Reinhart Koselleck Research Articles

Pe. Dall’Alba e o Centro Nacional de Referência Cultural: o processo de (re)elaboração do projeto “Indústrias Familiares dos Imigrantes”

A partir da análise nos documentos salvaguardados no CEDOHI – Centro de Documentação Histórica Plínio Benício, o presente artigo tem por objetivo compreender as motivações que levaram o Padre João Leonir Dall’Alba a elaborar o projeto “Indústrias Familiares dos Imigrantes”, evidenciando as relações estabelecidas ao firmar o convênio com o CNRC, bem como, as mudanças ocorridas no projeto original até a inauguração do empreendimento em agosto de 1980. E por último, buscamos analisar os discursos promovidos pelo projeto museal que auxiliam na consolidação dos imaginários referentes a etnicidade, pioneirismo, religiosidade e trabalho. Para orientar a pesquisa dialogamos com o autor Reinhart Koselleck e a perspectiva de espaço de experiência e horizonte de expectativa.

Transparency in algorithmic decision-making: Ideational tensions and conceptual shifts in Finland

This article uses a theoretical and methodological framework derived from the political theorist Quentin Skinner and the conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck to examine ideational and conceptual tensions and shifts related to the transparency of algorithmic and other automatic governmental decision-making in Finland. Most of the research material comprises national and international official documents and semi-structured expert interviews. In Finland, the concepts of ‘algorithmic transparency’ and other ‘transparency of automatic decision-making’ are situated amongst a complex array of legal, ethical, political, policy-oriented, managerial, and technical semantic fields. From 2016 to 2019 Finland’s Deputy Ombudsman of Parliament and the Constitutional Committee of Parliament pinpointed issues in algorithmic and other automatic decision-making with the consequence that at the turn of 2019 and 2020, the Ministry of Justice started moving towards the preparation of new legislation to resolve these issues. In conclusion and as expected, Finland’s version of the Nordic tradition of the public sphere with established legal guarantees of public access to government documents indeed has both important enabling and constraining effects upon resolving the transparency issues.

CHURCH-STATE SYMPHONIA: ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS BY THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

AbstractThis article analyzes the origins of the concept of symphonia, its historical development, and its utilization by the Russian Orthodox Church as a normative ideal for church-state relations. In various historical contexts, this concept has referred to different normative requirements; it relied on different paradigms in Byzantium and in medieval Russia and it acquired new meanings in Imperial Russia. The reinterpretations of this concept by the Russian Orthodox Church in order to legitimize its position in the political life of contemporary Russia take this concept far from its original meaning. Using methods from the history of concepts of, among others, Reinhart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner, the author considers how the semantic transformations of symphonia in modern contexts by the Russian Orthodox Church lead to a hollowing of this concept. This conception is hardly reconcilable with the normative logic of the actual Russian political and legal systems.

Philophobia: From Post-Critical to Neo-Critical Pedagogy Through Art Critique (and a Pinch of Hate)

While post-critical pedagogy urges us to educate out of and toward love for the world, in this article I argue against the privileged status of love in educational discourse. I hold that renewing the world is impossible without critique, indeed without a pinch of hatred. I suggest, therefore, moving from post to neo-critique, to renewing the world by renewing critique. I start with discussing some good reasons for hating the world, and then turn to the concept of critique, which post-critical pedagogy is by no means the first to attack. A look at the thorough analysis of the modern concept of critique offered by German historian Reinhart Koselleck uncovers the deep contradictions inherent to its totalizing, rationalistic presuppositions that see nothing but absolute good and absolute evil. Koselleck’s comments on premodern critique point the way to a more complex concept of critique, which transcends such binary divisions. In the last section of this article, I take some steps in this direction, fleshing out the concept of neo-critical pedagogy by thinking of art criticism.

Dealing with an Ocean of Meaninglessness

During his prolific career, Reinhart Koselleck left his mark on a myriad of topics beyond the history of concepts: iconology, memory, and temporality. The first part of this piece is a never before published English translation of one of Koselleck’s numerous public interventions. Second, taking as a starting point his reflection about the end of the war and the impossibility to collectivize certain memories, this article links his considerations about the unsayable with his work on images and political sensuality. Going beyond a simple analysis of Koselleck’s writings, the article opens a dialogue between the history of concepts and affective memories, offering news ways to link experiences, emotions, and practices while underlining the limits of communication and collective memory.

Los conceptos de las Reformas Borbónicas en educación media superior, una propuesta

El presente artículo es una propuesta de educación de la historia en nivel medio superior en el caso del Estado de México. Se hace énfasis en que, a través de un esclarecimiento de los conceptos, tomando como ejemplo las Reformas Borbónicas los estudiantes pueden comprender de mejor manera su contexto, relacionando pasado y presente. Para realizar esta tarea se hace uso de la historia conceptual de Reinhart Koselleck y se demuestra que la historia a nivel básico y medio superior en el caso estudiado presenta rasgos completamente memorísticos. Se elabora una crítica a dicho modelo diseñado en la educación, para finalmente proponer una serie de conceptos que pueden reformularse para estudiar el caso de las Reformas Borbónicas en la educación media superior, lo que daría pauta a una propuesta de intervención posterior.

História do currículo do presente

Nesse texto, investigamos os discursos que produzem uma especificidade para os conhecimentos escolares em ciências historicamente endereçados para a Educação de Jovens e Adultos (EJA) no Brasil. Ele é parte das investigações que vimos realizando no Grupo de Estudos em História do Currículo, no âmbito do NEC/UFRJ, com recursos do CNPq, Capes e Faperj. No diálogo com Michel Foucault e historiadores que nos instigam na produção de uma História do Currículo do Presente (Reinhart Koselleck, por exemplo), mobilizamos a noção de alquimia das disciplinas escolares proposta por Thomas Popkewitz para compreender como os conhecimentos escolares em ciências vêm sendo historicamente produzidos para a EJA. Interessa-nos perceber que transformações esses conhecimentos sofrem ao serem atravessados por enunciados que produzem regularidades para essa modalidade. Investigamos: (i) documentos oficiais voltados para a modalidade de ensino no país; (ii) uma coleção didática disponibilizada pelo Ministério da Educação. Na análise, enunciados relativos a uma educação de pessoas jovens e adultas voltada para a emancipação, a formação cidadã e o trabalho, assim como aqueles voltados para as experiências de vida desses estudantes, emergem como reguladores da produção curricular aqui investigada. É nesse contexto discursivo que se produzem conhecimentos escolares em ciências que participam da produção de estudantes enunciados como trabalhadores oprimidos e que necessitam de um professor (e um ensino) que os emancipe. Em tal movimento, as contingências e complexidades da vida cotidiana vão sendo reorganizadas como objetos da lógica escolar, passando a constituir, alquimicamente, os conhecimentos escolares em ciências.

Aus der Geschichte lernen?

Historians have publicly intervened in discussions around the COVID-19 pandemic, using their expertise on past crises to analyze the present. The article first presents three models of how the past, the present and the future relate to each other, drawing mainly on the work of Reinhart Koselleck: history as a teacher, the parting of the space of experience and the horizon of expectation and finally, the crisis. It then highlights the specific role of historians in a crisis, arguing that this role might ideally engender not structures of repetition, but radical newness. The text therefore invites a renewed discussion on the position of historians, including our present and future functions.

Baile de máscaras o una inversión absolutamente extraña: El derecho de las bestias de Hugo Salas frente a Amalia de José Mármol

Desde que la Argentina recuperó la democracia, en la narrativa del país abundan novelas y cuentos que vuelven al siglo XIX, socavando las versiones oficiales de la historia y reescribiendo el canon literario decimonónico. Uno de estos textos es la novela de Hugo Salas El derecho de las bestias (2015), una suerte de pastiche de Amalia (1851) de José Mármol. En el presente artículo se analiza cómo el texto contemporáneo retoma el discurso y las estructuras narrativas del clásico, descontextualizándolos, sin embargo, temporalmente, ya que el fondo político en el caso de la novela de Salas, en vez del antirrosismo marmoliano, es un antiperonismo exagerado. Recurriendo a varios conceptos metahistóricos de Reinhart Koselleck, intentaremos demostrar qué consecuencias semánticas y políticas pueden tener estas operaciones textuales.

El rol ideológico de los conceptos en la historia conceptual de Reinhart Koselleck

En este artículo analizamos los supuestos de la historia conceptual de Reinhart Koselleck, de cara a la cual se sostiene que el orden conceptual opera a través de la constitución de campos semánticos que obtienen su contenido de los diversos horizontes de expectativas y experiencias en que se encuentran. Sin embargo, esta relación es problemática, pues Koselleck no explora el fundamento ideológico que ejerce presión desde el orden extralingüístico hacia el orden conceptual, mostrando un aspecto que afecta la constitución de la historia conceptual como disciplina que ponga en cuestión sus propios fundamentos. Por ello sostenemos que la noción de control semántico, que es ejercido por las ideologías, que determinan la primacía de ciertos contenidos semánticos sobre otros, permite poner de relieve y solucionar este problema.

Sob o estigma do fundamentalismo: algumas reflexões sobre um conceito controverso

Este artigo procura discutir o atual uso inflacionado do conceito de fundamentalismo (na mídia e na reflexão acadêmica) e apresentar algumas reflexões sobre os limites e polêmicas em torno da noção de fundamentalismo. A partir da perspectiva da História dos Conceitos, especialmente das reflexões de Reinhart Koselleck, o texto procura reconstruir a história do conceito de fundamentalismo nos Estados Unidos, apresentando alguns momentos essenciais para se entender as transformações no uso do conceito ao longo do século XX. Ressalta-se a importância da diferenciação entre o “fundamentalismo histórico” (protestante e norte-americano) e sua ampliação no sentido de um “fundamentalismo global”, perspectiva que ganhou força na academia a partir dos anos 1980. A partir dessas reflexões, o artigo procura apresentar um debate atual entre os defensores do uso do conceito numa perspectiva comparativa e os que consideram que a utilização de um conceito ampliado de fundamentalismo tem se tornado mais um complicador do que uma ferramenta analítica relevante nos estudos sobre a religião na contemporaneidade.

History, Metaphors, Fables. A Hans Blumenberg Reader

Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996) has been widely admired in Europe for decades by academics and intellectuals from a wide variety of different fields and with varying interests. This has, not surprisingly, somewhat “diluted” his reputation. He was certainly a philosopher, influenced early on by Husserl and Heidegger (only early on, although their influence was still detectable later), but, possessed of vast erudition, and, to cite one of his main interests, constantly “curious” about a number of topics, he published on so many different topics, ranging from theories of modernity, the impact of Copernicus, the history of science more generally, that nature of literature, ontology, themes in the philosophy of language, theories of metaphor, histories and analyses of basic metaphors in Western thought, philosophical anthropology, the nature of myth and analyses of the meaning of numerous individual myths (especially the Prometheus myth), the role of technology in modernity, aesthetics, and individual studies of figures ranging from Goethe to Valéry to Faulkner, that he has as good a claim as any modern thinker to be termed “unclassifiable.” That means that he is often viewed as falling “between” disciplines rather than a master of many (a mistake), and perhaps this has made him seem to some less central to their enterprise, perhaps even marginal. (This is even more the case with Blumenberg than with figures he is often associated with, like Erich Rothacker, Joachim Ritter, and Reinhart Koselleck.) His reception in the anglophone world has been slow, due mostly to the slow pace of translations of his major works. This began to change in the eighties, thanks to the solitary, dedicated and, I think it fair to say, heroic labors of the philosopher Robert M. Wallace, who took it on himself to translate three massive, central books by Blumenberg: The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1983), Work on Myth (1985), and The Genesis of the Copernican World (1987). The pace of translations has since picked up, and now we have an extremely valuable “reader,” edited, translated and introduced by Hannes Bajohr, Florian Fuchs, and Joe Paul Kroll, History, Metaphors, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader.

Outros modos de pensar e sonhar

A partir de uma prática epistêmica que procura assegurar a diferença, este trabalho se constitui em um diálogo necessário entre a Teoria da História e áreas afins, a saber: a Filosofia e a Antropologia, e integra uma pesquisa que investiga as reflexões de Reinhart Koselleck, Ailton Krenak e Davi Kopenawa sobre a experiência onírica. Neste artigo, procuro destacar que as abordagens dos autores sobre os sonhos oferecem aberturas críticas aos modos de vida e de pensar ocidental, impactando nossa relação com o conhecimento e também com os desafios sócio-políticos atuais. O artigo realiza, inicialmente, um breve panorama do que seria a atividade onírica no interior da tradição ocidental. Em seguida, na contramão dessa trajetória, são apresentadas as reflexões de Koselleck e dos autores ameríndios. Na última seção, justifica-se a escolha epistemológica, ética e política pelos autores e pelo tema junto à perspectiva da “história dos vencidos” (dos silenciados) proposta por Koselleck, buscando contribuir para os exercícios de desconstrução da colonialidade.

History Politics and (Re)forming the Future: Visions of Democracy and the Category of the Utopian

During the First World War, the legitimacy of established polities was challenged throughout Europe. Not only did the war affect the great powers; smaller nations that were not directly involved also experienced a resurgence of constitutional disputes. While these controversies have been analyzed as conceptual struggles, this article – inspired by Reinhart Koselleck’s theory of historical times – suggests that they can also be understood as ideological struggles over temporalities. The article examines the Swedish parliamentary debates on further democratization after the introduction of universal suffrage. In this context, there were ideological struggles over how the historical development should be interpreted and differing visions of how the future should be shaped, resulting in varying understandings of what was required of the present. In the conclusion, the article addresses the Koselleckian categorization of temporal experience and argues that there is a need for another category, one that lies beyond calculable prognoses and predictions: the category of the utopian.

A crisis of the singers’ market? Shifting discourses on opera from vocal health to changes in the organization of work

In the history of opera, singing has repeatedly been associated with states of crisis – a term and concept traced back by historian Reinhart Koselleck from its origins to expanded meanings in the modern age. By adopting his findings on the medical and economic use of crisis, a delayed discourse surfaces regarding singers and singing. Concepts of crisis as choosing between alternatives, such as trust in vocal technique or medical treatment, flexibility or specialization in repertoire, have been established and maintained. However, the most recent developments make it necessary to consider the uncertainties instead of alternatives, as well as the shifting organizational and networking aspects of the opera industry, with artist managers and agents in special, triadic relations of varying order with the opera companies and the singers. Especially with the economic pressures on the opera companies increasing, the singers’ agencies are in a key position of securing engagements and career developments.

Zur Zukunft der Nationalphilologien: Europäische Kontexte und weltliterarische Aspekte

Abstract In a time of intensified interdisciplinary research, of expanding translation activities and an internationalized book market, one wonders what is happening in the academic fields of national philologies. ‘Subsidarity’ – a term used by social scientists who deal with political federal structures – can illustrate the relation between national and European or global literary studies. Furthermore, the terms Erfahrungsraum (‘realm of experience’) and Erwartungshorizont (‘horizon of expectation’) used by the historian Reinhart Koselleck can also help to explain this relationship.

Sediments of Time—On Possible Histories, written by Reinhart Koselleck

Sediments of Time—On Possible Histories, written by Reinhart Koselleck

Digital begriffsgeschichte: Tracing semantic change using word embeddings

Recently, the use of word embedding models (WEM) has received ample attention in the natural language processing community. These models can capture semantic information in large corpora of text by learning distributional properties of words, that is how often particular words appear in specific contexts. Scholars have pointed out the potential of WEMs for historical research. In particular, their ability to capture semantic change might assist historians studying conceptual change or specific discursive formations over time. Concurrently, others voiced their criticism and pointed out that WEMs require large amounts of training data, that they are challenging to evaluate, and they lack the specificity looked for by historians. The ability to examine semantic change resonates with the goals of historians such as Reinhart Koselleck, whose research focused on the formation of concepts and the transformation of semantic fields. However, word embeddings can only be used to study particular types of semantic change, and the model’s use is dependent on the size, quality, and bias in training data. In this article, we examine what is required of historical data to produce reliable WEMs, and we describe the types of questions that can be answered using WEMs.

Vindicación de las esferas públicas: espacios de crítica para tiempos críticos

El artículo replantea, en confrontación con Reinhart Koselleck, la relación entre tiempos de crisis y esferas públicas, así como la «dialéctica», ahí implicada, entre «secreto» y «publicidad». Desde este marco interpreto la crisis contemporánea de modelos de comunicación y participación políticas, en parte por el impacto de las TIC, con referencia a fenómenos sociopolíticos recientes en España, como el movimiento 15M o el nuevo partido Podemos. La crítica genera o agudiza las crisis y éstas se expresan en aquella. El ideal de la esfera pública se reconfigura con cada crisis, para confrontar a sociedad y política con el nivel de crisis su tiempo. Frente a Koselleck, reitero la exigencia normativa de esferas públicas como espacios críticos, ámbitos sociales, intermedios entre política y mundo de la vida.

Machiavelli’s Revolution and Koselleck’s Sattelzeit

This article suggests that human action in Machiavelli is both materialistic and temporalized. It further argues that Reinhart Koselleck’s view of Machiavelli’s understanding of time as historical circularity is misleading. The author is making the case that Machiavelli drew from Lucretian materialism to strip political concepts of content via an animal-materialist anthropology and ontology holding that man, as any animal, is material reality acting under an atomic arrangement wherein no time, whether linear or circular, can exist. The conclusion is that Koselleck’s interpretation of the circularity of time in Machiavelli kept him from seeing his role as an antecedent of the conceptual and temporal revolution underlying the Sattelzeit.