This book is the first comprehensive exposition of the work of one of the most important intellectual historians and political theorists writing today.
The history of concepts has partly replaced the older style of the `history of ideas' and can be extended to a critique of normative political theory and, thereby, understood as an indirect style of political theorizing. A common feature in Quentin Skinner's and Reinhart Koselleck's writings lies in their critique of the unhistorical and depoliticizing use of concepts. This concerns especially the classical contractarian theories, and both authors remark that this still holds for work by their contemporary heirs, such as (...) Rawls, Habermas and other contemporary normative theorists. Conceptual history offers us a chance to turn the contestability, contingency and historicity of the use of concepts into instruments for conceptualizing politics. The alternative, indirect mode of political theorizing Skinner and Koselleck practise consists of a `Verfremdungseffekt', which helps us to distance ourselves from thinking in terms of contemporary paradigms, unquestioned conventions, given constellations of alternatives or implicit value judgements. In the Skinnerian variant the conceptual changes are made intelligible through analysis of the rhetorical redescriptions among the political agents, whereas Koselleck thematizes the differences in the temporal index of concepts. The subversive aspect in the history of concepts consists of the explication and historical variation of the tacit normative content in the use of concepts. (shrink)
Quentin Skinner’s thesis ‘that political life itself sets the main problems for the political theorist’ marks a turning point in the study of the history of political thought. The Protestant princes who revised Luther’s doctrine of disobedience in order to save Lutheranism as a political force are the best example of this ‘Skinnerian revolution’ in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. This is in accordance with his claim that principles play a legitimating and innovating role in politics. A tacit implication (...) of the thesis is that we should not only read theorists as politicians but also read politicians as theorists. The politician possesses a special competence in discerning between various types of situation, has a distinct contestational imagination, is a person who is prepared to acknowledge the inherent paradoxes of the situation and who has the capacity to deal politically with limited time. (shrink)
Max Weber was a decathlonist of the human sciences. Today he has a reputation of first rank classic in several academic fields. If we imagine, however, Weber resurging from his grave today, he would not recongize himself in the textbook-Weber or in the popular use of Weberian formulas, such as charisma or rationality. The Weber studies in two recent decades have dis-embalmed Weber from the ex-post-classifications, such as sociologist or theorist of bureaucracy. Weber's political and intellectual context, the specific points (...) he intended to make and his tacit but systematic revisions of central concepts are given a closer attention. Contemporary scholars can use their freedon of imagination to construct new perspectives on Weber's work. This volume illustrates some trends in newer Weber studies. A number of scholars with different gackgrounds, working especially in the fields political and administration studies, construct their own modes of reading Weber. Some of them deconstruct the received views, others, rather, take a fresh look to some Weverian concepts and problemToday Weber has a reputation of a first rank classic in several academic fields. If we imagine, however, Weber resurging from his grave today, he would not recognize himself in the textbook-Weber or in the popular use of Weberian formulas, such as charisma or rationality. (shrink)
This article discusses the ways of conceptualizing politics in parliamentary debates. When the politics-vocabulary is ubiquitous in them, which kind of speech act lies in emphasizing the political aspect? Focusing on thematized uses allows us to identify conceptual revisions in the politics-vocabulary in digitalized plenary debates of the German Bundestag from 1949 to 2017. My fourfold scheme for conceptualizing politics provides the analytical apparatus. The units of analysis in this study are compound words around politics written as single words, a (...) German language specialty. Their frequency has remarkably risen in the Bundestag debates, and the search engine can easily find them. This research interest allows me to speculate with changes in the understanding and appreciation of politics in postwar Germany. (shrink)
ABSTRACTThe conceptual history of politics in post-WWII Germany is connected to the history of academic political science. From the Bundestag plenary debates both the controversies on the political science itself and the contributors of both contemporary scholars and the ‘classics’ of the understanding of politics can be studied. The digitalisation of parliamentary debates opens up new chances for conceptual research in this regard. The article studies the conceptual commitments in the use of the discipline titles and actors, and looks at (...) who is mentioned in debates, for example, political scientists in early West Germany, and political theorists, Formulae from Weber’s Politik als Beruf seem to be most frequently evoked in the Bundestag. (shrink)
