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Category: Theory of History (Re)read

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The Incomprehensible, or Groping in the Dark: At the Limits of Concepts

Koselleck 100

Jan Ifversen – Darkness constitutes a paradigm opposed to enlightenment. While conceptual history is an approach suited to understand progressive semantic mastery, Reinhart Koselleck – although hesitatingly and implicitly – also developed an approach suited to situations where concepts are beyond reach and leave everyone groping in the dark. This entry traces Koselleck’s theory of the incomprehensible.

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Realism, Historical Traces, and Unintentional Evidence. A Look at Charles S. Peirce

Tullio Viola – Charles S. Peirce is primarily read and discussed today for his contribution to logic and semiotics, and as a key figure in pragmatist philosophy. Much less known is his interest in history, both as a scientific discipline to be cultivated alongside philosophy and as fertile ground for philosophical reflection.

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Revolution

Koselleck 100

Disha Karnad Jani – In our re-examination of Koselleck’s work on his centennial, I ask what happens when we turn one of his characteristics for modern concepts – the “simultaneity of the non-simultaneous” – on its head. Why, I ask, did his work on the modern concept of revolution and the revolutions of the 1950s-70s appear to him as inassimilable?

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Seriality

Koselleck 100

Sean Franzel – Though the term seriality is not a central element of Koselleck’s critical vocabulary, his work is very much attuned to how patterns of repetition and variation—defining features of serial forms—shape experiences of historical events, organize language use, and inform how historical sources are produced and evaluated.

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‘The Report of My Death Was an Exaggeration’: Metanarrative, Legitimacy, and History (with apologies to Mark Twain)

Luke O’Sullivan – In The Postmodern Condition Jean-François Lyotard defined a metanarrative as a vision of the historical process that served some legitimatory role. A metanarrative did not need to make claims regarding historical necessity, but it must function as a justification of a political position of some kind. Subsequent developments suggest that while his definition was sound, his prediction that metanarratives were in decline was falsified by events.

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Koselleck’s Theory of History and Its Subversive Potential

Koselleck 100

Victor Neumann – Despite the fact that Koselleck’s history of concepts and theory of history have long remained fairly marginal in Germany, the impact of Koselleck’s work in the international context is impressive. Kritik und Krise and Vergangene Zukunft were translated into several languages immediately after their appearance in German, while Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe served as a model universally recognised by the academic world in Europe and the Americas.

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Defeat

Koselleck 100

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young – Koselleck wrote that defeat in war is the greatest transformational experience because it maximizes the distance between a planned course of action and an unplanned outcome. Therefore, as unpleasant or traumatic as it may be, being defeated “contains an inexhaustible epistemological potential” and has stood behind many innovations in historical methodology, including his own following his experience as a soldier of the defeated German army.

Horizonte

Koselleck 100

Javier Fernández-Sebastian – En el mundo moderno estamos más que acostumbrados a considerar el horizonte como el tropo por excelencia para el futuro. Usado progresivamente desde el siglo XIX por filósofos, historiadores y teóricos, y vulgarizado por los periodistas y por los hombres de negocios, casi ha dejado de percibirse como una metáfora.

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Horizon

Koselleck 100

Javier Fernández-Sebastian – In the modern world, we are more than used to considering the horizon as the trope par excellence for the future. Used progressively since the nineteenth century by philosophers, historians, and theorists, and vulgarised by journalists and businessmen, it has almost ceased to be perceived as a metaphor.