Hans-Herbert Kögler (born January 13, 1960, in Darmstadt), is a German-American philosopher.
Biography
1960 born in Darmstadt. After finishing the Viktoriaschule in Darmstadt, Kögler studied in Frankfurt philosophy, history of art, and sociology of education. He was supported by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (National German Fellowship Foundation) for a doctoral fellowship as well as a one-year USA-stipend. He completed his doctoral dissertation 1991 under the direction of Jürgen Habermas. During this work he already opened his European point of view to philosophical discussion in the United States with academic stays at Northwestern University (T. McCarthy), The New School (R. Bernstein), and Berkeley (H. Dreyfus). After returning to Frankfurt to complete his PhD, he began his US teaching career in 1991—first as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then following a call to the University of North Florida, Jacksonville. He received two NEH faculty fellowships (1997 Boston University, 2000 University of Arizona, Tucson). In 2007/2008 he became the UNF Philosophy Department Chair (until 2015) and Full Professor. All the years in the States he maintained academic contacts to Europe, first to the Austrian Alpen-Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt, where he was teaching as a guest professor (2004; 2006, 2010, since 2014 regularly), also to Prague (2003).[1]
Work
Kögler developed a 'critical hermeneutics' which received attention in the social sciences and social theory. The first paradigmatic formulation can be found in Die Macht des Dialogs (1992), whose American edition The Power of Dialogue (1996, 1999) received international attention.[2]
Furthermore, Kögler articulated and developed his project in more than 80 journal articles and book chapters. Important developments include a 'dialogical cosmopolitanism' and the problem of agency. Kögler's cosmopolitanism integrates a context-sensitive comprehension, normative orientation to universal values and rules, and critical reflection of power relations. Kögler's theory of agency fuses hermeneutic and existential approaches with George Herbert Mead's theory of the self.
Reception
Kögler made influential contributions to the philosophy of the social sciences, hermeneutics, and critical theory. His critical-hermeneutic approach is widely received in the Anglo-American as well as the global context.[3] His impulses can be found among education theorists, psychologists, anthropologists, and social scientists generally, as well as in gender research and by feminist authors. Readers and former students reimported his views and impulses into European discussions, for instance in Norway, Denmark, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, and Italy, among others. The journal Social Epistemology devoted a special issue in 1997 to Kögler's critical analysis of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology.[4] His critical engagement with Bourdieu continued.[5]
Jubilee workshop
In February 2020 a conference with more than 15 philosophers and sociologues from the United States, Europe and the United Arab Emirates honored Kögler with their contributions in a two days workshop Hermeneutics, Critique, and Dialogue.[6]
Bibliography
A full-length bibliography of his works published in English, German, French, Czech, Italian, and Russian, is available on the personal web site of the University of North Florida.[7]
Monographes and edited works
Die Macht des Dialogs: Kritische Hermeneutik nach Gadamer, Foucault und Rorty. Stuttgart, Metzler, 1992.
The Power of dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault, transl. by Paul Hendrickson. Cambridge, Mass. 1996; 1999. (with a new final chapter: Critical Theory as Critical Hermeneutics).
Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, Hans/Herbert Kögler/Karsten Stueber (eds.), Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press 2000.
Kultura, Kritika, Dialog (Culture, Critique, Dialogue), Prague: Publishing House Filosofia, December 2006.
Religion and the Public Sphere, with Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Alessandro Ferraro, Hans-Herbert Kögler, (ed. by O. Stech, Prague Academic Publishers, Fall 2017.
Reconceiving Religion in the Postsecular Public Sphere. Special issue of Berlin Journal of Critical Theory, vol. 4,2, July 2020.[8]
Noted essays
Fröhliche Subjektivität: Historische Ethik und dreifache Ontologie beim späten Foucault, Ethos der Moderne—Foucaults Kritik der Aufklärung, E. Erdmann, R. Forst, A. Honneth (eds), Frankfurt: Campus 1990) pp. 202–228.
The self-empowered subject: Habermas, Foucault, and hermeneutic reflexivity, Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol. 22,4 (July 1996) pp. 13–44.
Alienation as Epistemological Source: Reflexivity and Social Background after Mannheim and Bourdieu, target piece in a special issue New Directions in the Sociology of Knowledge, Social Epistemology vol. 11, 2, April—June 1997, pp. 141–164.
Reconceptualizing Reflexive Sociology: A Reply. Special issue New Directions in the Sociology of KnowledgeSocial Epistemology vol. 11, no. 2, April—June 1997, pp. 223–250.
Empathy, Dialogical Self, and Reflexive Interpretation: The Symbolic Source of SimulationEmpathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, H.-H. Kögler/K. Stueber, (eds.), Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press 2000, pp. 194–221.
Recognition and Difference: The Power of Perspectives in Interpretive Dialogue, in the special issue Dialogue as the Inscription of 'the West', Social Identities vol. 11,3, May 2005, ed. by C. Zene and A. Mandair, pp. 247–269.
Constructing a Cosmopolitan Public Sphere: Hermeneutic Capabilities and Universal Values, European Journal of Social Theory vol. 8,3, 2005, pp. 297–320.
Die Macht der Interpretation: Konturen einer kritischen Sozialwissenschaft in Anschluss an Foucault, concluding part 4 Macht Wissen Macht: Michel Foucault's Analytik der Macht und die Soziale Arbeit, Roland Anhorn, Frank Bettinger, Johannes Stehr (eds.). VS (Verlag der Sozialwissenschaften), Fall 2007, pp. 347–366.
Critical Hermeneutics, Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, Thousand Oaks, 2009, pp. 153–155.
Consciousness as Symbolic Construction: A Semiotics of Thought after Cassirer, Constructivist Foundations vol. 4,3, July 2009, pp. 159–169.
Being as Dialogue, or: The Ethical Consequences of Interpretation, The Consequences of Hermeneutics: Fifty years after Gadamer's Truth and method, J. Malpas/S. Zabala (eds.), Evanston: Northwestern U.P. 2010, pp. 343–367.
Constructing a Cosmopolitan Public Sphere: Hermeneutic Capabilities and Universal Values, republished from European Journal of Social Theory, 2005, Cosmopolitanisms vol. 4: Contested Cosmopolitanisms, G. Delanty (ed.), Routledge 2010, pp. 297–320.
Recognition and the Resurgence of Intentional Agency, Inquiry, special issue Rational Agency as Ethical Life, Taylor & Francis, vol. 52, Summer/Fall 2010, pp. 450–469.
Hermeneutic Cosmopolitanism—or, Toward a Cosmopolitan Public SphereAshgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism, Ashgate Publishers, UK, 2011, pp. 225–242.
Agency and the Other: On the Intersubjective Roots of Self-Identity. Special issue on 'Human Agency and Development,' New Ideas in Psychology (NIP), B. Sokol, J. Sugarman, (eds.), vol 30, April 2012, pp. 47–64.
A Critique of Dialogue in Philosophical Hermeneutics, Journal of Dialogue Studies vol. 2,1 2014, pp. 47–68.
Empathy, Dialogue, Critique: How should we understand (inter-)cultural violence? The Agon of Interpretations. Towards a Critical Intercultural Hermeneutics, Ming Xie (ed.), Univ. of Toronto Press, 2014, pp. 275–301.
Ethics and Community, chapter 24 Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics, Jeff Malpas, Hans-Helmuth Gander, London/New York, 2015, pp. 310–323.
A Critical Hermeneutics of Agency: Cultural Studies as Critical Theory, Philosophical Approaches to Social Science, ed. B. Babich, Springer Press, 2017, pp. 63–88.
Reflexivity and GlobalizationHuman Affairs vol. 27,4, Fall 2017, pp. 374–388.
Beyond Ethnocentrism: Towards a Global Social Theory, with L'ubomir Dunaj, Social Theory and Asian Dialogues, Ananta Giri (ed.), Springer, 2017, pp. 69-106.
Social Ontology and the Varieties of Interpretation: A Hermeneutic Critique of Searle, Philosophy of the Social Sciences vol. 48,2, Spring 2018, pp. 192–217.
Tradition, Transcendence, and the Public Sphere: A Hermeneutic Critique of Religion, Berlin Journal of Critical Theory vol. 4,2 July 2020, pp. 107-146.
International Who's who of Authors and Writers 2004, p. 304.
Paul Hendrickson, Review essay: Reflexivity as dialogue and distanciation: Kögler's project of a critical hermeneutics, Philosophy and Social Criticism vol. 30,3, 2004, pp. 383–388.
John Rapko, [Review of] Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity by Seyla Benhabib and Maurizio Passarin d'Entrèves and The Power of Dialogue: Critical Hermeneutics after Gadamer and Foucault by Hans Herbert Kögler, Criticism vol. 40,1, 1998, pp. 133–137.
Mark M. Ayyash, A Hermeneutics of Violence: A Four Dimensional Conception. Toronto-Buffalo-London, University of Toronto Press, 2019.
Randi Gressgård, Multicultural dialogue: Dilemmas, paradoxes, conflicts. New York, Berghahn, 2010.
Judith McAra-Couper / M. Jones, Rising rates of intervention in childhood, British Journal of Midwifery vol. 18,3, 2010, pp. 160–169.
Liz Smythe, Discerning which qualitative approach fits the best, New Zealand College of Midwives Journal vol. 46, 2012, pp. 5-12.
Andrew Lynch, The place of structural self-reflexivity in our ongoing educational journey as social workers, Social Work Review vol. 18,4, 2006, pp. 78–89.
Martin Solik, Kritická teória spoločnosti a problém globálneho uznania, Studia Politica Slovaca vol. 5, 2012, pp. 77–84.
* Kurt C. M. Mertel, L'ubomír Dunaj (eds.), Hans-Herbert Kögler’s Critical Hermeneutics. London, Bloomsbury, 2022.
^The theme of the book comprises a central issue of the philosophical discussions in Germany of the 1960s and 1970s, i.e. how the hermeneutic and intentional understanding of human agency can be reconciled with a social critique and the analysis of power, i.e. 'hermeneutics versus the critique of ideology.' Its major representatives were Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method and Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests.
By fusing a dialogical attitude and ethos with a discourse-analytic and genealogical conception of power, Kögler developed the first systematic conception of critical hermeneutics since Paul Ricoeur. For Kögler understanding includes criticism based on power-analysis, but criticism must be based on context-sensitivity and respect for the self-understanding of the agents. The connecting link is for him the dialogue, but dialogue implicates dealing with power. That is why Kögler incorporates French philosopher Michel Foucault into hermeneutics. The importance of Foucault for Kögler is shown by his introduction to the work of his French social philosopher, first published in German in 1994 and in a revised expanded edition in 2004. Richard Rorty becomes important for Kögler as critic of ethnocentric perspectives of truth and understanding. Kögler's theses are best summarized and discussed by Paul Hendrickson.
^Cf. for instance the dissertations of Alex D. Scheinmann, From explanation to understanding. Diss. George Mason University; 2009.
^Cf. Kögler's recent articles "Overcoming Semiotic Structuralism: Language and Habitus in Bourdieu", in: Simon Susan / Brygan S. Turner (eds.), The Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu: Critical Essays. Anthem Press, London 2011, 271-300 and "Unavoidable Idealizations and the Reality of Symbolic Power", in: Social Epistemology 27, 3-4 (2013) 302-314.
