Hans Köchler (born 18 October 1948) is a retired professor of philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations. In his general philosophical outlook he is influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, his legal thinking has been shaped by the approach of Kelsen. Köchler has made contributions to phenomenology and philosophical anthropology and has developed a hermeneutics of trans-cultural understanding that has influenced the discourse on the relations between Islam and the West. Early life and academic career In his student years, Hans Köchler was actively involved as a board member of the European Forum Alpbach and established contacts with leading European intellectuals and philosophers such as Manès Sperber, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Rudi Supek of the Praxis school who he invited to his lecture series that he organized from 1969 onwards. At the beginning of the 1970s, he had joined the team around Otto Molden, the founder of the European Forum Alpbach. These were his formative philosophical years; he initially developed an interest in existential philosophy, transcendental philosophy and phenomenology. In particular, he undertook an epistemological critique of Husserl's transcendental idealism and interpreted Heidegger's philosophy of Being in the sense of social critique, opening up—in the Cold War era—a dialogue with humanist philosophers of the Praxis school in Yugoslavia and in Czechoslovakia. As a doctoral student, he also had met in Alpbach with Ernst Bloch, Arthur Koestler and Karl Popper. In 1972, Köchler graduated at the University of Innsbruck with a doctor degree in philosophy (Dr. phil.) with highest honours ("sub auspiciis praesidentis rei publicae"). In the years following his graduation he expanded his scholarly interest to philosophy of law and later political philosophy. Since the early 1970s he has been promoting the idea of inter-cultural dialogue which—since the last decade—has become known under the slogan of dialogue of civilizations. Köchler first outlined his hermeneutical philosophy of dialogue and his concept of cultural self-comprehension in lectures at the University of Innsbruck (1972) and at the Royal Scientific Society in Amman, Jordan, in March 1974 and discussed that notion in a tour around the world (March–April 1974) for which he got support and encouragement from Austrian Foreign Minister Rudolf Kirchschläger (later to become President of Austria) and in the course of which he met with intellectuals and political leaders on all continents. Among his interlocutors were