Richter - Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory

Sage Publications, Inc.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/191282 .
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory.
http://www.jstor.org
CONCEPTUAL HISTORY
(BEGRIFFSGESCHICHTE) AND
POLITICAL THEORY
MELVIN RICHTER
City University of New York
Graduate School and Hunter College
This essay is at once a review of two German encyclopedias and an

introduction to their respective versions of Begriffsgeschichte (the
history of concepts or conceptual history). These two works are the
Historisches Worterbuchder Philosophie (A Dlctionary of Philosophy
on Historical Principles, hereafter referred to as HWP) and the
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historlsches Lexikon zur Politisch-
sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Basic Concepts in History A
Dictionary on Historical Principles of Political and Social Language in
Germany,hereafterreferredto as GG).' Although both works are still in
progress, they already merit inclusion on the short list of reference
works indispensable to anyone concerned with political theory and its
history
The publication of the GG and HWP marks the return of German
scholarship to the first line of scholarly achievement in the history of
political thought and that of philosophy The GG provides the most
intensive history of political and social concepts ever attempted; the
HWP, the most extensive treatment of philosophical terms (among
which it includes concepts central to political, legal, and social
philosophy). Of the GG's projected six substantive volumes, five have
A UTHOR'S NOTE: Researchfor this review essay was made possible by support from
the Herzog-August-Bibliohtek, Wolfenbuttel, the Earhart Foundation, and the PSC-
CUNY Research Award Program of the City University of New York. The author
acknowledges-with thanks-their indispensable aid, as well as that of Professors
Reinhart Koselleck, ChristianMeter, Thomas Nipperdey, Manfred Riedel, and Dr. Horst
Gunther.
POLITICALTHEORY,Vol. 14No. 4, November1986604-637

? 1986Sage Publications,Inc.
604
Richter / CONCEPTUAL HISTORY 605
appeared; of the HWP's planned eight volumes, six are in print, but the
final number of volumes may well reach twelve. Although both works
are meant to be limited to uses of concepts in German-speaking Europe,
in practice they range far more widely. For they provide considerable
new information about the meanings of concepts in other languages,
classical, medieval, and modern. Both works deliver more than they
promise.
It is not too much to say that the GG has already set a new standard
for the historical study of political and social vocabularies by its
method, scale, and specialized techniques of investigating changes in the
meaning of concepts. Indeed, its achievement demonstrates the in-
adequacy of entries for political and social concepts in the established
national dictionaries such as the Grimms' Deutsches Worterbuchand
the Oxford English Dictionary Thus, to take just one example, the
longest entry for "anarchy, anarchism"in any German dictionary is 17
lines; that in the GG (written by the late Peter Ludz and by Christian
Meier) has 60 pages with 359 footnotes.2 Executed for the most part by
teams of specialists, the GG's account of conceptual history combines
reliable summaries of existing scholarly monographs with substantial
additions to existing knowledge of political and social usage in classical
Greek and Latin, medieval Latin and vernacular languages, as well as in
modern German and other European languages. In view of the intensive
and scholarly quality of the GG's entries, it must henceforth be the
starting point for any serious investigation of European political
vocabularies. As one English reviewer has written of the GG, "Future
researchers will ignore these essays only at their peril, and certainly to
their cost."3
Readers encountering the GG and HWP for the first time may
experience something approaching awe at the extent to which the
number and length of entries have been determined by the criteria of
scholarship rather than by the profit margin of publishers. Ap-
proximately 5,000 pages of the GG have appeared. Its primary concern
is to chart the careers of political and social concepts in German-
speaking Europe between 1750 and 1850, the period its editors regardas
crucial both for the transition to modern political and social thought
and for structural changes in government, economy, and society The
GG is unprecedented in its scale. About 130 concepts have been
scheduled. Thus far articles average 50 and occasionally exceed 100
pages.
As for the HWP, the total number of pages already exceeds 6,700.
Like the GG, the HWP contains no articles on individual thinkers or on
606 POLITICAL THEORY / NOVEMBER 1986
competing interpretations of them and their theories. In practice the

HWP's definition of philosophy is highly ecumenical. It includes both
philosophers who did not write in German and many thinkers and
subjects usually considered to belong to other disciplines. This accounts
in part for the large number of entries in political, legal, and social
philosophy, including recent work in English. Thus a reader of Charles
Taylor might wish to learn the history and present use of the distinction
between constitutive and regulative rules. Such information is provided
by the HWB's article on Konstitution, which begins with classical Greek
philosophy and carries the story through Kant to Searle and Habermas.
That the emphasis of both these lexicons is upon the use of concepts
and terms in German may be counted as a double advantage. For they
contain information about German thought that may be absent from
equivalent sources in English, and they also introduce a much needed
comparative perspective to counteract complacent provincialisms.
Hermeneutics, a subject nowhere treated in either the Encyclopedia of
Philosophy or the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, is the subject of a
concise and authoritative article in the HWP by Hans-Georg Gadamer.
And those political theorists who first read Max Weber in translations
by Gerth and Mills, Parsons and Henderson, or Roth and Wittich
cannot but learn much from the GG's 100 page entry on Herrschaft
(domination, authority, rule), its 120 pages on Macht (power), Gewalt
(force, violence), and 67 pages on Legitimitat (legitimacy), Legalitat
(legality).
Despite differences in the scale, foci, and methods of the GG and
HWP, they complement each other very well. Readers of the GG can
usually learn from the HWP what technical terms in German phi-
losophy, law, theology, or linguistics mean and have meant. Readers of
the HWP can greatly add to their knowledge of the context, political
and social, of concepts found in the HWP but the historical meanings of
which are presented in far greater detail by the GG. Its version of
Begriffsgeschichtelinks the history of concepts to social, economic, and
political history; the HWP usually does not.
II
Both the HWP and the GG originated in relatively small working

groups, each united by common interests and assumptions. Such
consensus made possible the original policy of cooperation by teams of

specialists when no individual commanded all the specializations
requisite to covering a topic. The editors of the HWP have been
philosophers principally concerned with the histories of the problems,
arguments, and technical terms of their discipline; the editors of the GG,
historians combining interests in intellectual, social, economic, legal,
and administrative history Both groups shared certain problems and
concerns inseparable from recent German intellectual and political
experience. Both published their respective statements of the guidelines
and principles meant to guide their contributors in the same year, 1967,
and in the same journal, the Archivfiir Begriffsgeschlchte, founded by
Erich Rothacker in 1955. Since then its editors have been Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Joachim Ritter, the first editor of the HWP, and his
successor, Karlfried Grunder.
As early as 1927, Rothacker, an important exponent of Geistes-
geschichte and Lebensphilosophie in the tradition of Dilthey, had
projected a dictionary of philosophy that would present its history
through tracing the careers of those concepts and terms which had
grown out of the major views of the world (Weltanschauungen).
Rothacker's historcist position on how the history of philosophy ought
to be written was ultimately rejected by the editors of the HWP for one
set of reasons, and by the editors of the GG for another. Those
producing the HWP decided that the nature and variety of philosophy
today preclude an exclusively conceptual dictionary of philosophy on
historical principles. As for the editors of the GG, they viewed
Rothacker's approach to the history of concepts as altogether too
disembodied, separated, that is, from the great changes in political,
social, and economic structures they considered as crucial to modern
history
Even the philosophical dictionary that was to be the HWP was not
executed according to Rothacker's design. For when the opportunity
came to do such a reference work, it was offered by Schwabe & Co., a
publishing house that proposed the revision of what had served since the
beginning of the twentieth century as the standard reference guide to
German philosophy' Rudolf Eisler's Worterbuch der philosophischen
Begriffe. This had first appeared in 1899 Its fourth and last edition was
revised and published between 1927 and 1930.
Eisler's purposes had been positivistic and neo-Kantian. He attrib-
uted the inconclusiveness of philosophy to deficiencies in its termi-
nology; his standard was derived from his view of the reasons for
advances in the natural sciences. Eisler sought to eliminate multiple or

contested meanings of philosophical terms. He wished to replace those
in use by precise definitions of terms and concepts, a uniform
nomenclature to be used by all philosophers. The history of philosophy
interested Eisler only to the extent that it had produced methods,
concepts, and formulations of problems that had been taken over by the
"positive sciences." Every article in his philosophical dictionary began
with a clear and concise prescriptive definition of the concept in
question. Such a view of concepts, their formation, and scientific
purpose is far from dead today; it still thrives among political scientists
in Germany, as in the United States.
Joachim Ritter, who was to be the first editor of the HWP, concluded
that Eisler's work could not and should not be updated. The conception
of philosophy it embodied no longer held a privileged or even a
respected position among philosophers. Indeed, since Eisler'stime there
had been a proliferation of positions unknown to him and incompatible
with his procedures and standards of philosophical worth. In Germany
important philosophical developments included phenomenology, ex-
istentialism, the revival of interest among philosophers in ontological
and metaphysical questions, neoscholasticism, and above all, her-
meneutics, Marxism, and critical theory A number of philosophers had
become specialists in modern logic. Still others had become concerned
with analytical philosophy as practiced in the English-speaking world.
Nor could European thought any longer be considered as possessing a
hegemonic superiority to that of the rest of the world. Oriental
philosophy and religions merit inclusion in a modern dictionary of
philosophy 4
Such developments ruled out anything resembling Eisler'swork, with
its goals of strict and obligatory terminology, prescriptive definitions
based on a reductlve natural science model. Which form, then, should be
given to the new work meant to replace Eisler's? Rothacker had
proposed a dictionary dealing with the history of philosophical
concepts. Despite his own status as an editor of the Archiv fur
Begriffsgeschlchte, Ritter rejected Rothacker's scheme. For Ritter and
his future collaborators believed that such a reference work should not
be limited to a single method or position. In their view philosophy today
is extremely varied. Thus the most useful purpose that can be served by a
modern reference work is to explain the concepts and terminology used
by major philosophical movements throughout the world.
No school represented among German philosophers today is ex-

cluded. Terms and concepts used by Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger,
Gadamer, Albert and Popper, Habermas and other critical theorists,
ordinary language philosophy, Marxism in its many variants-all
receive considerable attention.
As for Begriffsgeschichte, this is used in the HWP when appropriate,
that is, when knowledge of past usage is needed to clarify and
understand a concept as employed by philosophers today Thus in his
introduction, Ritter wrote: "it would be a mistake to consider the HWP
as a dictionary of conceptual history (begriffsgeschichtliches Worter-
buch)."5 Neither in its form nor in its content may it be properly so
described. In the HWP much space is devoted to modern logic treated
with full technical rigor and notation. In this subject articles relate to
one another. No historical treatment is attempted. When the HWP
includes terms and concepts drawn from disciplines now autonomous
but still closely related to the concerns of philosophy today (psychology,
linguistics, mathematics, biology), again there is no attempt to treat
such notions historically In the HWP Begriffsgeschichteis applied only
to those concepts that have either changed little over time or enough so
that they benefit from being viewed against a historical horizon. Yet, as
the editors have commented, the HWP has occasioned and included far
more research into the history of concepts than could have been
anticipated. It is for that reason that political theorists will find it worth
consulting.
It is instructive to compare entries when they appear in both lexicons.
On occasion, as in their articles on Herrschaft, discrepant conclusions
may occur. This raises questions about how such disagreements may be
resolved, about what counts for evidence in Begriffsgeschichte. Since
the GG seeks to combine social with conceptual history and the HWP
does not, their respective treatments of the same concept may also
clarify the advantages and disadvantages of their methods. On the other
hand, it is sometimes illuminating to analyze the value of detailed
treatments of concepts as compared to much shorter versions of them.
Not infrequently, the author of a long entry in the GG summarizes it
briefly in the HWP Among the most important articles in the GG are
those by Manfred Riedel dealing with the contrast that came to be
drawn by theorists between "the political," or "the state," on the one
side, and "the social," or "civil society," on the other. In the GG Riedel
wrote 82 pages on "civil society" (Gesellschaft, burgerliche), but only 7
pages in the HWP Again, in the GG he devoted 55 pages to the concept

of the citizen (der Burger)and citizenship, but only 5 pages in the HWP
The GG's significant 24-page entry on "anti-Semitism" by Thomas
Nipperdey and Reinhard Rurup appears in the HWP as a 2-page
summary
In the length of its articles there is no discernible principle of
limitation at work in the HWP Its longest entry to date is the almost 100
pages and 890 footnotes devoted to Gott (God). In its first four volumes
the GG's most extensive treatment was that of history (Geschichte,
Historie) in 127 pages and 633 footnotes. But while in political theory
some concepts receive little attention in the HWP, others rival in length
those of the GG. On Naturrecht (natural law, natural right) the GG's
entry is 68 pages, 376 footnotes; the HWP, 64 pages, 725 footnotes. On
Freiheit (freedom) the GG runs to 117 pages, 746 footnotes; the HWP,
35 pages, 396 footnotes. On Fortschritt (progress) the GG has 72 pages,
377 footnotes; the HWP, 28 pages, 254 footnotes. Finally, the GG
devotes 79 pages, 408 footnotes to Demokratie (democracy); the HWP,
5 pages, 34 footnotes.
If, as has been remarked, it is the eclecticism of the HWP that makes
it most valuable to all those professionally concerned with political
theory and its history, very different qualities will recommend the GG to
readers of this journal. For the GG, as one contributor has commented,
is among the few reference works since the Encyclopedie that have been
written with a specific set of theoretical concerns.6 The GG's three
principaleditors, Otto Brunner,WernerConze, and Reinhart Koselleck,
deliberately established a program that combines conceptual with what
they call social history and historical semantics. It is concerned with the
reciprocal relationships between continuities, changes, and innovations
in the meanings and applications of political and social concepts on the
one side, and large-scale structural transformations in government,
society, and the economy on the other. Guided by this carefully
articulated, although not uncontroversial program, the GG's authors
look back as far as classical antiquity and forward to the political and
social concepts of our own time. Just what is entailed in the GG's version
of Begriffsgeschichte will be the subject of Section III. But the GG's
program, the scope of its theoretical concerns, its perodization and foci
cannot be understood in isolation from the GG's setting both in German
history and historiography
In his important book The German Conception of History, recently
reissued with a new chapter, Georg Iggers identified three positions
central to German historiography prior to 1945: (1) the concept of the

state as an end in itself, the existence of which depends on the successful
use of power; (2) Antnormativitat, the rejection of any moral
judgment on historical actors and actions; (3) Anti-Begrifflichkelt, the
rejection by historians of any systematic effort to study structural
characteristics of human societies.7 Insofar as German historians dealt
with political ideas during the Wilhelminian and Weimar periods, they
did so by treating political ideas as did Friedrich Meinecke, without
reference to the positions of political thinkers in the politics and society
of their time.8
Jorn Rusen has sketched three phases of historiography during the
forty years following 1945.9 In the first phase (extending from the
beginning of the postwar era to the 1960s) there was a revised version of
prewar historicism, with the emphasis on history as a human study of
political and historical events by empathic understanding and her-
meneutic method. History was interpreted through documents that
revealed the intentions and self-understanding of the actors. The second
phase (from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s) occurred at a time when a
change in generation coincided with the expansion of German uni-
versities. During this transitional period of what Rusen sees as an
"accelerated transformation," younger historians began to experiment
with new concepts and methods. Later in the 1960s student protest
movements called into question the purposes and organization of the
historical profession. Finally, the theoretical status of history as a
Geisteswissenschaft was challenged by other positions: analytical
philosophy of science (Popper and Albert), critical theory, critical
rationalism, Marxist historiography
In the third phase (from the end of the 1970s up to the present) social
history emerged as an integral, perhaps central interest of younger
German historians, who consequently shifted away from political and
intellectual history in the older style. This new approach became rapidly
institutionalized. New journals, such as Geschichte und Gesellschaft,
have both emphasized possible uses of the social sciences and sought a
new synthesis bringing together some aspects of the older hermeneutic
method with the uses of explanatory theories and the construction of
ideal-types and models. One manifesto described the proper subjects of
historical research as "The history of social, political, economic,
cultural, and intellectual phenomena, all anchored in identifiable social
formations."1' Thus understood, history is not limited to sets of events
but is placed within a framework of structures that condition human
action. To some extent, such structures lie outside the intentions and
purposes of actors, beyond the horizon of their self-understanding.
Although social history has its formidable critics in the Federal
Republic, it now plays a prominent part in the theory and practice of
Germany's professional historians.
In his new edition of The German Conception of History, Iggers
argues that in the social history now written by German historians, there
is an emphasis on politics that until recently was absent from the French
Annales school. French social history had concentrated on long-term
impersonal and structural processes." Thus the Annales style of social
history was relatively apolitical in contrast to the work done by German
social historians, who have specifically defined their task both as
questioning rather than celebrating (as had earlier German historians)
the political organization of Germany since its nineteenth-century
unification; and second, as relating political forms to social and
economic processes. Although German historians remain concerned
with the intentions and self-understanding of actors, their interest has
shifted from individuals to parties and pressure groups involved in
conflicts. Thus their aim is now "a social history of politics, or perhaps a
political history of society "
Where does the program of the GG fit into the schema provided by
Riisen and Iggers?The answer is to be found in the GG's "Introduction"
and in the essay (now available in English) "Begriffsgeschichte and
Social History," both written by one of the GG's principal editors,
Reinhart Koselleck.'2 He argues that these two modes of writing history
are indispensable to the GG. Its project is to test a hypothesis: that the
principal concepts used in the political and social language of German-
speaking Europe were transformed during what Koselleck calls the
Sattelzeit-the period of crisis and transition that extended from
approximately 1750 to 1850. Such conceptual change, he and the GG's
other editors suggest, both registered and directed rapid, irreversible
transformations in political, social, and economic structures. Rejecting
the reductionlsm often practiced by social historians who treat the
relationship between concepts and structuralprocesses, the GG's editors
find equally unacceptable the study of concepts in the style of
Geistesgschichte as practiced before 1945 aiid revived in the first
postwar phase of German historiography. In their characterization of
the relationshlp between conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) and
social history, the editors of the GG stress what in their view is the
creative tension between these two historical disciplines.
The group that was to translate the GG into reality originated in a

workshop for modern social history organized at Heidelberg by another
of the GG's editors, Werner Conze. In an early statement (1966) Conze
characterized the lexicon's objectives as a "serious version of his-
torlcism."'3 By this he meant a version of historicism that took into
account social history This characterization reappeared in Koselleck's
programmatic article in the 1967 Archivfur Begriffsgeschichte.4 The
history of concepts, long among the subjects of Getstesgeschichte, now
was to be linked in the GG to changes in the political, social, and
economic structures of Europe. Although not usually counted among
the prime movers of this trend toward social history, Koselleck has been
far from unsympathetic to it. Thus he has been active as an editor of
Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Yet he, no less than the GG's other editors,
insists that Begriffsgeschichte ought to be distinguished from social
history tout court. (What the major differences are will be discussed in
detail in the subsequent section.)
In general terms what distinguishes the GG from most other work
done by professional historians in the Federal Republic and elsewhere is
its nonreductive, interpretative mode of analyzing concepts in their
appropriate social, economic, and political contexts. Another notable
characteristic of the GG is its concern with language and its application
of methods originally employed in philology, structural linguistics, and
historical semantics. Yet the GG's editors employ these methods in a
pragmatic way, focusing on what they view as essential to understanding
and recording the usage of political and social concepts. They do not
regard their work as a contribution to linguistics. The editors' stated
purpose in preparing this dictionary of concepts is neither to provide a
dictionary of philosophical terms such as the HWP nor a purely
semantic dictionary of individual words such as is done by lexico-
graphers. 5
Because of the GG's varied objectives, its choice of concepts has been
determined by criteria that make it difficult to predict just what will or
will not be found in this work. Of the approximately 130 concepts
announced, 101 have appeared in the five volumes available to this
reviewer. What remains are one more substantive volume, and finally,
the all-important index that will complete this project. Disregarding the
fact that some concepts appear in more than one category, my
breakdown shows the following distribution in the first five volumes:
1. Political concepts, 50. These include constitutional regime types,
such as "democracy," "republic,""monarchy," "dictatorship";abstract
terms such as "power" (Macht), "representation,""equality" (Gleich-

heit), "politics" or "policy" (Politik); as well as concepts meant to
characterize actual arrangements, groups, or processes: "party," or
"parliament, parliamentary regime, parliamentarlanism."
2. Social Concepts, 41. These include generic terms such as "civil
society" (burgerliche Gesellschaft);the contrast, most familiar through
Tonnies, of Gemeinschaft/ Gesellschaft; middle class, stratum, or estate
(Mittelstand); "calling" or "vocation" (Beruf); "family"; "peasant"
(Bauer); "sociology "
3. Socialism, " or ideologies, 27 These include "anarchism," "con-
servatism,""liberalism,""Marxism"and "communism,""imperialism,"
and "faclsm."
4. Philosophical concepts, 20. These encompass "naturallaw, natural
right" (Naturrecht); "nihilism," "materialism-idealism," as well as
concepts political and legal such as "justlce,""liberty,""rghts" (Grund-
rechte, Menschenrechte, Burgerrechte, Volksrechte).
5. Historical concepts, 19 Although these include the generic notion
of history (Geschichte; Historie), the overall emphasis is on concepts
from the philosophy of history "progress," "crisis," "criticism,"
"revolution."
6. Economic concepts, 17 Among these are "work," "worker,"
"need" (Bedurfnis), "interest"(Interesse), "capital," "capitalist,""cap-
italism," "property"(Eigentum).
7 Legal concepts, 15. These include "law" or "statute" (Gesetz),
"state of emergency"(Ausnahmezustand).
8. Concepts used in internationalpolitics, 10. These include "war,"
"peace," "neutrality," "balance of power," "neutrality," and "inter-
nationalism."
III
The GG originated in the attempt to track the advent and perception

of modernity in German-speaking Europe, where it took on a distinctive
form. The GG combines the study of the language used to discuss
politics, society, and economics with the identification of those radical
and sudden transformations in the structures that had long persisted in
"old Europe" (Alt Europa). Its chosen temporal focus is ca. 1750-1850,
the Sattelzeit, or period of rapid change to the beginnings of the modern

world which Germans now share with others inside and outside Europe.
Through the rigorous application of the GG's unique combination of
Begriffsgeschichte and social history, its contributors analyze how
social and political concepts were used before, during, and after the
Sattelzeit. Particular attention is given to fundamental changes in
concepts that accompanied radical alterations of prerevolutionary and
prelndustral aspects of the l'ancien regime.'6
The GG postulates three types of political and social concepts, and
these are partially defined by their relationship to German usage now-
(1) traditional concepts, such as "democracy" and other Aristotelian
regime types, the meaning of which may still be retrieved and
understood at this time; (2) concepts such as "civil society" and "state,"
whose earlier meanings have become so altered since the Sattelszeit that
they can now be understood only after scholarly reconstruction of their
earlier uses; (3) neologisms such as "anti-Semitism," "Caesarism," or
"Marxism" coined in the course of revolutionary transformations they
helped shape or interpret. All three types of concepts have a variety of
meanings, associations, and applications. The historical contents of
concepts, therefore, are those concentrates of meanings they acquired
over time in a variety of changing contexts. The GG seeks to discover the
various meanings concepts acquired over time in two ways: through the
application of a number of linguistic techniques to the analysis of
concepts historically and by relating changes in their meaning to
structural political, social, economic transformations.
In accordance with the GG's attempt to apply its unique method of
combining Begriffsgeschichte and social history to the analysis of
concepts, all entries follow the same general format. Each article is
preceded by an outline of its contents and is divided into three main
sections treating its usage. Section I focuses on usages from the classical
to the early modern period. If a concept derives from classical or
medieval terms, its meanings at each of these times is treated, as well as
its relationship to other concepts then in use. Especially close attention
is given to early modern usages, whether those of the Reformation,
Counterreformation, humanism, or absolutism. The editors have
attempted to avoid reading any unexamined, arbitrary, or ideological
assumptions back into the past, such as those between ancients and
moderns or idealized images of "Old Europe." In section II, in principle
always the longest, conceptual development and change is covered from
approximately the middle of the eighteenth century as far Into the

nineteenth century as the special history of the concept requires. The
main body of this section incorporates all those modes of analysis
entailed in the GG's program. Usages are plotted, their durations
recorded, as are changes in their political and social applications: is the
concept a neologism? a continuation of one long in use? or a
fundamental revision of meaning? What relationship do the conceptual
forms have to structural change? The third section of each article is
meant not only to summarize its findings but to relate them to twentieth-
century and present-day usage. This Ausblick, or overview and
projection into our own time, is meant to establish the extent to which
former meanings have dropped out or still persist today Often it is in
this section that the terminology and concepts of National Socialism are
noted. The conclusion of the article on "materialism-idealism," for
example, analyzes Hitler's exploitation of this dichotomy in Mein
Kampf
The editors of the GG have concluded that in general, the modernity
of political and social concepts consists in the following developments:
1. Verzeltlichung (temporalization). One characteristic of modern
social and political concepts is that they are apt to be inserted into one or
another philosophy of history set out in terms of periods, phases, or
stages of development in time. The theory of progress is the best-known
case of a philosophy of history that puts concepts into such a temporal
frame of movement toward a goal. Such impositions of temporal
patterns on political and social thought have produced discernible
consequences: they produced tensions between perceptions of the
present and some more desirable future. Thereby such histornczed
concepts greatly increased the emotional charge, intensity, and polar-
ization of passions in political and social life. For such use of historical
time helped create the "horizon" within which concepts functioned
thereafter. Especially significant for establishing such "horizons" are
eschatological perspectives that make actors conceive of themselves as
either living in a period unique in history or else in a period that is about
to begin transforming all things.
2. Demokratislerung (democratization) of political and social con-
cepts. Prior to the Enlightenment, specialized political and social
vocabularies were used by elite groups: the clergy, aristocracy, jurists,
and other members of that relatively small part of the population which
had received formal education. During the eighteenth century profound
changes occurred in the manner of reading, what was read, the political
messages delivered, and the size of the audiences to which they were
directed. Previously the same texts had been intensively read and reread;
now many texts became generally available and were read more rapidly
Political and social concepts could now be communicated through
varied media such as newspapers ratherthan through books exclusively
In these ways the size of the reading public familiar with political
concepts was greatly widened. As for nonreaders, many of them could
now become familiar with concepts used in political discussion because
of their personal participation in large-scale political movements of a
sort previously little known.
3. Ideologiesierbarkeit (concepts that could be incorporated into
ideologies). Under the estates and orders characteristic of Europe
during the l'ancien reglme, concepts used in political and social language
tended to be specific and particularistic in their references to well-
defined social categories and gradations. However, beginning with the
eighteenth century, those older terms that remained in use began to
become more general in their social reference, more abstract in meaning,
and hence more easily fitted into open-ended formulae that could be
defined and used differently by competing groups and interests.
Changes in the grammatical form of concepts from plural to singular are
one way in which this ideological tendency was manifested. Thus single
collective concepts were created out of notions previously conceived as
concrete rights, practices, or events: "liberties" became "liberty";
"histories," "history " Neologisms were coined in great numbers to
designate ideologies just created: liberalism, conservatism, anarchism,
socialism, communism, fascism.
4. Politisierung (politicization) of concepts used in political and
social discourse. As old regime social groupings, regional units, and
constitutional identifications were broken down by the forces of
revolution, war, and economic change, publics became much larger
than those previously addressed. More and more people had messages
directed to them. These newcomers to politics were mobilized by
competing movements and groups. In the process, concepts were made
more susceptible to deployment as propaganda slogans and terms of
abuse. In short, concepts became weapons in political conflicts among
antagonistic classes, strata, and movements.17
The GG's editors stress that during the periods under study, not every
political and social concept shared all four characteristics. But overall,
the editors argue, those concepts studied in the GG demonstrate that
these four sorts of changes occurred in German-speaking Europe.

To understand how modern political and social concepts came into
existence, we need to know more about the diverse ways in which the
vast transformations of political, social, and economic structuresduring
the Sattelzeit were conceptualized by those experiencing them. And, the
editors of the GG argue, we can also learn much about structuralchange
from the concepts that both registered experience and helped shape it
through organized decision and action. But such interactions cannot be
traced without using conjointly the resources of both Begriffsgeschichte
and social history, treated by Brunner,Conze, and Koselleck as separate
subdisciplines of history Social history, as used in the GG, "investigates
social formations; the construction of constitutional forms; the relations
of groups, strata, and classes."'8 As Braudel himself noted about
Brunner, such an understanding of social history puts political organi-
zation on the same level of analysis and importance as the long-term
social and economic structures stressed by the Annales school.'9
Social history deals with texts only to the extent that they provide
evidence about social stratification, the division of labor, demography,
urban-ruralrelationships, and other problems treated quantitatively to
the greatest possible extent. By contrast, Begriffsgeschlchte focuses on
the words and concepts that constitute texts. The methods of conceptual
history derive in part from those used in the history of philosophy, but
even more from historical philology and linguistics. The conclusions
reached by practitioners of Begriffsgeschichte "can be continually
evaluated through the exegesis of texts and [are] based on such
exegesis."20 Because of their different foci and concerns, Begriffs-
geschichte and social history must be used together if we are to
understand the dynamic interaction between conceptual and structural
change. To the extent that social historians work with concepts, these
serve as indicators of structuralchange. Yet, the editors of the GG argue,
concepts are more than indicators. Concepts also affect political and
social change because it is through them that a horizon is constituted
against which such changes are seen, projected into the future, or
contrasted to the past. It is through Begriffsgeschichte that it becomes
possible to identify continuities, alterations, and innovations in social
and political concepts during times of crisis and conflict.
Practitioners of Begriffsgeschichteclaim that the language of politics
in such situations of conflict is characterized by fundamental dis-
agreements about usage and rules. They further assert that it is not only
historians who are aware of the significance of contested usages. In

periods of profound crisis, those groups, strata, and classes most
affected by fundamental alterations in the language of law, politics,
bureaucracy, or constitutions themselves become highly sensitive to the
consequences that follow from using the vocabulary and other linguistic
practices of the old order or else from redefining deliberately its terms
and the rules governing their use. Just as any use of empirical evidence in
political argument is apt to be disputed by political antagonists, so too
are linguistic usages. As Koselleck has written:
The semantic struggle to define political or social positions, and by means of such
definition to defend or occupy these positions-such conflicts characterize all
periods of crisis known to us through written sources. Since the French
Revolution, this struggle has become sharper as its structure has changed.
Concepts no longer serve merely to define given states of affairs; henceforth
concepts are made to reach into the future. Increasingly this future was
conceptualized. Before positions could be won, they had first to be linguistically
formulated. Only then could these positions be seized and held.21
This approach to understanding texts is historical and critical. Here

are some of the questions asked about any text being studied by
practitioners of Begriffsgeschichte: To which public is this text ad-
dressed? How do the messages conveyed by the text affect the interests
of those sending or receiving them? Does the writer include or exclude
himself from the concept's referent? For example, is a concept such as
"peasant"(Bauer) used only by those regarding themselves as belonging
to a superior class and who refer to themselves by other terms? What is
regarded as the opposite or contrary of any given concept prominent in
the text, its Gegenbegriffp Which orders, estates, strata, classes,
associations, churches, sects are included in a concept's meanings or
referents?22
This combination of Begriffsgeschichtewith social history is meant to
reveal the political and social meanings of words in a text, as well as the
intentions, thrust, and force of the messages it conveys. "Words will be
understood in their context, social and political; the relationship
between word and content will be interpreted; the result of this inquiry
will be defined in terms of the resulting concept."23
Concepts are not to be treated as purely disembodied units func-
tioning within some larger cultural whole, as in Geistesgeschichte, or as
the purely technical deductions from logical operations internal to
philosophical efforts to resolve a problem, as in Problemgeschichte.The

attention paid in the GG to the position of a text's author and intended
audience, to the interests affected by the acceptance or refusal of the
message meant to be conveyed, to the polemical context and con-
temporaryapplicationsof political and social concepts-these emphases
also distinguish Begriffsgeschichtefrom Lovejoy's version of the history
of ideas.24To specify conceptual change and explain the reasons for it
are essential to the GG's program.
Historians of political thought writing in English may detect some
resemblances between the GG as a historical project executed by
historians and the objectives of J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, John
Dunn, Richard Tuck, and James Tully Both the German and the
Anglophone groups aspire to historical accounts of political thought,
accounts that attend particularly to language. But the GG's unit of
analysis is the concept rather than ideologies and discourses. Skinner
has argued that it is always a mistake to write the history of a concept by
tracing its morphology over time.25He himself has justified his method
largely by argumentsfrom analytical philosophy of action and language
rather than from linguistics. Pocock's emphasis usually falls on such
discourses as "civic humanism" or "the ancient constitution."26 By
contrast, the methods used in the GG are far more explicitly derived
from philology, linguistics, and historical semantics. Its editors seek to
apply terms and methods associated with structural linguistics.
Basic to the analysis of political and social language in the GG are
four sets of distinctions. The first two, derived from Saussure, are: (1)
the contrast between language (langue, Sprache) and speech (parole,
Rede); (2) the sharp separation of synchronic from diachronic analyses
of language. The two remaining sets of distinctions are: (3) that between
semasiological and onomasiological analyses; (4) that between a
semantics seeking to determine "meaning" through analysis of single
words ("lexical semantics") and that other type of semantics which
studies "meaning" within that larger unit known as a semantic or
linguistic field.
Saussure, generally regarded by linguists as the founder of their
discipline in its present form, drew a sharp line separating language
(langue, Sprache) from speech (parole, Rede). Language cannot be
affected by any individual. It is that system which provides the means of
communication for a society This function can be performed by
language only if it is substantially the same for all its users. By contrast,
speech is the use of language by a single person in a specific situation.

Speech, then, may be determined by an individual's will, intelligence,
and skill. While individuals may decide almost anything about their own
speech, they can exert no such control over language, which, learned in
early childhood, cannot be much affected by any individual linguistic
practice, intention, or belief.27 For anyone drawing this Saussuran
distinction between language and speech, problems arise about how
much significance from a linguistic point of view ought to be assigned to
the distinctively personal usages of any individual, however innovative
and intellectually preeminent.
It was also from Saussure that the editors of the GG drew the strict
distinction between synchronic and diachronic analyses of language.
Breaking with the reliance on historical study of language by the
founders of philology in the nineteenth century, Saussure declared that
two modes of describing and analyzing language ought never to be
confused or practiced together:
A diachronic description of a language traces the historical development of a

language and records the changes that have taken place in it between successive
points in time: "diachronic" is equivalent, therefore, to "historical."
A synchronmcdescription of a language is non-historical: it presents an account of
the language as it is at some point of time.28
Linguists today practice synchronic analysis of language almost to

the exclusion of diachronic analysis. This they tend to regard as
belonging to the largely superseded past of their discipline. Semantics,
whether practiced by linguists, philosophers using such linguistic
theories as Chomsky's generative grammar, or analytical philosophers,
is almost exclusively conducted through synchronic analysis of the
"meaning" of words, sentences, or discourses.29
In this regard the GG disregards both the practice of present-day
linguists and semanticists. Essential to the method of the GG is the
alternation of synchronic and diachronic analysis. To do so, the editors
argue, is the only way to write Begriffsgeschichte in ways that enable
them to carry out their theoretical program. Thus the GG is meant to
transcend the limitations of nineteenth-century philology, which con-
fined historical semantics to the survey of the meanings over time of
single words. To compile such semantic dictionaries for the words in a
natural language was the goal of philologists directing the national
dictionaries such as the Grimms' Worterbuch and the Oxford English
Dictionary Although they depended too much on literarysources to be

reliable for their entries dealing with political and social language, these
national dictionaries remain lasting achievements of lexicography
conducted by diachronic analysis. However, the GG seeks to do more
than write the history of single words. The GG alternatessynchronic and
diachronic analysis to relate changes in conceptual meaning to changes
in their structuralcontext.
Contributors to the GG are meant to construct a row, a series, that is,
of the successive and generally discrepant meanings carried by a single
concept. In performing such a diachronic analysis, the references or
meanings carried by a concept are deliberately severed from their
historical contexts and placed in relationship to one another. In this way
Begriffsgeschichte enables us to assess persistence and change in the
meaning of a concept over time, as well as the relationship of that
concept to persisting or changing structures, political, social, economic.
In 1700 Burgerdenoted the citizen of a city (Stadtburger); in 1800, the
citizen of a state (Staatsburger); in 1900, someone who was not a
proletarian(Nichtproletarier).30The fact that the word Burgercontinued
to be used conveys nothing about either the persistence or trans-
formation of its meanings. Only by diachronic analysis can we learn
when and how dislocations occurred among older and newer meanings
of a concept. Sometimes shifts occur because an earlier meaning no
longer has any application to the extant political or social order. For
example, the concepts of "honor" (Ehre), "dignity" (Wurde), and
"nobility" (Adel) had once been unambiguously reserved for groups
with high ascribed status within the framework of the old regime's
system of estates or orders. Once that system was abolished, these
concepts lost their original location and significance. Later they came to
be applied to the qualities of individual persons. Such a shift can be
detected because of linguistic techniques put into the service of
Begriffsgeschichte.
By alternating synchronic and diachronic analysis, it becomes
possible to determine whether a concept has ceased to play a central
part in a semantic field or else has assumed such a role. The GG's
method thus provides a satisfactory answer to Quentin Skinner's
objections both to "tracing the morphology of a given concept over
time" and to "the study of the social context."'3 Skinner illustrated the
deficiencies he alleged to be inherent in such ways of treating ideas
historically by calling attention to the fact that prior to Locke, in
seventeenth-century England the political discussion of political prn-
ciples had almost always been based on competing versions of the

original or "ancient constitution." Thus Locke's failure to mention such
issues was "perhaps the most radical and original feature of his own
argument." Skinner comments that this clue could not emerge from
either the social context of the text or from the study of the text itself.32
He concludes therefore that "the essential question in studying any
given text is what its author in writing at the time that he did write for the
audience he intended to address, could in practice have been intending
to communicate by the utterance of this particular utterance."33Put into
linguistic terms, Skinner's mode of analysis is exclusively synchronic
and phrased in terms of individual speech acts and their intended
"illocutionary force." He appears to assume that a choice must be made
between synchronic and diachronic modes of analysis and to assert that
only a synchronic account can meet his criteria of what constitutes a
meaningful account of political thinking as it actually occurred.
The GG makes use of both modes, but without confusing them. In
this way the analyst gains information that could not be acquired by the
exclusive use of either. Synchronic analysis addresses the questions
identified as most important by Skinner: what could the theorist have
intended to do by writing what he did in a given situation to a given
audience? What was the vocabulary used? What did it mean at that
moment in the language, and what was its illocutionary force? But
further advantages may be gained from the application of diachronic
analysis. For this makes it possible to identify not only shifts in a
concept's meaning but also the addition or omission of concepts in a
semantic field. Thus Begriffsgeschichte calls attention to the extent to
which past concepts do or do not persist in the way men think and
communicate. The method of alternation makes it possible to identify
conceptual changes enabled or required by changes in the reference of a
concept. Those meanings that no longer correspond to a vanished
reality (as in the example of "honor") may be detected. Or else we may
be made aware of new realities previously unrecognized. Here Koselleck
calls attention to the way that citizenship was reconceptualized in
Prussian legal reforms at the time of the Napoleonic invasions.34
Another distinction applied in the GG to the analysis of concepts is
that between semasiology and onomasiology 35Semasiology is the study
of all the meanings of a given word, term, or concept. The GG
specifically abjures the attempt to provide such complete coverage of the
concepts it treats. Instead it confines itself to uses within the political
and social vocabulary Onomasiology is the linguistic study of all names
or terms in a language for the same thing, or in this case, concept. For
the GG's editors, the possibility that different terms are simply
synonyms for the same concept must be systematically examined.
Onomasiology assists in this task. But again the editors make no attempt
to achieve linguistic comprehensiveness. Only overlapping political and
social concepts, synonyms or near synonyms are treated in the GG. The
systematic study of metaphor and metonomy are excluded on the
ground that their inclusion would overload the capacities of the GG's
contributors. Also excluded on pragmatic grounds, compelling at the
time of editorial decision, was the use of quantified evidence for
continuity or change in the use of concepts. Computer data bases in
classical Greek and Latin, as well as in French, have now made possible
such quantification in those languages. As yet no such data base exists
for German.
The GG alternates between semasiological and onomasiological
analyses. It does so for two reasons: (1) the distinction between words
and concepts; (2) the need to treat concepts as parts of a semantic or
linguistic field. As for the first reason, suffice it to say here that the GG
treats the difference between word and concept as something that must
be worked out pragmatically through the analysis of texts. Research is
necessary to determine whether a historical phenomenon such as
secularization was designated by just one concept, by several different
concepts, or by a combination of concepts. If the investigator follows
only one name for the concept, the results of such an inquiry may be
incomplete or mistaken. The phenomenon of secularization may be
understood in either narrow or broad senses. Treated narrowly, it may
refer to the transfer of property from churches or church-connected
orders to private individuals, to the state, or to the abolition of such
orders. Treated more generally, "secularization" may refer to the
replacement of religious by secular motives, interests, or institutions.
Research has demonstrated that at least in German-speaking Europe, it
is not enough to follow the history of the one word most often used by
present-day analysts to designate the phenomenon: Sakularisierung
(secularization). In addition, two other concepts must be tracked:
Verweltlichung (the realization or embodiment of something in this
world) and Verzeitlichung (temporalization, or placing something
within a particular secular time).36
Thus Koselleck has written, "the investigation of a concept cannot be
carried out purely semasiologically; it can never limit itself to the
meanings of words and their shifts in meaning."37That is, all the
concepts that make up the semantic field at a given time must be

identified and put together. Onomasiological analysis involves finding
parallel or synonymous concepts; discovering in each case which
concepts were regardedas opposites or contraries; and finally, collecting
terms that overlap semantically with that concept under study It is
always possible that imprecise, overlapping concepts were used in a
given semantic field. Such a finding may be important, for it would
establish that there were no clearly established distinctions among
certain terms in political language at a given time.38The fourth aspect of
linguistic theory incorporated into the GG's method is that of the
semantic field within which concepts function at a given time, or
synchronic state. Although frequent references are made to this notion
of a semantic field, it is not treated by the GG's editors with the care
given to the three linguistic distinctions just explicated. However, the
notion of a semantic field seems to be crucial to the rejection of lexical
semantics found in the GG's program and merits discussion here.
Jost Trier, one of the founders of this theory, which he preferred to
call a linguistic field (sprachliches Feld), remarked that it may best be
understood as a highly developed onomasiology 39 The notion of a
semantic or linguistic field refers to a relatively unified part of a
language's vocabulary at a given time. In that part of the vocabulary (in
this instance, political and social language) its elements are so organized
that each of them delimits and is delimited by the other in such a way
that "everything will depend on the number and nature of concepts we
have, and how we classify them."40 Research may reveal either that
political and social concepts are precisely delimited or else that they are
not. Concepts may be imprecise and overlapping.
This theory has important implications. Applied to different fields,
such as kinship, morality, colors, military organization, and various
types of knowledge or skill, it shows that in such fields, the vocabularies
of different languages and different states of the same language, may be
nonisomorphic.41That is, some distinctions made in one language may
not be made in another. And certain domains may be conceptualized in
disparate ways by different languages. Although such studies have been
particularly successful in relation to terms designating color in a range
of languages, the pioneer work that launched the investigation of
specialized domains of meaning was centered on intellectual concepts
designating knowledge, skill, and understanding in middle high Ger-
man.42An analogous analysis of terms designating knowledge in Plato
has been performed by a leading English linguist concerned with
semantics.43The following is an example of what is meant by a linguistic

field. About 1200, three terms designating knowledge dominated middle
high German. A century later there were still three terms, but a different
three. Here then are the two linguistic domains:
synchronic state 1, c. 1200: wisheit, kunst, list

synchronic state 2, c. 1300: wisheit, kunst, wizzen
About 1200 kunst designated higher, courtly forms of knowledge;

list, lower, noncourtly, technical knowledge and skills; wisheit could
serve as an alternative to either kunst or list, or as their synthesis:
"viewing man as a whole and merging intellectual, moral, courtly,
aesthetic, and religious elements into social standing."44
By 1300 the linguistic field had been transformed. Knowledge was
now designated by terms meaning very different things from the three
terms used a century before. First, the meaning of each separate term
has altered; second, the relationship among them had shifted. Wisheit
had taken on an exclusively religious, indeed mystical sense. Thus it
could no longer be used either as an alternative to the other two or as a
synthetic termjoining them. As for kunst, by 1300 it had lost the courtly
and social senses it had carried a century before. List, because of
pejorative senses connected about 1300 with magic and low cunning,
dropped out of the sphere of intellectual terms. Wizzennow turned into
a key term within a linguistic field that functioned within a society itself
profoundly changed from that of 1200. A distinction was opening up
between "knowledge" and "art." What is reflected in these changes is
that neither feudal relationships nor the difference among courtly
achievements were meaningful, as they had been in the previous century
(In modern German Kunst means "art"; Weisheit, "wisdom"; List,
"cunning,""craft"; Wissen, "knowledge,""learning.")
This diachronic contrast of two synchronic linguistic fields revealed
possibilities not previously available to historical semantics. This
subject had originally been conceived in the nineteenth century as the
diachronic study of shifts in meaning of single words ("lexical seman-
tics"). Although such studies had provided much information about
each separate word, they could not show how the whole structure of the
semantic relationship among words had changed. In short, relationships
among terms or concepts would not have been on the agenda of either
research or theory When limited to the diachronic study of individual
words, nothing would have or could have been said about:
how the whole picture, appraisal, and interpretation of the universe of

intellectual activity had come to be rearranged, regrouped, redefined so radically,
how it had shifted its center of gravity on more than one plane (social-general,
religious-mundane), how a new prism had been developed by a century of linguistic
development, or to put it quite simply, how the whole structure had changed.45
Although this theory of a semantic or linguistic field seems implicit in

many of the editors' remarks about language, particularly about the
relationship between words and concepts, there may be a simple
explanation for the absence of further comment on their part. They may
have been reluctant to stake their ultimately pragmatic method on a
controverted linguistic and semantic theory Their method for treating
the history of concepts is closely tied, as has been seen, to what they
regard as the characteristics of political and social language, ratherthan
language in general. Whenever the editors have committed themselves
to a linguistic theory, they have found themselves under fire from
linguists.46Nevertheless, their silence on this point probably will have to
be broken. Otherwise it may be difficult to fulfill the synchronic part of
their program, which up to now has been in practice subordinated to the
diachronic treatment of separate concepts. Indeed, the value of the GG
would be greatly enhanced by a series of synchronic studies of linguistic
fields that would map the concepts in use at various significant points in
time.
Another point that merits more discussion than has been given it by
the GG's editors is the question of how to weigh the significance of
evidence taken from different types of sources for linguistic usage. In
short, what are the sorts of materials used by contributors to the GG747
Political theorists will find it both fitting and convenient that the
notable German figures in the history of their subject comprise one
important source for determining continuity, change, and innovation in
the meaning of political concepts. In addition to German "classics" of
political theory, the GG makes use of analogous works in philosophy,
theology, economics, jurisprudence, and less often, literature. Taken
together, such works are indispensable sources of information about
political and social language. That classic authors have been published
in collected editions fitted out with indices or concordances is, of course,
among the reasons for their prominence among sources of political and
social vocabularies. But more to the point is the fact that the most
distinguished authors may themselves be powerful agents of conceptual
change, may be highly sensitive to changes in usage by others, or else
defend older usages against challenges by neologisms or attempted

redefinitions and semantic shifts.
But if the purpose of research in Begriffsgeschichte is to determine
usage, problems arise about how to weigh evidence drawn from elite
sources against that originating in other strata. The editors of the GG
have chosen to cover the political and social language used in
newspapers, journals, pamphlets, reports of parliamentary assemblies,
as well as documents originating in administrative, legal, and state
hierarchies. Such materials may be surveyed when monographic studies
have already been made of their vocabularies. Other sources are
memoirs, letters, and diaries. But the accuracy of reports about usage
remains debatable until gaps are filled by further research.
A third type of source has been utilized more successfully by
contributors to the GG than in any other work of its kind. This involves
systematic coverage of dictionaries-German, bilingual, and multi-
lingual-in each of the periods treated. Also included are apposite
entries in encyclopedias, handbooks, and thesauri. This genre often
provides indispensable linguistic clues to conceptual continuity or
change. In its first volume the GG prints a valuable list of sources that its
contributors were meant to consult. Often the editors furnished
contributors with relevant entries from such old reference works.
As historians familiar with problems of assessing critically the nature
and value of documentary evidence, the editors of the GG are scarcely
unaware of methodological problems arising out of inccmmensurability
among these three types of sources.48 Yet the discrepancy in the
materials used by contributors indicates that no adequate criteria have
as yet been developed for specifying just where research ought to be
conducted. In practice the editors have had to accept most of the
findings submitted to them. Legal historians turn to different materials
from those chosen by specialists in political philosophy Thus the
various balances sought by the editors in their program have turned out
to be difficult to maintain in practice: between Begriffsgeschichte and
social history; between synchronic and diachronic analysis; between
semasiological and onomasiological analyses.
Not infrequently, therefore, a contributor may fail to situate a
concept in relationship to the group, stratum, class, or profession that
holds or transmits it. Again, the emphasis of a contributor more at
home with social than conceptual history may be determined by
whatever data are most familiar and available. Thus professional
training may do much to determine the findings of a particular article.

And this is not unrelated to the sources used by different disciplines.
That the general level of articles is so high must be attributed both to
the unprecedented labors of the editors and to the erudition and
research of their contributors. In addition to the numerous articles
written in whole or in part by the editors, they have spent much time in
determining whether reported uses of a concept were in fact represen-
tative. Sometimes, they write, literally hundreds of pages were read by
an editor checking an entry 49Although individual efforts were made
less demanding by the GG's use of teams of specialists, they must be
praised for stretching themselves in the effort to meet the demands of the
lexicon's program.
IV
To sum up: the HWP is an eclectic and remarkably inclusive work

that combines a number of purposes and methods. Focusing on the
terminology and concepts used by philosophers today, whatever their
schools, methods, or technical specialties, the HWP does not legislate a
single view of philosophical method, as did Eisler. Its treatment of
philosophy could scarcely be more latitudinarian. To the extent that
disciplines other than philosophy affect present-day thought about
human nature, the HWP includes them: theology, law, psychology,
sociology, ethnology, linguistics, and biology To the extent that their
concepts have meaning for political, moral, social, and legal philosophy,
the HWP also finds room for the social and physical sciences, as well as
legal studies.
All this makes it likely that when political theorists seek information
about concepts and terms, they will find what they are looking for in the
HWP This is rather less the case for the GG, whose editors have elected
to treat in great detail relatively few concepts. It is in the HWP rather
than in the GG that entries appear on Autoritdt (authority), Autonomie
(autonomy), Entfremdung (alienation, estrangement), and Ordnung
(order). Even relatively exotic regime classifications flourish in the
HWP- Autokratie (autocracy), Ochlokratle (mob rule), and a unique
German antithesis to French physiocracy, Nomokratie. As for the
canonical regime types, they too are treated in the HWP, although at
nothing like the length of the GG's articles on monarchy, aristocracy,

and democracy Nevertheless, those who wish to know the history of
Begriffsgeschichte as a scholarly practice, the varied forms it has
assumed both in the past and present, will find in the HWP the best
single account in any language. There too are entries, admirably
cosmopolitan in their scope, as well as being indispensable to dis-
criminating Begriffsgeschichtefrom its predecessors, Gelstesgeschichte
and Ideengeschichte, as well as from such trans-Atlantic studies as
"History of Ideas" and "Intellectual History" (among the few entries
listed in English).
One nagging question remains, however. Given the virtually bound-
less inclusiveness of the HWP, to what extent is its title stilljustified? Is it
in fact a dictionary of philosophy on historical principles?Its first editor,
Joachim Ritter, argued that the HWP merits its name because it
contains far more historical coverage of philosophical concepts than is
available anywhereelse. Few philosophers could in good conscience ask
for more conceptual history than is here provided. Most historians of
political theory will be pleasantly surprised that the HWP contains so
much of interest to them. Nevertheless, they will find that the HWP's
version of Begriffsgeschichtedoes not seek to relate political and social
concepts to changing structures.
To do precisely this and to track the advent and perception of
modernity were, of course, the intentions of the GG's editors. To what
extent has their version of Begriffsgeschlchtebeen successful in practice?
Its editors limit their own claims for the GG to three achievements.50
The first claim made for the GG is perhaps the least controversial: its
contributions as a reference work supplying information in unprece-
dented depth about the meaning of political and social concepts, the
words and terms designating them, and the semantic fields within which
they have functioned. The editors remind us that dictionaries compiled
by philologists and linguists, because of their reliance on literary
sources, are relatively thin in their treatments of political and social
vocabularies. These defects the editors have sought to repair in the GG
by printing extensive passages from texts, as well as references to
primary and secondary sources. Their contributors have discovered
many of the first uses of terms, often in translations from Latin, Greek,
French, and English. Such information makes the GG most useful for
the social sciences and for lexicography.
On this point there will be little disagreement. The five volumes in
print have already made the GG into an indispensable source for anyone
seeking to understand the meaning of political and social texts. Despite

its ostensible limitation to German-speaking countries, it is superior to
any other work tracing the history of political concepts in classical and
modern European languages. Of course, the GG was not meant to
provide such information for languages other than German. An
analogous project for French concepts during approximately the same
period is well under way 51As yet no such project has been proposed for
political and social concepts written in English.
The second claim deals with one of the GG's principal theoretical
concerns: the application of its method to discovering in detail how the
modern world came into existence. Here the emphasis falls on the effort
made in the GG to combine conceptual with social history in order to
show how structures changed and were registered in language. This
comes to more than accumulating rich sources; it is an attempt to apply
a theory
On this point, it must be said, the GG must bejudged to be somewhat
uneven. What should have been a key article on the concept of Politik
(politics, policy) by Volker Sellin is on the whole disappointing. It fails
to chart and assess the significance of modern conceptualizations of the
political, as Manfred Riedel has done for the social. Nor are all the GG's
articles on topics equally crucial to its program. However, when an
appropriate subject has been assigned to an individual or team of
scholars suitably equipped and theoretically alert to the implications of
the GG's program, the results are often impressive indeed. Notable in
these regards are the contributions by Conze on Adel, Aristokratie
(nobility, aristocracy); by Rledel on Burgerliche Gesellschaft (civil
society); by Koselleck on Geschichte, Historei (history) and Krise
(crisis). The Herrschaft entry is a notable success for the scholars who
worked together to produce it, as is also the case for Macht, Gewalt and
Gewaltelnteilung, but not Legtlimitat, Legalitat. As for those who share
the editors' interest in modernity (the subject of an article by Hans
Ulrich Gumbrecht), they will find ample rewards throughout the GG.
Finally, its editors believe that the GG may provide a critical basis for
comparison of past to present usage. For those studying political
thought in the past, Begriffsgeschichte may enable them to avoid
anachronism and to penetrate to the original meaning of the texts they
read. Definitions need no longer be phrased in unhistorical terms or
remain at a level of abstraction that makes understanding difficult or
impossible. And the findings of conceptual history may clarify our
understanding of the present by providing a clearer view of the concepts
we ourselves use to think about politics and society In a modest way

Begriffsgeschichtemay contribute to the identification and neutralizing
of ideologies, as well as to their historical study 52As for the concepts
central to politics and sociology, Begriffsgeschlchte may clarify the
context in which they emerged, their implications, and the uses to which
they have been put in actual practice. But conceptual history in no way
can serve as a substitute for theory
Another set of concerns was not and could not have been prominent
in the minds of those who conceived the GG. These deal with the
potential benefits of the GG to non-German, particularly Anglophone
specialists in political theory and its history In the opinion of this writer,
there are a number of such advantages.
Far from insignificant is the aid which the GG can offer to translators
of political and social theory written in German. The GG indicates far
more accuratelythan any other work previously available what were the
political usages of terms at any given time. Thus questions about
German political theorists' language, terminology, and semantic field
may now be answeredfar more fully than ever before. I hope to survey in
another place the practices adopted by those who translated Max
Weber's work into English. Although Weber's translators and com-
mentators were both fluent in German and sophisticated theoretlcians,
they knew little about the history of the concepts he used. Had the GG
been available to his translators, they might have made readers more
aware of the extent to which Weber had redefined all his terms to fit his
political and sociological purposes.
There is a second potential advantage of conceptual history to
political philosophers writing in English who write in an analytical
mode emphasizing conceptual analysis. The history of concepts is more
closely fitted to their needs than any other historical treatment of their
subject. Such a history of concepts may be useful in a number of ways.
The analyst may be enabled to see the relationship between past uses of a
concept and its present use, of its dependence on institutional and other
practices in the past. Again, a philosopher might, on the basis of
contemporary associations of concepts, assume intuitively that there is
some connection or opposition among them that is logically given.
Knowledge of past uses or uses outside this polity may reveal that such a
connection is fortuitous and does not occur elsewhere.
There remains one last set of questions. What is the case for adding
Begriffsgeschichte, as practiced in the GG, to the already large
repertoire of methods and competing conceptions of how to write the
history of political theory now being argued by those writing in English?

I shall contend that the issue is not whether Begriffsgeschichte ought to
supersede all other modes of treating the history of political theory Too
many arguments about its methods derive from the assumption that
there can be one and only one thing worth studying and only one valid
means of doing so. My case for conceptual history will be based on the
indubitable value for all political theorists of such referenceworks as the
GG. In any case, relatively few historians of political theory possess the
linguistic equipment, the historical training, and the interest in con-
ceptual analysis that would be required to conduct such specialized
research. Thus the issue here is much more narrowly defined than in
most methodological discussions about how the history of political
theory ought to be written.
On the other hand, it is worth asking, as has already been done for the
history of philosophy, whether the concept is that unit of analysis most
appropriate for writing the history of political theory Familiar rivals
are: individual authors, texts, traditions, persisting problems, forms of
argument, discourses, ideologies.53 But even if one of these alternatives
werejudged preferableto concepts, yet a strong case would remain for at
least some Anglophone historians of political thought to attempt a
conceptual history of political theory written in English during the
periods treated by the GG. To do so would make it possible to attempt a
comparative analysis of concepts.
Were the careers of the same concepts the same or significantly
different in German-, French-, and English-speaking countries respec-
tively9 If different, was it the case that German political thought
developed along lines qualitatively different from those in Anglophone
countries? That there was just such a special development or Sonderweg
was the famous thesis of Ernst Troeltsch.54How would this hypothesis
be affected by a comparison of the salient concepts of political theory9
Troeltsch also maintained that the break between German and French
political thought was no less marked.55 On the other hand, some
scholars, including Reinhart Koselleck, have argued that because of
characteristics common to continental absolutism, but absent from
Britain, German and French political theory resemble each other more
than they do British.56Is it possible to resolve such a disagreement? The
chances of doing so have been greatly enhanced by the announcement of
the lexicon (already mentioned above) of French political concepts
during approximately the same period covered by the GG.
Historians concerned with political theory written in English might

well consider the feasibility of an analogous enterprise. Its execution
would be no easy matter. But it would soon become indispensable.
There are many potential advantages of such a conceptual history of
political concepts in English. Not least among them would be the
possibility of engaging in a comparative history of the leading concepts
in political theory written in English, French, and German. It might
enable scholars to investigate such theories as that of Troeltsch and to
do so far more exactly than heretofore possible. Such a comparative
analysis of concepts might also be applied to the ways in which
modernity or modernization have been conceptualized. If it should turn
out that political and social concepts in Great Britain, France, and
Germany developed in the same way, one set of conclusions would
follow If the three countries developed disparate forms and applications
of these concepts during this same phase, very different conclusions
would be appropriate. Such a study would have important implications
for the study of modernity, which it would either call into question as a
meaningful focus of inquiry or else confirm as an indispensable key to
understanding the world in which we live.
NOTES
1. Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, eds. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried

Grunder [6 vols. in print; Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co., 1971--]. Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe.Historisches Lexikon zur Politisch-Sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, eds.
Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck [5 vols in print; Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1972--].
2. I owe this comparison to the review of the GG by Peter von Polenz in Zeitschrift
fur Germanstische Linguistik, 1, 1973, 239.
3. Sidney Pollard in his review of the GG, Social History (May, 1979), 371.
4. Joachim Ritter, Vorwort, HWP, I, v-xi.
5. Vorwort, HWP, I, viii.
6. Horst Gunther, Begriffe in der Geschichte, Archivfuir Begriffsgeschichte (Heft 1,
1979), 100.
7 Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History (2nd ed., Middletown, Conn:
Wesleyan University Press, 1983).
8. Felix Gilbert, review-essay on Friedrch Meinecke, Historlsm, in History and
Theory (no. 1, 1974), 64.
9. Jorn Rusen,, "Theory of History in the Development of West German Historical
Studies: A Reconstruction and Outlook," in Germanic Studies Review (February, 1984),
11-25. This article provides full bibliographical references to the German literature.
10. Risen, "Theory of History," p. 18. Cited by Rusen in German from Geschichte
und Gesellschaft (Heft 1, 1975), 5, and translated by Melvin Richter.
11. Iggers, German Conception of History, "Epilogue."
12. This important essay, Begriffsgeschichteund Sozlalgeschichte, has been reprinted
in Koselleck's collection of essays in Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher
Zeiten (Frankfurt, 1979), 107-129. It has been translated by Keith Tribe as "Begriffs-
geschichte and Social History," in Economy and Society 11, 1982, 409-427 Tribe has
translated Vergangene Zukunft [hereafter cited as VZ] as Futures Past (Cambridge,
Mass.. M.I.T. Press, 1985).
13. Werner Conze, "Histoire des notions dans le domaine socio-politique," in Roland
Mousnier, ed., Problemes de la stratification sociale (Pans: Presses universitaires de
France, 1968), 34.
14. R. Koselleck,"Richtlinienfur das Lexikonpolitisch-sozialer Begriffeder Neuzeit,"
in Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 11 (Heft 1, 1967), 91.
15. Conze, "Histoire des notions," 32.
16. This and what follows summarizes Koselleck's Einleitung, GG, I and "Begriffs-
geschichte and Social History."
17 Koselleck, Einleitung, GG, I, XVI-XVIII.
18. Koselleck, "Begriffsgeschlchte and Social History," 409; VZ, 108.
19. Fernand Braudel, Sur une conception de l'Histoire sociale, Annales (April-June
1959) 317
20. Koselleck, "Begriffsgeschichte and Social History," 409; VZ, 108.
21. "Begriffsgeschichte and Social History," 413-414; VZ, 114.
22. GG, I, XX.
23. GG, I, XX.
24. For the distinction between Geistesgeschichte and the history of ideas, see Paul
Oskar Krsteller, "History of Philosophy and History of Ideas," Journal of the History of
Philosophy (April 1964), 11-12. For a new and cogent defense of Lovejoy against Skinner,
see Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, & Order(Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1984), 15-40. Limitations of space have forced me to omit a section of this paper that
distinguishes these and other approaches to the study of past political thought from
Begriffsgeschichte.
25. "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas," History and Theory(No. 1,
1969), 48.
26. J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (New York:
Norton, 1967); The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
27 Stephen Ullmann, The Principles ofSemantics (2nd ed; Oxford: Blackwell, 1957),
27-29, 98-100; Stephen Ullmann, Semantics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962); John Lyons,
Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969),
51-52; John Lyons, Language and Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), 8-17.
28. Lyons, Language and Linguistics, 35.
29. For a clear introduction to semantics from the point of view of those philosophers
and linguists who approach theories of meaning through generative grammer, see Janet
Dean Fodor, Semantics (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1980). Her
comments on Wittgenstein ("meaning and use") and Austin ("meaning and speech acts")
merit attention from those assessing Skinner's argument.
30. GG, I, XX.
31. "Meaning and Understanding," 37-39, 39-43, 48.

32. Ibid., 47
33. Ibid., 48-49. For the discussion of "illocutlonary force," see 46.
34. Koselleck, "Begriffsgeschichteand Social History," 410-15; VZ, 122.
35. GG, I, XXI.
36. Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichte and Social History," 420; VZ, 122.
37 Ibid.
38. See Christian Meier's findings for classical Greek and Roman usage in his
contribution to the GG's article on Macht, Gewalt, IV, 820-835.
39. HWP, II, 934.
40. Ullmann, Semantics, 248.
41. Lyons, Introduction, 429.
42. The pioneer work was Jost Trier, Der Deutsche Wortschatz im Bezirk des
Verstandes. Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feld (Heidelberg, 1931).
43. John Lyons, Structural Semantics. An Analysis of Part of the Vocabularyof Plato
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). See his synopsis in English of his findings in
Language, Meaning, and Style, eds. T. H. Hope et al. (Leeds: Leeds University Press,
1981), 73-90.
44. Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics, 166.
45. Ullmann, Semantics, 248-249. I owe my analysis of linguistic or semantic fields to
the accounts provided by Ullmann in his two works cited above.
46. In a volume edited by Koselleck, several contributors attack his views of language,
to which they offer a number of disparate alternatives. This volume is Historische
Semantik und Begriffsgeschichte,ed. R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1969). See the
papers by Schultz, Gumbrecht, and Stierle. For criticisms of linguistic field theory, see
Ullmann, Semantics, 249-250.
47 GG, I, XXIV-XXV
48. See Conze's remarks on this topic in "Histoire des notions," 34.
49. GG, IV, V
50. GG, I, XIX.
51. This is the Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffein Frankreich, 1680-1820,
eds. H. U. Gumbrecht, E. Schmitt, R. Reichardt (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag). Dr.
Reichardt has kindly sent me two articles distinguishing its program from the GG's:
Zeitschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (Heft 47, 1982), 47-94; Mots 5
(October 1982), 189-202.
52. GG, I, XIX.
53. See the review of HWP by David Lachterman in Archiv fur Geschichte der
Philosophie 61, 1979, 196-205. Similar issues in the history of political theory are treated
by John Gunnell, Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass:
Winthrop, 1979). Gunnell does not discuss Begriffsgeschichte.
54. Ernst Troeltsch, "The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity in World Politics,"
Eng. tr. in Otto Von Gierke, Natural Law and the Theoryof Society, 1500-1800, tr. and ed.
E. Barker, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 1, 201-222.
55. Troeltsch's position has been placed within a longstanding debate among
Germans. This is done historiographically in a major book by Bernd Faulenbach,
Ideologie des deutschen Weges. Die deutsche Geschichte in der Historlographie zwischen
Katserreichund Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Beck, 1980).
56. Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 11.
Melvin Richter is Professor of Political Science at the City Unlversityof New York
Graduate School and Hunter College. Among his books are The Politics of
Conscience and The Political Theory of Montesquieu. He helped found the
Conference for the Study of Political Thought. He is currently writing a book on
the history of the concept of despotism.

Richter - Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Richter - Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Richter - Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Sage Publications, Inc.

This essay is at once a review of two German encyclopedias and an

POLITICALTHEORY,Vol. 14No. 4, November1986604-637

competing interpretations of them and their theories. In practice the

Both the HWP and the GG originated in relatively small working

consensus made possible the original policy of cooperation by teams of

advances in the natural sciences. Eisler sought to eliminate multiple or

No school represented among German philosophers today is ex-

pages in the HWP Again, in the GG he devoted 55 pages to the concept

central to German historiography prior to 1945: (1) the concept of the

The group that was to translate the GG into reality originated in a

terms such as "power" (Macht), "representation,""equality" (Gleich-

The GG originated in the attempt to track the advent and perception

the Sattelzeit, or period of rapid change to the beginnings of the modern

approximately the middle of the eighteenth century as far Into the

these four sorts of changes occurred in German-speaking Europe.

historians who are aware of the significance of contested usages. In

This approach to understanding texts is historical and critical. Here

philosophical efforts to resolve a problem, as in Problemgeschichte.The

speech is the use of language by a single person in a specific situation.

A diachronic description of a language traces the historical development of a

Linguists today practice synchronic analysis of language almost to

Dictionary Although they depended too much on literarysources to be

ciples had almost always been based on competing versions of the

concepts that make up the semantic field at a given time must be

semantics.43The following is an example of what is meant by a linguistic

synchronic state 1, c. 1200: wisheit, kunst, list

About 1200 kunst designated higher, courtly forms of knowledge;

how the whole picture, appraisal, and interpretation of the universe of

Although this theory of a semantic or linguistic field seems implicit in

defend older usages against challenges by neologisms or attempted

training may do much to determine the findings of a particular article.

To sum up: the HWP is an eclectic and remarkably inclusive work

nothing like the length of the GG's articles on monarchy, aristocracy,

seeking to understand the meaning of political and social texts. Despite

we ourselves use to think about politics and society In a modest way

history of political theory now being argued by those writing in English?

Historians concerned with political theory written in English might

1. Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, eds. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried

31. "Meaning and Understanding," 37-39, 39-43, 48.

You might also like