Stefan Gandler (born 1964 in Munich) is a philosopher and social scientist. He studied at Frankfurt University and has lived in Mexico since 1993[1][2]
Gandler studied Philosophy, Latin American studies, Romance Languages and Literatures and Political science in Frankfurt/Main, among others with Alfred Schmidt, and he was the Chairman of the Frankfurt General Students' Committee (AStA) in 1989/90.[3]
1997 Stefan Gandler earned his doctorate with a study on Contemporary Social philosophy in Mexico,[4] which has been translated in two languages.[5] 1997 Gandler was tenured as professor for Social theory and Social Philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro (UAQ) and has this position until today, and since 2008 he is additionally permanent invited professor for philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.[6] Gandler is also, since 2001, member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores[7] (category 3)[8] and founded in 2012 the Research Project on Critical Theory from the Americas[9] of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). Gandler is since 2007 chair of the academic group Modernity, development and region[10] from the Mexican Federal Education Authority.[11] (SEP)[12] In his sabbatical years he researched und taught[13] at the Universität Frankfurt am Main (2001/2002), the University of California, Santa Cruz (2009/2010),[14][15] the Tulane University, New Orleans (2015/2016).[16] and the Universität Innsbruck (2021/2022).[17] The main research fields of Stefan Gandler are the Critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the critical western Marxism, philosophy in Latin America, Critique of ideology and Walter Benjamin.[18] He worked also as translator of philosophical texts between Spanish and German and published texts on Today's Germany and the National Socialism.[19] Gandler is working on a productive conceptual confrontation between the Critical theory of the Frankfurt School and its contemporary further developments in Latin America,[20] for example from the Ecuadorian-Mexican philosopher Bolívar Echeverría,[21] trying to overcome the limitations of both: the philosophical Eurocentrism in the first case, and the reduced Critique of ideology in the second.[22] In that context he uses also the non dogmatic interpretation of the works of Karl Marx made by the Spanish-Mexican philosopher Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez,[23] and that made by the Horkheimer-successor Alfred Schmidt.[24]
In 2021 Gandler received the Bolívar Echeverría Prize from the International Herbert Marcuse Society for his book Marxismo crítico en México. Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez y Bolívar Echeverría.[25]