History of Concepts: Comparative PerspectivesIain Hampsher-Monk, Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree Although vastly influential in German-speaking Europe, conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) has until now received little attention in English. This genre of intellectual history differs from both the French history of mentalités and the Anglophone history of discourses by positing the concept - the key occupier of significant syntactical space - as the object of historical investigation. Contributions by distinguished practitioners and critics of conceptual history from Europe and America illustrate both the distinctiveness and diversity of the genre. The first part of the book is devoted to the origins and identity of the field, as well as methodological issues. Part two presents exemplary studies focusing either on a particular concept (such as Maurizio Viroli's 'Reason of the State') or a particular approach to conceptual history (e.g. Bernard Scholz for literary criticism and Terence Ball for political science). The final, most innovative section of the book looks at concepts and art - high, bourgeois and demotic. Here Bram Kempers discusses the conceptual history of Raphael's frescos in the Stanza della Segnatura of the Vatican; Eddy de Jongh examines the linguistic character of much Dutch genre painting; and Rolf Reichardt considers the conceptual structure implicit in card games of the French Revolution, used to induct those on the margins of literacy into the new revolutionary world-view. |
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History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives Iain Hampsher-Monk,Karin Tilmans,Frank van Vree No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
analysis anglophone approach architectonic Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte Arndt Bastille Begriffe Begriffsgeschichte Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte Bellori Bibliothèque Nationale Paris Brunner Cambridge century Cicero cognitio conceptual change conceptual history Constitution Conze cosmopolitism cultural diachronic divine Dutch Dutch Revolt Einleitung emblem example explication FIGURE France Fréart French Revolution fresco genre German Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Handbuch historians Historische Semantik history and Begriffsgeschichte history of concepts history of ideas history of political Huizinga human Ibidem identify images intellectual interpretation J.G.A. Pocock Julius Koselleck linguistic Martin van Gelderen Meaning and Context methodological modern objects Otto Brunner painting particular philosophy Pocock political discourse political language Political Theory political thought Quentin Skinner question Raphael reality reason refer Reinhart Koselleck Republic Rolf Reichardt School of Athens sciences semantic field seventeenth-century social history society speech act Stanza della Segnatura structure terminology texts theology tion tradition translated understanding Vasari visual words
Popular passages
Page 43 - Why, so can I, or so can any man ; But will they come, when you do call for them ? Glend.
Page 85 - Thus the problem facing an agent who wishes to legitimate what he is doing at the same time as gaining what he wants cannot simply be the instrumental problem of tailoring his normative language in order to fit his projects. It must in part be the problem of tailoring his projects in order to fit the available normative language.
Page 116 - The psychiatrists stepped in at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th, centuries.
Page 153 - Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things, and has cast beneath his feet all fear and unyielding Fate, and the howls of hungry Acheron...
Page 83 - Philosophy leaves everything as it is - except concepts. And since to possess a concept involves behaving or being able to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances, to alter concepts, whether by modifying existing concepts or by making new concepts available or by destroying old ones, is to alter behavior.
Page 83 - ... philosophical inquiry itself plays a part in changing moral concepts. It is not that we have first a straightforward history of moral concepts and then a separate and secondary history of philosophical comment. For to analyze a concept philosophically may often be to assist in its transformation by suggesting that it needs revision, or that it is discredited in some way. Philosophy leaves everything as it is - except concepts. And since to possess a concept involves behaving or being able to...
Page 63 - ideas" cannot account for the entirely different functions performed by them in disparate contexts: that of religious civil wars, that of enlightened absolutism, and that of bourgeois nation-states. By contrast, the history of concepts deals with the use of specific language in specific situations, within which concepts are developed and used by specific Speakers. Thus KOSELLECK holds that every speech act is unique.
Page 49 - What we cannot learn from any such history is in the first place what part, trivial or important, the given idea may have played in the thought of any individual thinker, who happened to mention it, or what place, characteristic or unusual, it may have taken in the intellectual climate of any given period in which it appeared (ebenda, 37-38).
Page 42 - Indeed it is tempting - looking back at The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law - to see Pocock's method as immanent in one of his eatliest and tecuttent subject mattets: the common law mind and the customaty chatactet of even the most theotetical petfotmances.
Page 47 - ... obtainable from empirical study (Sachanalyse). The language of concepts is a consistent medium in which potential experience and theoretical stability can be assessed. This can be done of course with socio-political ends in view, but sight must not be lost of the method of Begriffsgeschichte.