Hans Joas as a Global Thinker

Abstract

Among the areas in which Hans Joas has excelled and devoted his studies and his prolific work, mention is usually made of studies on religion, the formation of values, the genealogy of human rights and the creativity of social action. However, little attention has been drawn to his contributions to the analysis of the global and his very stature as a thinker who in his intellectual journey also becomes global. This openness to the global is not only manifested in an intellectual journey (a global thinker), but begins to be an object in itself of his enquiries (a thinker of the global); for example, with regard to the universal role of religion and the Catholic Church, the genealogy of human rights and the precariousness of peace in an increasingly unequal and risky world. However, there are few instances in which the author dwells on these issues in all their complexity. His contributions mainly come from marginal mentions, from questions left open, and from answers given in academic interviews. Therefore, in this article we propose to reconstruct some of these diverse and scattered approaches to the global scale and its attributes, trying to summarize their original contributions and situate them as part of the author's journey through his vast work, highlighting the perspective of analysis that he built up over time and in his transition from a sociologist (or more precisely, a social theorist) to a scholar of religion in general and who, moreover, makes his Catholicism explicit.