The essay explores the exchange between Otto Brunner and Reinhart Koselleck about the use of historical sources in Begriffsgeschichte. Criticizing historicism in Brunner, who asserts the difference between ancient Europe and modernity starting from the idea of a strong epochalization of modern politics as linked to the short time of the State, Koselleck assumes the idea of transformation of political and juridical concepts insisting on their continuity between ancient and modern time. The comparison between the two historians (...) questions the very limits of Western modern political experience. (shrink)

Taking the cue from the translation of Land und Herrschaft by Otto Brunner, the essay explores how his work challenges the historian as well as the translator. Using ideologized concepts as Staat, Land, Herrschaft, Friede, Recht, Brunner gives to these expressions a specific value from the temporal point of view. After the transformation of the social and political concepts between the XVIII and XIX centuries, which made many concepts so temporally determined that they are of little use, (...) Brunner redefines them radically and makes intelligible a language which is otherwise obscure. (shrink)

This short methodological insert appears like a homage to Otto Brunner, that in some Italian historical literature continue to be, all things considered, remarkable. Instead it is a homage to my wife Giuliana Nobili, co-founder with me and few others of the journal «Scienza & Politica», died the 5 th January 2015.

The program of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, formulated primarily by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, calls for relating conceptual change to structural transformations of government, society, and economy in German-speaking Europe. J. G. A. Pocock, of Cambridge, identified the range of alternative and competing political discourses available to early modern writers, while Quentin Skinner, also of Cambridge, treated political theories in terms of those historical contexts and linguistic conventions which both facilitate and circumscribe legitimations of political arrangements, (...) and he described such theories as intentional speech acts. Despite the differences in the German and Anglophone modes of treating political language, however, there are no major obstacles in bringing them together. The GG could profit from Pocock's technique of analysis and comparison in identifying early modern political languages, and the issues raised by Skinner about political thought and theorizing as forms of linguistic action, as well as the effect of general linguistic conventions upon available modes of legitimating political arrangements. The Anglophone mode might profit from considering the GG's non-reductive use of social history in conjunction with that of concepts, and from the GG's systematic use of contemporary sources of language and linguistic definitions. (shrink)

L’indagine sui moderni processi di ideologizzazione ha assunto un ruolo centrale nel dibattito contemporaneo sul Novecento come «epoca degli estremi». Tra le più originali e interessanti linee di ricostruzione dei concreti presupposti storici di tale fenomeno occorre senz’altro annoverare la direttrice di studi e ricerche sviluppatasi in Germania nel grande laboratorio della Begriffsgeschichte. Muovendo dalla seminale riflessione di Otto Brunner sull’«epoca delle ideologie», l’articolo si sofferma in particolare sulle originali modalità di concettualizzazione del tema nella riflessione storiografica di (...) Reinhart Koselleck e sugli esiti da esse prodotte nel grande impianto lessico- grafico dei Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. (shrink)

Historically, the productive aspect of the aesthetic experience can be described as a process during which aesthetic practice freed itself step by step from restrictions imposed on productive activity in both the classical and the biblical tradition. If one understands this process as the realization of the idea of creative man, it is principally art which actualizes this idea.1 First, when the poietic capacity is still one and undivided, it asserts itself subliminally; later, in the competition between technical and artistic (...) creation, it explicitly claims to be a production of a special kind. It is in that history of the concepts labor and work that the restrictions become most palpable.2 In the Greek tradition, all producing remains subordinate to practical action . As the activity of slaves who are rigorously excluded from the exercise of the virtues, poiesis occupies the lowest rank in social life. In the Christian tradition, handiwork is cursed, which means that man is meant to maintain himself only by toiling against a resistant nature ; salvation can only be found beyond his activity in this world. But in both the classical and the Christian conceptual fields relating to labor, we already encounter ambivalent definitions which could introduce and justify an upward revaluation of man's labor.1. See Hans Blumenberg, "'Nachahmung der Natur': Zur Vorgeschichte des schöpferischen Menschen," Studium Generale 10 : 266-83, still unexcelled. I also base my discussion on Jürgen Mittelstrass, Neuzeit und Aufklärung; Studien zur Entstehung der neuzeitlichen Wissenchaft und Philosophie , and to the results of two seminars at Constance held jointly and to which I owe essential insights.2. See Werner Conze, "Arbeit," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historiches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Conze, Otto Brunner, and Reinhart Koselleck, 4 vols. , 1:154-215, and Walther Bienert, Die Arbeit nach der Lehre der Bibel ; an abbreviated version appears in Bienert's "Arbeit," Die Religion in Gescheichte und Gegenwart .Hans Robert Jauss is professor of literary criticism and Romance philology at the University of Constance. He is the author of many books and articles, including two works forthcoming in English, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, from which the present essay is taken. Michael Shaw has translated many works, among them Max Horkheimer's Dawn and Decline. (shrink)

If we do not shrink from making rough generalizations and adopt a broad, conventional approach, then what we call modernity refers to the process whereby a state of heterogeneity progresses toward homogeneity in time, space, human collectives, social order, and other areas. In his book The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg discusses a late-16th century incident of heterodoxy that cannot be classified into previously existing standard categories. As new knowledge was disseminated thanks to the invention of the Gutenberg printing (...) press, old and new knowledge came into conflict in the mind of a heterodox figure by the name of Menocchio. He attacked the church, saying that it was more important to love one’s neighbor than to love God. Through these small, humble manifestations of change, Ginzburg was able to reveal the juncture when European modern knowledge first emerged from a muddled, undifferentiated state into one of clarity, whereby over the course of about a century of fermentation, its contours eventually became clearly evident around the year 1800. This process has been termed by the pioneer of conceptual history Otto Brunner as the “threshold era”, and by Reinhart Koselleck as the beginning of the “saddle era”. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The movement for the Unity of Science has been making headway for a number of years, and each year more workers in the various scientific domains have expressed their interest in it by participating in the discussion of its aims and its specific problems. A characteristic feature of this movement which explains this growing interest is that it does not propose a “super-science” which is to legislate to the special sciences. Its proposal of a Unity of Science is of a (...) different kind, not based upon some grand metaphysical view of any sort. Those who are active within this movement are emphatic in their insistence that instead of aiming at a synthesis of the different sciences on the basis of a prior and independent philosophy, the special sciences will themselves supply their own synthesizing glue. For appreciating the significance of this movement it is therefore necessary to keep in mind that its tendency is toward a unified science, departmentalized into special sciences, and not toward an artificial and speculative juxtaposition of an autonomous philosophy and an autonomous group of sciences. (shrink)

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

This text presents a broad scope of philosophical issues and primary sources from the history of philosophy with the intent of providing students with a general introduction to significant and relevant questions in philosophy, the humanities, and the history of thought.