about war over more than 350 years--from the premodern era to the period of German idealism and the Scottish and French enlightenments, and then from the birth of sociology in the nineteenth century through the twentieth century. While focusing on social thought, the book draws on many disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, and political science. Joas and Knobl demonstrate the profound difficulties most social thinkers--including liberals, socialists, and those intellectuals who could be regarded as the first sociologists--had in coming to terms with the phenomenon of war, the most obvious form of large-scale social violence. With only a few exceptions, these thinkers, who believed deeply in social progress, were unable to account for war because they regarded it as marginal or archaic, and on the verge of disappearing. This overly optimistic picture of the modern world persisted in social theory even in the twentieth century, as most sociologists and social theorists either ignored war and violence in their theoretical work or tried to explain it away. The failure of the social sciences and especially sociology to understand war, Joas and Knobl argue, must be seen as one of the greatest weaknesses of disciplines that claim to give a convincing diagnosis of our times.

What are the origins of the idea of human rights and universal human dignity? How can we most fully understand - and realize - these rights going into the future? This title sets out a path, proposing an affirmative genealogy in which human rights are the result of a process of "sacralization" of every human being.

Fører modernisering til sekularisering? Fører sekularisering til moralsk forfald? Nogle betragter religion som et levn fra fortiden. Med modernisering og fremskridt har religionen mistet sin betydning og samfundet er blevet til et bedre sted. Andre ser derimod religion som grundlaget for moral og et værn mod opløsning af et velfungerende samfund. Hans Joas undersøger den tilsyneladende modsætning mellem modernisering og religion, som i generationer har domineret de akademiske såvel som intellektuelle diskussioner. Han peger i stedet for på en mere frugtbar dialog, hvis man tager afsked med de konventionelle opfattelser af forholdet mellem tro og ikke-tro. Vi lever i dag i en verden, hvor mennesket i alle aspekter at sit liv står over for en uendelig mængde af valgmuligheder. Det er ifølge bogen et grundvilkår for mange mennesker, som også gælder deres forhold til religion. Religionen er ikke længere nødvendigvis udtryk for tradition og opdragelse, men udtryk for et valg, en option, lige såvel som ikke-tro er en option.