THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
John U. Nef Lecture Series
Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion at the Humboldt University of Berlin
Monday, October 21, 2024
4:30 – 6:00 p.m. CST
Foster 505
Taking the well-being of all human beings into account when making moral and political decisions - for many people today, this is at least justified as an ideal. But such a "universalist" orientation is by no means innate or universal. It is therefore important to ask about its historical origins, its further development and the conditions for its stabilization - against nationalism and racism, for example. However, the history of the interactions between universalism and imperialism also shows what dangers are built into universalism as soon as it serves to justify empires. Can there be a universalism without imperialism? From which thinkers - from Augustine to Dante to Gandhi - can we learn something in this respect?
You must register HERE to attend the master classes.
Master class session 1: Wednesday, October 23, 2024; 4:30 – 6:30 pm, Social Science Tea Room
This first session will be devoted to a clarification of the main purpose of Under the Spell of Freedom: Theory of Religion after Hegel and Nietzsche (OUP, 2024). It is the second volume of a trilogy. Vol. 1 (The Power of the Sacred) was the subject matter of last year’s class. It deals with the Weberian narrative of disenchantment and the assumption that it was the preparation for modern European secularization. Vol. 2 does the same with regard to the Hegelian narrative according to which the history of religion leads to a highest form, namely Christianity, the history of Christianity to a highest form, namely Protestantism, and Protestantism to the institutionalization of political freedom whereas all the other religions are a danger for freedom. For preparation I recommend reading the introduction (pp.1-18) which argues that we have to go beyond Hegel in four respects: his understanding of religion, of history, of freedom and his eurocentrism. These four points also constitute the basic structure of the book. The long "introductory remarks“ in each of the four parts allow the reader to follow my argument in more detail. Each of the parts then contains portraits of crucial 20th century thinkers, whose understanding of religion is neither Hegelian (or Marxist) nor Nietzschean.
Master class session 2: Monday, October 28, 2024; 4:30 – 6:30 pm, Foster 505
The focus of this session will be the fourth part of the book and the conclusion. In preparation, pp. 241-255 and pp. 344-361 should be read. This means that crucial sociological approaches to an adequate understanding of the history of religion from H. Richard Niebuhr to David Martin, Robert Bellah and José Casanova are being dealt with. The main thesis of the conclusion is that we need a global history of moral universalism as a counternarrative to the Weberian and Hegelian narratives. Vol. 3 (Universalism: World Domination and Ethos of Humanity) is finished in German and coming out in the spring of 2025; it offers this counternarrative in twelve analytical chapters. The guiding thread is the interplay between moral universalism and the history of empires from the Axial Age to the present. It will be the topic of the master class next year.
Professor Joas is the Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of Religion in the Faculty of Theology at the Humboldt University of Berlin and, for over twenty years, has also been Visiting Professor of Sociology and in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.