week8-conceptual-history

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Weekly Readings:

• Lucian Hölscher. 2008. “The Concept of Conceptual History(Begriffsgeschichte) and the ‘ Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.’” CONCEPT AND COMMUNICATION (2): 179–99. doi:10.15797/CONCOM.2008..2.005.
• Booeker, Hans Erich. 1998. “Concept - Meaning - Discourse. Begriffigeschichte Reconsidered.” In History of Concepts, Comparative Perspectives, eds. Iain Hami’Siier-Monk, Kaiun Tilmans, and Frank Van Vree. Amsterdam University Press, 51–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt45kdhv.8 (December 23, 2024).
• Koselleck, Reinhart, and Michaela W. Richter. 2006. “Crisis.” Journal of the History of Ideas 67(2): 357–400.

Video Lecture Notes

This lecture focuses on conceptual history, an approach to understanding the origins, development, and social impact of important concepts over time. It situates conceptual history within broader disciplines such as intellectual history, history of ideas, and philology, while emphasizing its unique position as a historiographical approach closely linked to German scholarship, particularly the work of Reinhart Koselleck and the Begriffsgeschichte (history of concepts) tradition.

Key Definitions and Foundational Concepts:

Concept: In linguistics, a concept is often understood as a bundle of descriptive information associated with a category of knowledge. This can be visualized through:

• Saussure’s Sign Model: Meaning emerges from differences between signs.
• Ogden and Richards’ Triangle Model: A concept is the mental reference connecting a symbol (word) to a referent (object).
• Peirce’s Triadic Model: A concept is an interpretant, interpreting the relationship between a sign and its object.

History: The term ‘history’ can refer to:

1. Events involving human agents.
2. Interpretations of the course and connection of events.
3. Texts representing events.
4. The academic discipline producing these texts.

Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte):

Developed primarily in Germany, conceptual history examines the production, transformation, and impact of key social and political concepts. It views concepts as both factors driving historical processes and indicators reflecting social changes.

Key Text: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Basic Historical Concepts), edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck. Koselleck argued that basic historical concepts are pivotal because they both:

1. Shape people’s understanding of social reality (factor).
2. Reflect societal transformations (indicator).

Koselleck’s Analytical Framework:

Koselleck emphasized that language and history are intertwined but must be analytically distinguished. While language mediates historical experience, action and experience are not reducible to language alone.

Key notion: Sattelzeit (Saddle Period) (1750-1850), during which modern European societies developed their fundamental political and social concepts. This period is a focal point in conceptual history because it marks the transition from pre-modern to modern conceptual frameworks.

Methodological Characteristics:

1. Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis:
   • Synchronic: Examines the meaning of concepts at a specific point in time.
   • Diachronic: Traces the evolution of concepts over time.
2. Semiotic Ambivalence:
   • Texts as Signs: Require interpretation.
   • Texts as Windows: Provide access to historical events.
3. Focus on Political and Social Concepts:
   • Governance (e.g., democracy, republic).
   • Social values (e.g., honor, emancipation).

Criticism of Koselleck’s Approach:

1. Elitism: Critics argue that the selection of sources overly emphasized canonical thinkers (e.g., Aristotle, Marx), neglecting everyday language and popular discourse.
2. Methodological Ambiguity: The fluctuating reliance on linguistic and historical assumptions led to concerns about conceptual clarity.

Developments Beyond Koselleck:

Koselleck’s successors embraced semiological constructivism, focusing on reconstructing social meanings rather than treating concepts as mere reflections of reality.

Wolfgang Reinhard emphasized that social history is the history of concepts, given that language itself is a social phenomenon.

Intersection with Political Semantics (Düsseldorf School):

Inspired by Koselleck and Foucault, German linguists in Düsseldorf studied political discourse and the strategic use of language in public debate:

• Flag Words: Positively charged words signaling group identity (e.g., freedom, security).
• Stigma Words: Pejorative terms discrediting opponents (e.g., “foreign infiltration,” “Gutmensch”).

Quantitative Turn: Corpus Linguistics:

Recent research incorporates statistical methods to analyze large text corpora:

1. Keyword Analysis: Identifies words whose frequency deviates significantly from a reference corpus (e.g., climate change discourse).
2. Collocation Analysis: Detects words frequently appearing together (e.g., “biofuels” with “produce,” “grow,” “use”).

While quantitative methods highlight significant terms, contextual interpretation remains crucial to reveal underlying discursive strategies and social meanings.

Conclusion:

Conceptual history is an interdisciplinary approach combining linguistic analysis with historical inquiry. It reveals how language shapes and reflects social and political transformations. Koselleck’s work laid the groundwork for contemporary discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, while the integration of quantitative methods continues to enhance our understanding of the evolution of social concepts.

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Reading Notes

The Concept of Conceptual History - Hölscher

The paper argues that the language fundamentally shapes historical reality. It contrasts traditional historical studies, which viewed language as a neutral tool, with conceptual history’s focus on how language constructs and changes our understanding of the past.

1. Overview of Conceptual History

• Key Idea: Conceptual history emphasizes language as a fundamental structure of historical reality. It studies how the concepts and language used in historical contexts shape our understanding of the past.
  • Language is central to understanding history.
  • Concepts evolve with time, affecting how historical realities are perceived.

2. Historical Time and Reality

• Distinction between language and reality
  • Conceptual history recognizes a difference between the word (“signifiant”) and what it refers to in the world (“signifié”).
  • Traditional history treated language as a transparent tool, like glasses, to see reality.
  • Conceptual history emphasizes that language is part of historical reality itself. Studying the past requires studying the language that brings past reality to perception.
• Subjective vs. Objective Time:
  • In the European tradition, we are used to relying on two concepts of time:
    • Aristotle’s concept of objective time: Combines the circular movement of earth and the linear addition of time units.
    • St. Augustine’s concept of subjective time: Based on the observer’s perspective of past (remembrance), present (awareness), and future (expectation).
    • Modern perspective: History combines both objective (calendars) and subjective (human experiences and interpretations) concepts of time.
      • The study of historical time acknowledges the interplay between past realities and present perceptions.
  • Our view of the past is shaped by current interests, moral frameworks, and language.
    • During the French Revolution (1789), contemporaries believed they were restoring the virtues of ancient Greece and Rome, while modern historians see it as the birth of modernity. This duality shows how interpretations of events vary based on historical contexts.
• Two views on historical reality:
  • Radical constructivism: “Reality” is entirely a construction of contemporary knowledge systems.
    • Past realities can only be understood through the perspectives of the people of that time.
  • Moderate constructivism: Balances the subjective realities of the past with the objective reconstructions by modern historians.
    • We know more about the long-term consequences of historical events than contemporaries did, moderate constructivists emphasize integrating this knowledge with historical actors’ perspectives.

3. “Present past” vs. “Past present”

• The distinction highlights the difference between our retrospective view of history and the contemporaneous experiences and beliefs of historical actors.
  • Present Past: Refers to how people today view the past.
  • Past Present: Refers to how people in the past viewed their own time.
• Traditional historiography often dismissed past understandings as outdated or incorrect, focused solely on modern, “scientific” interpretations of history.
• Conceptual historians value the past present as a crucial aspect of historical reality, alongside the present past.
• Understanding historical events requires considering both:
  • Reformation: Contemporaries believed that they were living in the end times, shaping their actions and expectations. Past present is important to better understand their motivations.
  • We know today Reformation’s long-term impacts: Emergence of Protestantism, influence on modernity → This is present past.

4. Discourse Analysis vs. Concept Analysis

	Discourse Analysis	Concept Analysis
Focus of Study	→ Examines the broader systems of knowledge. → Focuses on texts, speech systems, ways of discussing.	→ Concentrates on individual words and their meanings. →Studies ideas and concepts as linguistic units.
Methodologies	Influenced by Michel Foucault, who explored how discourses shape thought → Focuses on systems of argument and larger texts.	Includes methods like the Cambridge School’s political language analysis → Republicanism as a political language and its influence on law, morality, aesthetics

5. Koselleck’s “Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe” Framework

• Distinction between “words” and “concepts”
  • Words: Defined by their use in context.
  • Concepts: Represent broader systems of meanings and associations across various contexts.
    • The concept of “state” is not just defined by a word but includes related ideas like nationhood, governance, law.
• Concepts can be shortcuts to discourses. A concept functions like a label, summarizing broader discourses.
  • The concept of “revolution” transitioned from astronomy (planetary motion) to political upheaval (e.g., French Revolution).
• Concepts evolve independently of the events they describe.
  • The term “industrial revolution” emerged decades after the societal and technological changes it refers to.
• Sattelzeit (Saddle Period)
  • A term coined by Koselleck to describe the transformative period between the 18th and 19th centuries when modern concepts began to emerge.
  • This era marked a linguistic shift that mirrored broader societal changes, separating the pre-modern from the modern world.
• An Example of Conceptual Evolution: The term constitution was once a ter for general governance structures. It gained its modern meaning (a codified system of laws) during the late 18th century.

6. On Translation and Methodology

• Challenge of Translation:
  • Translation is more than reproducing meanings in another language — it involves understanding, accommodation, influence.
  • Concepts change as they move between languages and cultures, reflecting historical and social realities.
• Impact on Conceptual History:
  • Translation plays a key role in how concepts evolve and are understood globally.
    • “Right Wing” in different cultural, political contexts
  • Translating the German concept of Bildung (education, personal development) into English often loses its philosophical meaning, complexity.

Conclusion:

Koselleck’s conceptual history offers a nuanced framework for understanding the dynamic interplay of language, concepts, and historical reality. By examining the evolution of concepts like “state”, “revolution”, and “nation”, historians gain insights into how societies perceive and construct their realities. The focus on translation and methodology further expands the scope of conceptual history, making it relevant in a globalized world.

Concept - Meaning - Discourse - Booeker

Crisis - Koselleck

1. General Summary

Historical evolution of the word crisis from its ancient Greek origins to its multifaceted modern usage. The authors examine semantic shifts across legal, medical, and theological contexts, showing how its metaphorical flexibility expanded its application to politics, economics, and philosophy of history.

• Ancient Greece: The term krisis (κρίσις) was central to politics and law, signifying “separation,” “decision,” and “judgment”. It carried a strong legal and constitutional weight, encompassing verdicts, trials, and the very act of reaching a crucial point. It also had a medical meaning, referring to a critical turning point in an illness.
• Theological and Medical Expansion: The juridical meaning was adopted into the Septuaginta (ancient Greek translation of the Old and New Testament). The term gained a new dimension by linking earthly judgment to God and the concept of the Last Judgment. The medical usage, as described by Hippocrates and Galen, also expanded, denoting a turning point in illness that could lead to life or death.
• Early Modern Period: From the 17th century onward, “crisis” expanded metaphorically into politics, economics, history and psychology. It was applied to the “body politic,” and used to describe critical situations, such as the conflict between the parliament and the crown.
• 18th Century: The term acquired a historical dimension, indicating the end of an epoch. The French and American Revolutions further cemented its use as a marker of fundamental change. The concept became a “catchword”. The idea of “crisis” also entered the philosophy of history, with thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot, and Paine using it to describe profound societal shifts and moral challenges.
• 19th Century: “Crisis” became a common term in everyday language, as well as in political, economic and social discourse. The medical, political, and economic meanings of “crisis” continued to evolve. Economic crises became a major area of concern, with the term being used to describe the cyclical nature of capitalist economies. Marx and Engels integrated the concept into their theory of history, seeing economic crises as a driving force of social change and revolution. The idea of a “crisis of the state” also became more common, and the word was applied to a variety of political events, from governmental changes to civil wars.
• 20th Century and Beyond: The concept of crisis was applied to culture and intellect. It was used in many context including psychology, anthropology, ethnology, and the sociology of culture. Despite its widespread use, the term often lacks precision and is used interchangeably with words like “unrest”, “conflict,” or “revolution”. In summary, the word “crisis” has transformed from its concrete, specific meanings in law and medicine to become a more abstract and widely used term for marking decisive moments of change in politics, history, economics, and culture.