Contributions to the History of Concepts

This article describes the social and linguistic processes underlying the formation of political language in France from the end of the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The author emphasizes the close relationship between the evolution of political language, as it can be traced through the many editions of dictionnaires and grammaires, and novel forms of sociability, from the medieval notion of friendship to revolutionary civism. The eighteenth century is considered a crucial moment in this process, given that during that period the thinkers of the Lumières, in their effort to harness civil society through language, forged the notion of a space of universal communication among men as a precondition for the invention of a political language specific to contemporary democracy.

Moving from Koselleck's most recent essays on Historik, the author explores the role played by historiography in the constitution of historicity as a peculiar experiential dimension of human existence. The essay focuses on the complex link between difference and repetition which, according to Koselleck's theory of experience, constitutes a “specific historical temporality” and its inner articulation. Actually, it is by exploring the “formal temporal structures” which constitute the horizon of historical intelligibility that Koselleck brings to light the decisive role that the point of view of historiography has for the constitution of man as the subject of historical knowledge and action. It is difficult to ignore the importance of this theory of historical temporalization in an age in which the End of History rhetoric tends to transform itself in a sort of media gospel.

This article surveys the history of the concept of democracy from Ancient times to the present. According to the author, the conceptual history of democracy shows that the overwhelming success of the concept is most of all due to its ability to subsume very different historical ideas and realities under its semantic field. Moreover, the historical evolution of the concept reveals that no unequivocal definition is possible because of the significant paradoxes, aporias, and contradictions it contains. These are popular sovereignty vs. representation, quality vs. quantity, liberty vs. equality, individual vs. collective, and, finally, the synchronicity between similarities and dissimilarities. The ubiquitous usage of democracy in present-day political language makes it impossible to speak of it from an external perspective. Thus, both democratic theory and practice are suffused with empirical and normative elements.

Development policy rests on the conceptual division of the world between developed and underdeveloped countries. The article argues that this dichotomous way of splitting the world into one collective self, on one side, and a collective other, on the other, pertains to the category of what Koselleck has termed “asymmetrical counterconcepts.” Moreover, many of the characteristics of our modern concept of development directly derive from older counterconcepts or dichotomizations e.g. the idea that the underdeveloped can, in principle, “develop” and that developed countries should assist others in developing themselves. In this essay some historical examples of such dichotomies are examined, with a special emphasis on the civilized-uncivilized conceptual pair and on the idea of civilizing the “Barbarian.” The recapitulation of past dichotomies not only unearths the historical influences on the idea of development. Above all, it contributes to a better understanding of its present-day complexities.

This interview was conducted during the VII International Conference of the History of Concepts: Transatlantic Dialogues, that took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 6-9, 2004, and appeared for the first time in Anales of the Iberoamerikanska Institutet. 7/8: 13-26.

Contents Volume 4 (2008)