Hans Joas Turns 75 on 27 November 2023

Hans Joas was born in 1948 and is the Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at the Humboldt University of Berlin and professor of sociology and social thought at the University of Chicago. Joas has received numerous awards for his work, including the Prix Paul Ricœur in 2017, the Max Planck Research Award in 2015, and the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association in the same year. In the Frankfurter Rundschau, Dirk Pilz wrote of Joas’s influence: »It is no exaggeration to describe philosopher and sociologist Hans Joas as one of the most important contemporary German thinkers.«

Joas’s most recent book with Suhrkamp was Under the Spell of Freedom. In a review of the English edition, published by Oxford University Press, Robert Norton wrote: »Hans Joas is arguably the most important moral philosopher writing in German today. This book will go a long way in making clear to the Anglophone world why that is so.« His work has been translated into more than 10 different languages.

We wish the author all the best on this special day.