Hans Albert

Hans Albert

Hans Albert (born February 8, 1921) is a German philosopher. Born in Cologne, he lives in Heidelberg.

His fields of research are Social Sciences and General Studies of Methods. He is a critical rationalist, giving special attention to rational heuristics. He is a strong critic of the continental hermeneutic tradition coming from Heidegger and Gadamer.

Albert's critical rationalism

Albert held the chair of 'Social Sciences and General Studies of Methods' at the University of Mannheim. He is also a much-cited philosopher. Most importantly, he gave Popper's critical rationalism a concise, broad-ranging formulation, even as a way of life.

He gave evidence for his thesis that there is no field of human activities where one should not be critical. Thus he applied critical rationalism to the social sciences, especially to economics, politics, jurisprudence, and religion.

In his view the attitude of criticism is one of the oldest European traditions (going back to the pre-Socratics) in comparison with other less critical traditions.

Before his many books were published Hans Albert was already known to a broader audience for his contributions to the positivism dispute answering his opponents of the so-called Frankfurt School (school of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer at Frankfurt's Institute of Sociology). His contributions were to:

  • differentiate critical rationalism and positivism;
  • argue against some strains of sociology opposing the application of methods used in natural sciences;
  • suggest that the role of values and the scientific handling of values has to be given new thought;
  • interpret Max Weber not as supporting value-free science but as demonstrating that scientists can 'be free of any value judgement', even for research in the fields of values.

New insights are not easy to be spread or proliferate. There is often an ideological obstacle, for which Albert coined the phrase 'immunity against criticism'.

Albert's well known Münchhausen trilemma is ironically named after Baron Munchausen, who allegedly pulled himself out of a swamp seizing himself by his shock of hair. This trilemma rounds off the classical problem of justification in the theory of knowledge. All attempts to get a certain justification must fail. The verdict concerns not only deductive justifications as many of his critics believe, but also inductive, causal, transcendental, and all otherwise structured justifications. They all will be in vain:

  1. All justification in pursuit of certain knowledge has also to justify the means of justification and therefore there can be no end.
  2. One can stop at self-evidence or common sense or fundamental principles or anything else, but in doing so the intention to install certain justification is abandoned.
  3. The third horn of the trilemma is the application of a circular argument.

Albert stressed repeatedly that there is no limitation of the Münchhausen trilemma to deductive conclusions. Therefore certain justification is impossible at all. Once having given up the classical idea of certain knowing one can stop the process of justification where one wants to stop. This, however, presupposes that one is ready to start critical thinking at this point anew if necessary. Thus:

  • Don't look backwards to the solid basis of your thinking, but look always forward to the consequences.
  • In this way no problem arises to justify this non-justificationalism.

To observe and criticize the endeavors made to escape from the quagmire of certain justification became an instructive part of Hans Albert's philosophy. For example his discussion of the ideas of Karl-Otto Apel, one of Germany's leading philosophers (see Albert's Transzendentale Träumereien... meaning Transcendental Reveries. Karl-Otto Apels Language Games and His Hermeneutical God, which is not yet translated).

Still, Albert argues that critical rationalists have to accept that those attempts of rigorous justification (like Apel's) are not senseless, since only as long as alternative methods are without success can critical rationalism be called successful.

Albert's style of writing and criticizing

Albert's plea is for critical rationalism. He avoids solemn preaching in favor of serious, serene discussion with people of different faith and thinking. While Popper always warned not to follow one's opponent into the mire, Albert follows them into their favored field of thinking on their own terms. So he criticized Heidegger's "being in the abyss" ("Sein im Ab-Grund"),[1] Gadamer's "horizons melting together",[2] Habermas's "consensual theoretical truth in the ideal discourse",[3] Karl-Otto Apel's transcendental arguments,[4] the theologian Hans Küng's "absolute-relative, this-life-and-hereafter, transcendental-immanent, allconcerning-allcontrolling most real reality in the very heart of things".[5] Hans Albert meticulously follows their arguments[6] to uncover:

Underlying suppositions and injunctions of Albert's method are:

The intellectual life of Hans Albert

In 1950 Hans Albert earned his first degree as a 'Diplom-Kaufmann', followed by an Academic degree of a Dr. rer.pol. 1952.[7] In the years 1952–1958 he worked as an assistant at the 'Forschungsinstitut für Sozial- und Verwaltungswissenschaften' of the University of Cologne. In 1957 he got the degree of a 'Dr. habil. for Social Politics' at the University of Cologne. As a lecturer he read logic, theory of science and economics of the welfare state. Since 1958 he has been participating the Alpbacher Hochschulwochen (a summer conference in the Austrian alpine village of Alpbach). It was there he made the acquaintance of Karl Popper after having studied Popper's philosophy and having mostly accepted it long ago. After 1955 he had exciting discussions with Paul Feyerabend, who in those times was a critical rationalist and an admirer of Karl Popper. Their letters later were published. In 1963 Albert finally got the chair of 'Social Sciences and General Studies of Methods' (later dubbed 'Sociology and Studies of Economics') at the Wirtschaftshochschule Mannheim (later University of Mannheim).

1961–1969 was the time of the so-called 'Positivismusstreit' (positivism dispute), i.e. the debate between Karl Popper and Theodor W. Adorno concerning positivism within German sociology during the 1960s. Albert participated at this meanwhile famous Conference of the German Society of Sociology ('Tagung der deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie') 1961 in Tübingen. In the beginning there was no dispute on positivism, because Adorno as well as Popper were opposed to positivism. The debate was more about the differences between social sciences and natural sciences and the status of values in the social sciences. 1963 The debate was continued by Jürgen Habermas in the Festschrift für Adorno. 1964 On the Soziologentag (conference on sociology) in Heidelberg the debate grew up into an excited discussion between Habermas and Albert. The famous dispute culminated in a collection of essays published in 1969, translated into several languages, also into English (1976, see booklist below). This dispute gained a broad audience.

In 1989 Hans Albert was discharged from active service as Professor Emeritus but continued writing books and giving lectures at many universities, such as the 1990 lectures at the University of Graz on Critical Rationalism, the 1995 'Walter Adolf Lectures' at the Hochschule St. Gallen, and the 1998 Wittgenstein-Lectures at the University of Bayreuth (with Prof. Rainer Hegselmann) about Critical Rationalism.

He was honored with the 'Vits prize' 1976 and with the 'Arthur Burckhard prize' 1984. He was decorated with the Austrian 'Ehrenkreuz für Kunst und Wissenschaft der Republik Österreich' (1994) and got honorary doctorates of the universities of Linz/Austria (1995), Athens/Greece (1997), Kassel/Germany (2000), Graz/Austria (2006), and Klagenfurt/Austria (2007).

Publications

Albert published around 30 books. Some of them are translated into different languages

English books

English papers

German books

Biographical literature

Hans Albert, 'Autobiographische Einleitung', in: Kritische Vernunft und menschliche Praxis, Stuttgart (Reclam) 1977, pages 5–33. Hans Albert, 'Mein Umweg in die Soziologie. Vom Kulturpessimismus zum kritischen Rationalismus', in: Christian Fleck (ed.), Wege zur Soziologie. Autobiographiche Notizen, Leske + Budrich, Opladen, pages 17–37. Eric Hilgendorf: Hans Albert. Zur Einführung Junius Verlag 1997. Hans Albert, In Kontroversen verstrickt. Vom Kulturpessimismus zum kritischen Rationalismus, LIT Verlag 2007, 264 p. (Hans Albert's autobiography)

Further information

As for Hans Albert's scientific articles see List of Publications maintained by Hans-Joachim Niemann in . See also the Hans-Joachim Niemann (alias 'hjn') initiated German Wikibook: Studienführer Hans Albert (Study Guide Hans Albert) . It contains a large publication list with many quotations of English written articles as well as articles translated into Italian, Finnish, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Serbo-Croatian language. You will find also a lot of secondary literature.

Decorations and awards

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hans Albert, Kritik der reinen Hermeneutik – Der Antirealismus und das Problem des Verstehens, Tübingen (Mohr Siebeck) 1994, chap.I
  2. ↑ ibid., chap. II
  3. ↑ ibid., chap. VIII
  4. ↑ Hans Albert, Transzendentale Träumereien. Karl-Otto Apels Sprachspiele und sein hermeneutischer Gott, Hamburg (Hoffmann und Campe) 1975; Hans Albert, Kritik des transzendentalen Denkens. Von der Begründung des Wissens zur Analyse der Erkenntnispraxis, Tübingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2003
  5. ↑ Hans Albert, Das Elend der Theologie. Kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Hans Küng, Hamburg (Hoffmann und Campe)1979; 2nd ed. Aschaffenburg (Alibri) 2005
  6. ↑ Much of the mentioned criticism is repeated in the English written Hans Albert, Between Social Science, Religion, and Politics. Essays on Critical Rationalism, Amsterdam-Atlanta (Rodopi) 1999
  7. ↑ This and the following facts are taken from the books referred in the precedent chapter 'Biographical Books'.
  8. ↑ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (pdf) (in German). p. 972. Retrieved 20 January 2013.