Conceptual History in the Post-Koselleckian Era

Abstract

The newly launched book series on European Conceptual History, published by Berghahn Books, is the latest initiative in the ongoing attempt to renew conceptual history as an academic field. “This series”, so the web page states, “focuses on the notable values and terminology that have developed throughout European history, exploring key concepts such as parliamentarianism, democracy, civilization, and liberalism to illuminate a vocabulary that has helped to shape the modern world.” Three volumes have appeared to date: Parliament and Parliamentarism, European Regions and Boundaries, and Basic and Applied Research. A volume on Democracy in Modern Europe is forthcoming. Conceptual History in the European Space is meant as the lead volume to this series. It is edited by three well-known scholars in the field – Willibald Steinmetz, Michael Freeden and Javier Fernández Sebastián – and contains ten chapters (plus an introduction and a conclusion) authored by specialist conceptual historians. The aim of the volume is to represent some of the most important theoretical, methodological and thematic contributions to the field in what the introductory chapter, authored by Steinmetz and Freeden, labels the “post-Koselleckian era” (which seems to be the period from around 2000 onwards). The essays are not divided into thematic sections, but address a range of different issues, including temporal, spatial, rhetorical, ideological and linguistic dimensions of conceptual history. Some of the included texts are derived from research projects and publications that have already become classic contributions to conceptual history. Jörn Leonhard’s discussions of the possibilities and pitfalls of the comparative dimension of conceptual history draw on his famous study of the meanings and transfers of the concepts of “liberal” and “liberalisms” into various European languages in the eighteenth century. Helge Jordheim’s elaboration of Koselleck’s theories of historical times as encapsulated in the catchword “synchronicity of the non-synchronous” into a more detailed framework to ana-