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, paying special attention to rational heuristics. He is a strong critic of the continental hermeneutic tradition coming from Heidegger and Gadamer.

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 developed Popper's critical rationalism into a concise, broad-ranging maxim, thereby extending it from a method to progress in science to one equally applicable in day-to-day heuristics.

To substantiate his approach, he provided evidence for his thesis that there is no field of human activities where one should not be critical. Consequently, he advocated applying 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 arguing against his opponents of the so-called Frankfurt School (school of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer at Frankfurt's Institute of Sociology). His contributions included

Albert observed that new insights are often difficult to spread or proliferate. He ascribed this phenomenon's cause to ideological obstacles, for which Albert coined the phrase 'immunity against criticism'.

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