{"title":"Books by Hans Joas","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780190933272","title":"The Power of the Sacred","description":"Disenchantment is a key term in the self-understanding of modernity. But what exactly does this concept mean? What was its original meaning when Max Weber introduced it? And can the conventional meaning or Max Weber's view really be defended, given the present state of knowledge about the history of religion? In The Power of the Sacred, Hans Joas develops the fundamentals of a new sociological theory of religion by first reconstructing existing theories, from the eighteenth century to the present. Through a critical reading and reassessment of key texts in the three empirical disciplines of history, psychology, and sociology of religion, including the works of David Hume, J.G. Herder, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William James, Emile Durkheim, and Ernst Troeltsch, Joas presents an understanding of religion that lays the groundwork for a thorough study of Max Weber's views on disenchantment. After deconstructing Weber's highly ambiguous use of the concept, Joas proposes an alternative to the narratives of disenchantment and secularization which have dominated debates on the topic. He constructs a novel interpretation that takes into account the dynamics of ever new sacralizations, their normative evaluation in the light of a universalist morality as it first emerged in the \"Axial Age,\" and the dangers of the misuse of religion in connection with the formation of power. Built upon the human experience of self-transcendence, rather than human cognition or cultural discourses, The Power of the Sacred challenges both believers and non-believers alike to rethink the defining characteristics of Western modernity.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56225465008501,"sku":"9780190933272","price":45.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780190933272_326f8a89-85fa-4b19-b59e-24dde7d3d2ad.jpg?v=1786011862"},{"product_id":"9781503640795","title":"Why the Church?","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhy did Christianity produce the special organizational form \"church\" in the first place? Is it possible to be a Christian without the church? To what extent is Christian faith in community with other believers an alternative to the mere self-optimization of individuals?\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn this accessible and questioning new work, Hans Joas traverses theological, church-historical, sociological, and ethical territory in search of a viable conception of the church adequate to contemporary globalized societies. Across eleven essays that draw on work by Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, H. Richard Niebuhr, Leszek Kolakowski and others, Joas reflects on key debates—from the failure of so-called secularization theory to explain religiosity in modern society, to the role of Christianity and the church in relation to rampant nationalism and refugee crises, and to the question of whether or not human dignity ever was, or still is, the highest value in the West. Addressing the sociology of the church as the distinctive communal formation of Christianity for the last two millennia, Joas underscores the need for Christian conceptions of church to balance theological sensibility with concrete sociological grounding. In the process, he considers the relation of a community of faith to contemporary ideas about the optimization of life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301364773237,"sku":"9781503640795","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781503640795_23ff0be3-50a5-4e0e-b60d-fe834bb7fa7a.jpg?v=1786021922"},{"product_id":"9781594514388","title":"Do We Need Religion?","description":"The old assumption that modernization leads to secularization is outdated. Yet the certainty that religion is an anthropological universal that can only be suppressed by governments is also dead. Thus it is now a favorable moment for a new perspective on religion. This book takes human experiences of self-transcendence as its point of departure. Religious faith is seen as an attempt to articulate and interpret such experiences. Faith then is neither useful nor a symptom of weakness or misery, but an opening up of ways of experience. This book develops this basic idea, contrasts it with the thinking of some leading religious thinkers of our time, and relates it to the current debates about human rights and universal human dignity.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305057726837,"sku":"9781594514388","price":200.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781594514388_9ab74713-e071-4432-8ec9-3b9c5cf715fc.jpg?v=1786023138"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-hans-joas.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}