Under the Spell of Freedom

Hans Joas is Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at the Humboldt University of Berlin. For more than twenty years, he was a Visiting Professor of Sociology and in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Among his numerous prizes are the Max Planck Research Award in 2015; the Prix Paul Ricoeur in 2017; and the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award of the German Sociological Association in 2022. Some of his books in English include The Power of the Sacred (Oxford, 2021); G.H. Mead, A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought, Pragmatism and Social Theory; The Creativity of Action, The Genesis of Values, War and Modernity, The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights, and Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity. He has also published two books with Wolfgang Knoebl: Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures and War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present and has edited severalvolumes, including The Axial Age and Its Consequences (with Robert Bellah).

• Preface Introduction: Hegel's Philosophy of Freedom and a Blind Spot in Present-day HegelianismPart I: A New Understanding of Religion in the Early Twentieth CenturyChapter 1: Introductory Remarks: A New Understanding of Religion in the Early Twentieth CenturyChapter 2: The Independence of Religion: Ernst TroeltschChapter 3: Secular Sacredness: Rudolf OttoChapter 4: Self-Evidence of Sense of Self-Evidence: Max SchelerPart II: Secularization and the Modern History of FreedomChapter 5: Introductory Remarks: Secularization and the Modern History of FreedomChapter 6: The Sacralization of Democracy: John DeweyChapter 7: Post-Totalitarian Christianity: Alfred Döblin's Religious DialoguesChapter 8: The Contingency of Secularization: Reinhart Koselleck's Theory of HistoryChapter 9: The Secular Option, Its Rise and Consequences: Charles TaylorPart III: The Search for a Different Kind of FreedomChapter 10: Introductory Remarks: The Search for a Different Kind of FreedomChapter 11: A German Idea of Freedom? Cassirer and Troeltsch Between Germany and the West Chapter 12: Indebted Freedom: Paul TillichChapter 13: Sieve of Norms and Holy Scripture, Theonomy and Freedom: Paul RicoeurChapter 14: Communicative Freedom and Theology of Liberation: Wolfgang HuberPart IV: The Project of a Historical Sociology of ReligionChapter 15: The Project of a Historical Sociology of ReligionChapter 16: Religion is More than Culture: H. Richard NiebuhrChapter 17: Christianity and the Dangers of Self-Sacralization: Werner StarkChapter 18: More Weberian Than Weber?: David MartinChapter 19: Religious Evolution and Symbolic Realism: Robert BellahChapter 20: Religion and Globalization: José CasanovaConclusion: Global History of Religion and Moral UniversalismNotes Index

Hans Joas, for decades now one of the world's most influential social theorists, sociologist and theorist of religion, and diagnostician of the modern age, has written an extraordinary, bracing book about the relation between the modern discourses of about religion and the modern idea of freedom. No one interested in any of these topics, especially no one interested in accounts of secularization and its meaning, can afford to ignore Joas's passionate, pellucid discussion.