UNIVERSAL

Hans Joas: Universalismus. Weltherrschaft und Menschheitsethos.

Roundtable with Hans Joas, Martin Petzke, Lisa Regazzoni and Tobias Werron

(Please note that the event will be held in German. For this reason, the event description is only available in German.)

Das Wohl aller Menschen bei moralischen und politischen Entscheidungen zu berücksichtigen – das ist heute für viele zumindest als Ideal gerechtfertigt. Aber schon immer gegeben und universell verbreitet ist ein solches Menschheitsethos nicht. Wann und wo ist es also entstanden – und warum eigentlich? Ist es eine Besonderheit der jüdisch-christlichen oder der westlich-aufklärerischen Tradition? Und wie hängt seine Entstehung mit der Geschichte imperialer Weltherrschaft zusammen? In seinem faszinierenden Buch folgt Prof. Dr. Hans Joas diesem Menschheitsethos in globaler Perspektive. In einem Roundtable diskutiert er seine Thesen mit Prof. Dr. Martin Petzke (Soziologie), Prof. Dr. Lisa Regazzoni (Geschichte) und Prof. Dr. Tobias Werron (Soziologie).

Hans Joas, geboren 1948, ist Ernst-Troeltsch-Honorarprofessor an der Theologischen Fakultät der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und lehrt als Mitglied des Committee on Social Thought an der University of Chicago. Für sein Werk wurde er vielfach ausgezeichnet, u. a. mit dem Hans-Kilian-Preis, dem Max-Planck-Forschungspreis, dem Prix Ricœur, dem Theologischen Preis der Salzburger Hochschulwochen und zuletzt für das wissenschaftliche Lebenswerk mit dem Preis der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie.

When?
Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 6:15 p.m.

Where?
Room X-E0-002

This event is a collaboration between the Institute for World Society Studies and the focus area UNIVERSAL.

Lecture by Chris Brown (London School of Economics)

“The Day After Tomorrow” International Relations after the ‘Rules-Based International Order’

The notion that we live in a ‘Rules-Based International Order’ emerged from a post-Cold War attempt to universalize the ways in which the advanced capitalist countries conducted their relations with each other to include now former enemies and the Global South. Always implausible, this conception has now become impossible to maintain. A new, or perhaps an old, world order is emerging, the nature of which is not easy to discern. However, two features can already be identified as important: first, the return to significance of the notion of the ‘national interest’ as a guide to policy, second, and more important, a re-evaluation of the role of international law in the relations of states in which the legal activism of the last three decades is seen as problematic.

When?
Tuesday, 02 December 2025, 6:15 p.m.

Where?
Room X-C3-107

This lecture is a collaboration between the Institute for World Society Studies and the focus area UNIVERSAL.

Lecture by Robert Heinze (German Historical Institute Paris, DHIP)

Between Nationalism and Universalism: Decolonisation, African History and Postcolonial Studies

Since their initial inception in the 1990s, Postcolonial Studies have influenced many academic fields. While the original texts are usually associated with literary studies, historiography has also taken up the challenge posed by new methods and productively employed them. But the critical historiography of Africa challenged prevailing orthodoxies long before that and developed important methods and narratives that influenced postcolonial studies themselves. African historians developed new approaches, decolonizing the field before the expression was widely used. In this, they followed different paths, emphasizing national, regional, Pan-African or global histories.

The lecture provides a brief history of the historiography in and outside of Africa and presents its main intellectual currents. The focus is on the following questions: How did historians of Africa respond to the challenge posed by postcolonial studies? What critical debates arose around them, and what role do they still play in African history today?

When?
Wednesday, 19 November 2025, 4:15 p.m.

Where?
Room X-C3-107

This lecture is a collaboration between the Institute for World Society Studies and the focus area UNIVERSAL.

Lecture by Matthew Specter (UC Berkeley)

Realism between Comparison and Exception: Alfred T. Mahan and the Dynamics of Universalization of the Monroe Doctrine, 1890-1914

Between 1890 and his death in 1914, American naval historian and founder of classical geopolitics, Alfred T. Mahan (1840-1914), returned obsessively to the topic of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), describing it as a “living principle” that adapts as needed to the growing “necessities” of the American empire. Specter argues that Mahan’s writings on the Monroe Doctrine both universalized the US historical experience into a general theory of “spheres of influence,” and paradoxically, stressed the unique qualities of the U.S. that resist practices of comparing. Realism (in international relations theory) rests on a practice of comparing the behavior of peer “great powers.” Having steered US strategy onto this implicitly comparative terrain, Mahan then developed a new answer to the question of American exceptionalism. Mahan’s work on the Monroe Doctrine negotiates geopolitical universality and national particularity, and illustrates the broader dynamics of the universalization of the Western realist tradition.

When?
Tuesday, 21 October 2025, 6:15 p.m.

Where?
Room X-C3-107 and online via Zoom

This lecture is part of the lecture series "Signatures of World Society" and is co-organized by the Institute for World Society Studies and the RTG "World Politics".

BI.research Conference 2025

UNIVERSAL holds a panel at this year's BI.research conference. The panel asks how universalization functions as the universalization of a particular perspective. It inquires into the conditions and the processes of the successful establishment of universalizations, as well as into dynamics of their contestation and their relativizing. A special focus lies on practices of comparison as key processes of a modernity constituted through universalizations.

Chair:
Prof. Dr. Mathias Albert

Panelists:
Prof. Dr. Oliver Flügel-Martinsen
Prof. Dr. Martin Lutz
Prof. Dr. Minh Nguyen
Prof. Dr. Martin Petzke
Prof. Dr. Holger Straßheim

Main Speakers

Prof. Dr. Mathias Albert
Professor of Political Science
Faculty of Sociology
mathias.albert@uni-bielefeld.de

Prof. Dr. Martin Petzke
Professor of Historical and General Sociology
Faculty of Sociology
martin.petzke@uni-bielefeld.de
 

Coordinator

Laura Späth
Faculty of Sociology
laura.spaeth@uni-bielefeld.de