Hans-Herbert Kögler (born January 13, 1960, in Darmstadt), is a German-American philosopher.

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Hans-Herbert Kögler
Born	13 January 1960 Darmstadt
Education	Goethe University Frankfurt
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Social philosophy Hermeneutics
Doctoral advisor	Jürgen Habermas
Main interests	Hermeneutics
Notable ideas	Dialogical cosmopolitanism

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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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

• 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.