Conflict, Context, Concreteness: Koselleck and Schmitt on Concepts

Abstract

In Reinhart Koselleck’s history of concepts, the general orientation that concepts are to be understood in their proper contexts is intertwined with the assumption that they are manifestations of particular political conflicts. The essay shows that the dense compound of context and conflict in Koselleck’s thought springs from Carl Schmitt’s political theory and also forms an important point of continuity between Koselleck’s early work and his later methodological writings. The formalized assumption of conflict, somewhat problematically, binds Koselleckian conceptual history to a particular conception of politics, one that sees politics ultimately as struggle and conflict. Once the historical-theoretical contingency of this conception is recognized, it becomes both possible and necessary to reassess the role of conflict in the methodology of conceptual history.