the enlightenment on trial reinhart kosellecks interpretation of atifklarung

7/18/2019 The ENLIGHTENMENT on TRIAL Reinhart Kosellecks Interpretation of Atifklarung

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THE M NY

F cEs O

Cuo

Approaches to Historiography)

Essays in Honor of Georg

G.

Iggers

Edited by

Q. Edward

Wang

and Franz L. Fillafer

erghabn

ooks

New York • Oxford



First published in 2007 by

Berghahn

Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

©2007 Q. Edward Wang and Franz L Fillafer

All rights reserved.

Except for the quotation of short passages

for the purposes

of

criticism and review, no part of this book

may

be reproduced in

any

form

or by any

means, electronic

or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or

any information

storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,

without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The many faces of Clio : cross-cultural approaches to historiography, essays in honor of Georg G.

Iggers / ed ited by

Q.

Edward Wang and Fra nz

L

Fillafer.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references an d index.

ISBN

I-84545-270-4

(alk. paper)

I.

Historiography-History. I. Wang, Q Edward, I958- II. Fillafer, Franz

L

III. Iggers,

George G.

DI3.H584

2007

907.2-dc22

20060I9295

British Library Cataloguing

in

Publication

Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

ISBN I-84545-270-4 hardback

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Q Edward Wang

CHAPTER

I

CoNTENTs

PART

I:

THEORIES

Ideas of Periodization in the West

Donald

R. Kelley

CHAPTER

2

What is Distinctive about Modern Historiography?

Allan Megill

CHAPTER 3

War and Peace: Against Historical Realism

Hayden White

CHAPTER4

Objectivity and Opposition: Some Emigre Historians in the

I930s

and Early

I940s

Edoardo Tortarolo

CHAPTER 5

Of

Nations, Nationalism, and National Identity:

Reflections on the Historiographica l Organization

of

the Past

Daniel

Woo f

CHAPTER 6

Wont

You Tell Me, Where Have All the Good Times Gone?"

On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Modernization

Theory for Historical Study

Chris Lorenz

lX

I

I?

28

42

59

7I

104



v1

I Contents

CHAPTER 7

Historiography, Social Sciences, and the Master Narratives

Bo

Strath

CHAPTER 8

Georg G. Iggers and the Challenge

of

A Poststructuralist Historiography

D. A.

jeremy Telman

CHAPTER

9

Future-Directed Elements of a European Historical Culture

jorn Riisen

PART

II: ScoPE

CHAPTER 10

Transnational Approaches to Historical Sciences in the Twentieth Century:

International Historical Congresses and Organizations

Jiirgen

Kocka

CHAPTER

I

Cross-Cultural Developments

of Modern

Historiography:

Examples from East Asia, the Middle East, and India

Q Edward

Wtmg

CHAPTER 12

Time

and Space in Chinese Historiography: Concepts

of

Centrality in

the History and Literature

of

the Three Kingdoms

Roger

V Des Forges

CHAPTER

13

Georg G. Iggers and the Changes in

Modern

Chinese Historiography

Chen Qineng and jiang Peng

CHAPTER 14

The

Korean Con ception

of

History : Shi n Ch ' aeho's

Nationalistic Historiography

Gi-BongKim

CHAPTER 15

"Historiology" and Historiography: An East Asian Perspective

Masayuki

Sato

CHAPTER 16

Curriculum Matters: Teaching World History in the US in the

Twentieth Century

Eckhardt

Fuchs

CHAPTER

I7

Challenges

to

the

History of

Historiography in an Age of Globalization

Matthias Middell and

Frank

Had/er

I28

145

163

175

187

210

233

247

262

279

293

PART Ill: CASES

CHAPTER 18

Why

Davila? John Adams

and

His

Discourses

Zdenka Gredel-Manuele

CHAPTER 19

The Enlightenment on Trial: Reinhart Koselleck's Interpretation

of Aujklarung

Franz Leander Fillajer

CHAPTER

20

Constitutional and Economic History at the University of Berlin,

1890-1933

Pave/ Koldf

CHAPTER 21

Border Regions, Hybridity, and National Identity: The Cases of

Alsace and Masuria

Stifan

Berger

CHAPTER

22

"Tons

of

Wasted Paper"? Jiirgen Kuczynski and

East German

Historiography

Axe/ Fair-Schulz

CHAPTER

23

Going

to

the Source: Historical Records and Interpretations of the

East German Dictatorship

Gregory R. Witkowski

CHAPTER

24

Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and Resistance in· the Politics of Memory and

Historiography in Post War Italy

Gustavo

Corni

CHAPTER 25

Let the Dead Bury the Living": Daniel Libeskind's Monumental

Counter-History

Ewa Domanska

APPENDIX

Georg G. Iggers: A Brief Biography

Select Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Contents I vn

309

322

346

366

f

382

402

420

437

455

465

473

479



Chapter

Z9

THE ENLIGHTENMENT ON TRI L

Reinhart Koselleck's

Interpretation

of Atifklarung

Franz

Leander

Fillcifer

Die Aufklarung als solche herrscht nur, indem sie ihre Herrschaft

verdunkelt.

Reinha rt Koselleck, Kritik

und Krise

1

In Reinhart Koselleck's oeuvre a latent disaster organizes the catastrophic pro

cess of modernity,"

2

or in his terminology, Neuzeit.

3

It

is this

utopian

self-exalta

tion

that leads mankind to claim history

and

gives rise

to

the

human

imagina

tion

of making

history. This utopian propensity

produces the

major tools and

factors of a far-ranging process indistinguishably joining historicization (Histo

risierung) and temporalization ( Verzeitlichung). Since the Sattelzeit/ initiated in the

second half

of

the eighteenth century, History die Geschichte-had become

both object and subject, a forceful

tautology

attached

to

itself, comprising all

histories and their narration.

5

Koselleck's contention that this process evolved in

the second

half

of

the

eighteenth

century

consequently resulted

in

his prevalent

efforts to explore the key forces in the development of the distinctly modern

historical hubris he

had

detected. Koselleck's disenta nglement

and

explanation

of

perilous

philosophical

self-assertions implies that the Enlightenment and

historicization are connected and that the correlation of both forces constitutes

a detrimental form

of

historical explanation and interpretation,

Geschichtsphiloso

phie (historical philosophy

6

.

Historical philosophy subjugated reality to the preponderance of its rationally

articulated desires, making the present a mere reality

of

second order: this

is

the

core pitfall

of

the eighteenth century utopian dream perspicaciously explored by

Koselleck, a utopian dream bringing about processes of ideologization and politi

cization7 that since then have never ceased to trouble modern societies. Dialektik

der

Atifkliirunl

was

the working title

of

Koselleck's Heidelberg dissertation supervised

by Johannes Ki.ihn, submitted in

I953

and eventually published

as

Kritik und

Krise:

on Trial I 323

Eine Studie

zur Pathogenese der

burgerlichen Welt

9

In Kritik und Krise Reinhart Koselleck

vitiates the Enlightenment pursuit

of

liberty and liberation, portraying an en

lightened hypocrisy that produced the totalization

of

the state and deification of

morality, a process that culminated in the political pretensions and confrontations

of

the twentieth-century

Weltbiirgerkrieg

(world civil war).

This

essay attempts

to

reconstruct the presuppositions and preconditions

of

this outlook, and it aims

to present a recontextualization

of

Reinhart Koselleck's theory of

Aujkliirung

in

the broader intellectual history of the restored, ascendant German republic after

I 945.

The

first section briefly elucidates what

could

be seen as a prevalent struc

ture

of

accusations and denigrations

of

the Enlightenment that remained crucial

to German intellectual his tory well beyond the I 9 50s;

10

the second part of the

chapter places Reinhart Koselleck's influential dissertation Kritik

und

Krise within

this wider context.

In

what follows as a short third subsection, I discuss the aspects

of the repudiation and appropriation of the Enlightenment that prevail in current

postmodernist thought.

I.

The

vituperative force

of

Koselleck's theory

of the

Enlightenment

is

inseparably

connected with a dominant current

of

German disparagement and rejection

of

Aufkliirung

11

(the history

of

this outlook remains to be written).

12

Atifkliirung was

perceived as an initial moment in the emergence

of

modernity in Europe both

affirmatively and depreciatively,

but

the explanatory efforts connected with this

multilayered argument varied considerably, departing from one decisive questio n:

Did the German-speaking world experience Atifkliirung?

If

yes,

was

this Enlight

enment equivalent to the patterns

of

intellectual and cultural action unfolding

elsewhere in Europe? If not, did this lack or delay obstruct or foster the further

development

of

the German sphere? Did it soothe or trigger the emergence of

nationalism and militarism, or-depending on the aberrations or valuable tradi

tions

the

respective interpreter intended to

recipture-socialism

or

liberalism?

13

Grappling

with

the inescapable force

of

these questions, what role was to be allot

ted to certain currents of the German past and

present-whether

crystallizing in a

Sonderweg or in an overall development concomitant to European history-currents

such as Protestantism, Pietism, Historicism, or

the

formation of a public sphere

emerging either belated

or

synchronous to alleged Western standards?

14

Also those

who were unflinching supporters

of

Enlightenment before and after National So

cialism-perceiving AufkLirung as inestimable accomplishment to be

emulated

were forced to tackle these questions

15

•

After I 945 the Enlightenment was read in new emplotments guided by pre

suppositions

of interpretation connected

with the

most

recent experience

of

Na

tional Socialism:

The

disappointment a nd despair after I 945

was not

so much the

incentive for questioning the Enlightenment's rationalist principles and emanci

pative promises, but the tradition

of

disparagement of Aujkliirung furnished many



324

I

Franz Leander

Fillajer

contemporaries with the means to dissoGate themselves from National Social

ism16 by constructing teleologies and equations.

As for the history of historiography, Aujkliirungshistorie was skilfully rehabilitated

(and stubbornly devaluated);

17

the conceptualization

of

an intricate and subterra

nean teleology organizing German history, the meandering

Ideologie des deutschen

We

ges/8

still remains "explosively value-laden, especially in Ge rmany where the discus

sion about historicism, Enlightenment and the use

of

'scientific' models

is

highly

charged with deep political meaning:'

19

Koselleck's own crucial

concept-the

im

mersion in the historical world resulting from a coincidence

of

the subject and

object

of history-is

indebted to two towering thinkers, Wilhelm Dilthey

20

and

Martin

Heidegger, the latter of whom Koselleck had the opportunity to become

personally acquainted with.

If

we study Heidegger's early works, which present his refutation

of

the

Neo

Kantian philosophy

of

knowledge coined by Rickert

21

a current he had until

recently

cherished-and

reframe his acclaim for Husserl's path-breaking phenom

enological endeavor/

2

the shape of ontological historicality ( Geschichtlichkeit) pre

eminently organizing Koselleck's theory

of

history becomes undoubtedly clear:

23

Heidegger's reassessment of the ahistorical "subject logic;' which gives way to his

notion

of

Dasein

( being )

as

profoundly determined by

the

essential structures

of

consciousness and existence in their historical manifestation, is mainly developed

in

Der Zeitbegriff

in der Geschichtswissenschcift and in the polemic

on

Die

Trivialisierung

der Diltheyschen Fragestellung durch Windelband und

Rickert

4

In a philosophical exchange

with Hans-Georg Gadamer, who was among Koselleck's teachers, Koselleck sum

marized the allegedly "ontological" oppositions that inevitably orchestrat e human

history- Friend-foe, lord-menial, death-smiting [Totschlagenkonnen ] and stated:

Notwithstanding the political-ideological inclination of these terms and

not

withstanding their ideological usability we need to realize, that the

opposition

between friend and foe formally broaches a finiteness that emerges in all histories

of

human self-organization:'

25

The philosophical foundation

of

historicality ( Geschichtlichkeit) scrutinizes the

naive equation of truth

claims/

ruth allegations and reality, the historicist adae

quatio intellectus

et rei, and sets out to overcome the problem

of

interpretation-de

pendence with an all-encompassing ontological holism. Geschichtlichkeit was a di

sastrously double-edged weapon, both anti-(Neo-)Kantian

26

and anti-Rankean.

27

With

its antihistor icist and anti-" positivist" features

(the

latter subsisting harmo

niously with the prevalent

anti-Enlightenment/

anti-Western assaults that affected

German scholarly and philosophical culture), Geschichtlichkeit contributed lastingly

to a climate

of

dismissal and disdain that eclipsed and scapegoated alternative

models of historical investigation and ways of studying Kultur.

28

This antihistori

cist and anticulturalist thread designed to surmount relativism framed

Reinhart

Koselleck's postwar Heidelberg milieu: it enduringly sustained epistemological

premises

of

Volksgeschichte

and

Strukturgeschichte

and remained a

common

angle

of

ref

erence for the two bifurcating predominant patterns

of

postwar German historical

interpretation, Begriffsgeschichte and historische Sozialwissenschcift, heiresses to the testatrix

The Enlightenment

on Trial I 325

Volksgeschichte.

29

The

conglomerate that came to be known as historische Sozialwissenschcift

defined idiosyncratic, controversial cultural and epistemological relations with the

historical epoch and political objective

of Atifkliirung;

these relations and multi

purpose references Buctuated between reliance and repudiation, depending on the

retroactive political and methodological proclivities and propensities.

30

The educational and epistemological connections

that

survived the political

saesura

of

I

945

have been eclipsed by anot her specific constellation: the disparage

ment and ostentatious condemnation

of HistorismusY

In this connection, Friednch

Meinecke's concept of historicism that encompasses individuality, internalisation

and development ( Individualitiit, Verinnerlichung and Entwicklung) as distinctly German

"historical revolution" was accepted and harnessed lock, stock, and barrel, in order

to refute it by those eager to certify the "progressive" and "innovative" character

of their craft. Thus, the two supposed archenemies,

Aujklcirung

and

Historismus,

were

caught in a coquettish pas

de

deux as "precursors:'

32

These scarecrows of intel

lectual

formations-adversaries

created from straw with obvious oversimplifica

tions-were decried as embodying despicable, potentially "totalitarian" propensi

ties: this move

of

dissociation considerably

facilitated-where

appropriate

and

desirable-the

obscuration of, e.g., the unshaken continuities

of

methods, par

lance, and personnel

of

Volksgeschichte

during the I

950s

and I

960s.

These variegated sense-cons tituting self-descriptions, multilayered allegations-

claiming Historismus

upon

one another-and mirror-opposites belie the

smooth

contradictions and truncating prescriptions we tend to apply subconsciously.

33

II.

In principle," Koselleck explained in I

999,

the motivation

of

nearly all histori

ans (after I

945, FF)

was

to

understand what had happened. And this was a strong

motivation, even for ancient historians. One

of

my first interests was to compare

the French Revolution with the Hitler movement:'

34

The men who were to be

come

Reinhart

Koselleck's intellectual mili eu

at

Heidelberg, his alma mater,

35

were

considerably afBicted by the National Socialist past and the exacerbating war ex

perience

of

a

lost

generation,"

36

and they came to ask one serious question:

How

did this system come into being?

This

premise gave credence to various endeavors

that retrieved the foundations

of

National Socialism in the eighteenth century.

37

In the I 950s, Koselleck's variegated intellectual environment mvolved both

Alfred Weber and Ca rl Schmitt

38

as pivotal figures. Koselleck's self-imposed task,

as he made abundantly clear, was to study a connection linking

the

Enlighten

ment and National Socialism, or, more adequately, totalitarianism: [M]y

mo

tivation to do it [to study this connection, FFJ was, of course, to analyse the

mentality, the origins and the feasibility of the Utopian dream-as I called it

at

the

time-that

Hitler

strove to achieve."

39

In

Koselleck's

account

the usur

pation

of politics by virtue

of

moral superiority and

the

mythologization of

reason

both

led to the National-Socialist frenzy

of

feasibility

(Machbarkeitswahn )

40

:



326

I

Franz Leander

Fillafer

The feasibility

of

history [Machbarkeit

der

Geschichte] is emphasized when the re

spective actor claims that history objectively predestines his

way.

This retroactive

justification conceals

that

the specific construct [Entwuif] is no more

and

could

not possibly be more than the product

of

a situative and contingent insight:'

41

Koselleck, his mentors, colleagues

and-mainly

Schmittian-friends

42

regarded

this cumulative thrust

of

historical self-realisation

as

hubris, a conceit

corroding

German

honor and resulting in an unprecedented catastrophe: According to this

outlook, the ostensibly emancipating enlightened allegations and self-fulfilling

prophecies, the ambivalence of Aujkliirung, presents a "historico-philosophically

disguised invocation

of

revolution [ . . . J wherein the process of unmasking

simultaneously caused political blindness:'

43

Koselleck's interpretation avowedly

embarked from the viewpoint of statist ideas

of

order:'

44

From this standpoint,

the problem of disintegration

of

sovereignty and authority remained vitally im

portant to the then-prevailing delegitimiziation

of

Siegerjustiz

45

and to the justifi

cation

of

verdicts

of

guilt and assessments

of

motives concerning

the

most recent

past.

46

These questions were closely connected with the entire development

of

the restored, ascendant Bundesrepublik. In

Hans

Rothfels' important The German

Opposition,

47

the authority of a just Machtstaat and the

Ideen van

l9l4

48

are pitted

against libertarian

and

pluralist claims

of

Western

provenance, against demagogy

and the hideous seductress mass

democracy-constituting the

essential c ondi

tions determining the rise

of

National Socialism.

This pseudo-sequential connection between the Enlightenment, National So

cialism/Fascism

and/

or totalitarianism established after I 945 furnished scholars

in

both

German states with different explanations and dissociations, within as well

as

without their disciplines/

9

bolstering claims to a lack

of

Enlightenment or an

overkill

of

Enlightenment

as

principal causes of recent havoc and mass-extinction.

In GDR parlance the Enlightenment was cherished a as proto-Marxist counter

poise against feudalism,

or

depreciated as inauguration

of

bourgeois suppression.

Suspicious

twentieth-century

epistemologies were stigmatized

as

anti-enlight

ened in the name

of

positivism, thereby retreating to epistemological positions

that

strikingly resembled the historicism one professed

to

despise sternly.

50

Like

hypotheses

of

German historical retardation-die verspCitete

Nation-West-German

interpretations

of

Aujkliirung

that

invoke self-unfolding historical processes are

acutely mirrored in East

German

historiography: "we are dealing

with

this

or

that

'ideological shell' or the 'consiousness

of

the historical mission' was or was

not

yet

developed among the historical actors involved:' 5

1

By the I 950s Aujkliirung and

Vergangenheitsbewiiltigung

were perceived as analogous encumbrances, symptoms

of

a

nefarious Hypermoral (Arnold Gehlen), "instantiating the return

into

the time

of

confessional civil wars, when

the

respective religious confes sion [Bekenntnis] ad

jucated upon each citizen's state and fate:'

52

Koselleck's repudiation

of

emancipat

ing enlightened demands as self-deluding hypocrisy that produced the totalization

and idolatry of morality should be read in this context.

In

a conclusion valid for

many intellectual engagements with

Aujkliirung

from different

angles, Jeffrey Herf's reading

of

Dialektik

der Aujkliirung

ends with the astonished

The Enl{ghtenment on Trial I 327

observation [H]ow little,

if

any, space 1s allotted to the Enlightenment as a con

tributor to

the

liberal political tradition-political pluralism, parliaments, public

discussion, the defence of individual liberty against the state."

53

In the broader setting

of

post- I 945 intellectual orientations, many interpreta

tions straightforwardly detected the Enlightenment project" as

(I)

self-contra

diction,

(2) liberal hypocrisy

or

self-delusion (3) a collision of ethical preten

sions and political objectives papered over with blatant accusations, Manichean

exhortations, and omnipresent suspicions

of

alleged subterfuge.

54

To the long

standing tradition of disparagement of Aujkliirung in Germany, the fraudulence

of

Enlightenment's intellectual tyranny lies in its revelation and stigmatization

of omnipresent

oppressions, which are said to have subjugated human life.

This

distorted account

of

the Enlightenment may provide a just assessment

of

the

political implications

of

postmodernism.

55

The critics of the Enlightenment

charge that the coercion exerted by Aujkliirung's politics of moral superiority and

reglementation is incomparably crueller than the

premodern or alteuropCiisch

con

straints it was supposed to supersede. This spawned the nostalgia for an age unaf

fected by

the

truculent enlightened "liberales Trennungsdenken" ("ideology

of

separation;' Otto Brunner .

56

After I 945

we

thus observe an intellectual torch

relay:

Nazism

passing the mission

of

superseding the enlightened "Trennungs

denken" to

the new historians inspired by Schmitt and Brunner after I945. The

intellectual inconsistency lies in that these historians deployed the model

of

an

enlightened ideology

of separation-that

they

had

some years before regarded as

unveiled and overcome by National

Socialism-now

identifying the Enlighten

ment as predecessor of Nazism.

7

The

post-I945 intellectual structure

of

hypothetical warfare and deterrence

the

Weltburgerkrieg

Koselleck

denoted-was

seen as perpetuating the symmetry

of

contestations and disastrous "psychological technique

of

leadership [

Psychotechnik

der

Menschenfuhrung]"

58

,

the instrumentalism of reason and feasibility instantiated

by the Aujkliirung.

59

The Enlightenment wrought the volatilization of political au

thority, [theJ

point

of convergence between the eternally valid moral values laws

that

govern conscience and

the

socially concrete representatives

of

that

conscience

is not spelled out;

the

[ . . . J politically relevant question

is

sublimated into

the

anonymous ,one:"

60

Denigrations

of Aujkliirung

indulge in a self-assuring sober

ness and unprecedented candor, appealing to an all-embracing human allegiance

of approval that deflects the "humanitarian battle position [whichJ politically

speaking, becomes so [void]

and

variable that with the appeal to man, a political

enemy can be put

on the

defensive by labelling

him

a monster:'

61

The text featured

prominently

on

the cover of the

Suhrkamp-paperback

edition of Kritik und Krise

praises the book for the "concrete execution of the historical insight, that each

time realizes its particular concept of the political in the questions and answers of

its situation,

and

that it

might

only be properly

understood

when these questions

and answers are conceived and tackled.

The

great figures of

Aujkliirung,

names like

Hobbes and Locke, Voltaire and Turgot, Rousseau and Raynal, but also Lessing,

Kant and Schiller appear in a light that is sharper than that

of

the ,lumiere; and



328

I

Franz

Leander

Fillafer

vigorous illumination [

A' if'kliirung potenzierten GradesJ

elucidates the

Arcana

and the

secrets, the distinctions and recesses

of

the most oblique powers:'

62

In this review

Carl Schmitt approvingly perambulates in a description

of

the pillars his theories

provided for the construct of Kritik und Krise. Koselleck's initial interest aimed at

the explanation and delineation of the political function

of

Kant's Kritikn, it was

Carl Schmitt who had encouraged him

to

explore the semantic-political intricacies

of

critique and crisis in eighteenth-century tho ught.

63

The

autonomizing and detheologization

of

politics resulted from the necessary

neutralisation

of

competing confessional claims to exclusivity and was advocated

by early modern political jurists; this process constructed the worldly, territorial

domination

of

the security state whose preponderance

was

separated from moral

ity:

This

intricate process

of

coercion and common wealth culminated in a signifi

cant raison d'etat that in turn produced the vacuum of moral legitimacy which was

to be envisaged and filled by

[ J

the Enlightenment intelligentsia's pursuit

of

moral perfection:'

64

Whether

this concealed seizure

of

moral power

that

pro

fessed

to

be politically innocent was a conscious campaign or a tragic self-delusion

does

not

become evident in Koselleck's work; "[ . . .

J

moments treten ein [enter],

things follow each other bald dara' if' [quickly after each other], some last eine

Zeitlang

[awhile], only to be replaced

by

others which

driingen durch

[force thei r

way

in].

How

this happens and by whom it is carried

out

is often left vague

or

um;?'pressed,

giving the described developments the appearance

of

being outside the compe

tence

of

human agency:'

65

The question

of

whether the Enlightenment's alleged

austere veracity was a pretension concealing mendacious intent ions or a pitfall

of

impostors who eventually came

to

be

ieve

their own feigned justifications touches

on longstanding debates in intelle ual history over agency and the possibility

of

reconstructing intentions eliefs.

66

It is by no means trivial whether the petit

tropeau

philosophique

acted "whether consciously or unconsciously"

67

or whether the

Enlightenment served

as

a "moral veil behind which the eighteenth-century bour

geoisie had assembled and behind it ultimately concealed its political plans:'

68

Koselleck does

not

take the Enlightenment at its own word; his projection

of

a

permanent dictatorship, an

ecclesia

triumphans

of

correct consciousness

is

self-delud

ing in its ideleogization-an ideologization similar

to

the imperious complacency

ascribed

to

Aufklarung.

Contrary

to

Koselleck's account

of

ineradicable self-esteem

and

hypocrisy, the

Enlightenment

was

riven by its own inconsistencies, threatened by allegations

of

sinister charlatanry and by accusations

of

patronizing and manipulating in

tellectual strategies.

69

The

Enlightenment was highly advertent of the possible

collisions

of

principles it produced and anxiously involved in probing skeptical

epistemologies.

7

°

Koselleck's

attempt to

decode the paradoxical trajectories, in

ternal tensions, and vicissitudes of the Enli ghtenment overemphasizes its alleged

relentless fanaticism. Koselleck retrieves the origins

of

the Enlightenment's all

embracing moral complacency in a dialectical relation of compensatory self-ful

fillment

that

auto-intoxicated the absolutist state: "According

to Kritik und

Krise

it was a dialectic-tragic process,

that

made Absolutism integrate conscience and

The Enlightenment on

Trial

I

329

ethical disposition [

Gesinnung und GewissenJ

nto its gantry

of

pure, denomination

ally neutral polity:

as

recessed int ernal space

of

the very subjectivity that was

to

dehisce Absolutism:'

71

Interestingly and importantly, Koselleck describes this process by utilizing a

host of

tropes that strongly reflect eighteenth-century epistemology.

Kritik und

Krise reproduces tropes of subverted symmetries and balanced complementarities,

thereby constructing structurally twisted, impenetrably coherent compounds

that

are subjugated to and substantially changed by organic transformati on and prote n

tion.72 The escalation

of

Enlightenment demands, its moral threats of retaliation

and its representational imitations of the ancien rfgim/

3

were connected

to

these key

metaphorical figurations long before Koselleck.

74

Koselleck's own interpretation

remains deeply immersed in the conceptual dynamic

of

confrontations and asser

tions unleashed by the eighteenth-century debates over the Enlightenment, and it

is

choked with the conceptual residues

of

late Enlightenm ent narratives, with key

metaphors of proliferation and dissemination,

of

interdependence, analogy,

mu

tual causation ( Wechselwirkung), identity, and harmony.l

5

The

presumed intellectual

coherence organizing different phenomena

or

instantiations, the alleged laws of

mutual causation connecting late eighteenth-century accusations and embarrass

ments, and the features

of

late eighteenth-century conspiracy obsession certainly

constitute the recurrent explanatory motives in Kritik und

Krise?

6

The same anal

ogy is said

to

link diverse clandestine intellectual camps, which are "different

and

often antipodal among themselves: Secret societies and secret orders, Rosicrucians,

Masons, Illuminati, mystics

and

Pietists, Sectarians

of

every provenance, the many

quietists in the country

['Stillen im Lande j:m

Nicolas Sombar t described the Heidelberg shamrock of fellow students compris

ing Kesting, Koselleck, and himself as "avant-garde of Weltgeist."

78

Koselleck, Kesting

and Somba rt witnessed the I950s and the Cold

War

as an epoch of transition and

crisis preparing the recrudescence

of

ideological civil war (

Weltbiirgerkrieg) on

a global

scale. A structural imperative

of

self-conscious exposure and unmasking prevails

as

an explanatory tool in both Koselleck's and Kesting's oeuvres: "It becomes clear,"

Kesting wrote in 1960, "that the ideological power

of

discrimination inherent in the

American conviction

of

progress and sense of mission is scarcely less vigorous than

that of Bolshevism, notwithstanding their distinctly different features. Both

turn

warfare into a crusade and into a civil

war,

the Bolsheviks consciously, the Ameri

cans unconsciously. Both appeal to the people against the government, because both

purport to

represent the party

of

,man' against the one

of

,fiend; in doing

so--as

becomes abundantly clear from the history of the European civil war-they ab

rogate the distinction between enemy and felon and contaminate the contention.

In both hemispheres, the historical philosophy

of

European civil war is harnessed

and incorporated into concrete politics:'

79

In Kritik

und Krise

Koselleck explored the

self-mythologization and seizure of power wrought by eighteenth-century utopi an

propensities, resulting from a conf rontation of conflicting totalities and serving as

ideological hotbed for the twentieth century Weltburgerkrieg (world civil war).

It

is

precisely because

of

these interpretations that the publication

of

Koselleck's and



330 I

Franz

Leander

Fillajer

Hanno

Kesting's dissertations-the latter being a world-historical anti-Enlighten

ment chain

of evidence-was

justly regarded

as

a "double strike"

80

(Doppelschlag) of

Schmittian historical interpretation.

81

Enlightenment is a dynamic tautology, a tautology to be unveiled and super

seded by the concrete Schmittian the political propensities and ideo

logical preoccupations underlying all soci and cultural positions.

82

In the light

of

late eighteenth-century conspiracy obs ssion,

Helmut

Kuhn's suggests perceiving

Koselleck's "analysis

as

a striking example

of

the

way of

thinking he fiercely repudi

ates (historical phi losophy subjugating reality to its means and ends )."

83

In the later

monumental project

of

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe-chiefly conceptualized by Ko

selleck, who organized the project under the auspices

of

Werner Conze and Otto

Brunner-the unambiguity

of

concepts

84

insinuated

as

kernel

of

Enlightenment

thought is harnessed

as

an explanatory and descriptive premise for a method pursu

ing the "thread

of

the identical word."

85

Notwith standing many indispensable and

brilliant articles incorporated in its many hefty volumes, the version of conceptual

history embraced in

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe

tends

to

elide intrinsic conceptual am

bivalences and conceptual freights that notions carry, thus alleviating inconsisten

cies and Werner Conze's inconvenience, the "unease about our historical confusion

of

language:'

86

In the course

of

Koselleck's introduction, the "instrumentalization"

of

concepts is pilloried

as

manipulation -without implying the precondition

of

a non-instrumental, quasi-pristine, and precommunicative existence

of

concepts

and coherence

of

meaning.

It is

however

not

entirely

aloof

from this assumption

to portray the modern freedom

of

values and

judgment-perceived as

freedom

of

conceptual formulation and concept-use-as culminating in a constant conflict of

values and worldviews: "the freedom of values provokes an eternal battle

of

values

and world-outlooks [ ... Ja bellum

omnia contra omnes,

the ancient bellum

omnia

contra

omnes, even the internecine state of nature in Hobbes are formidable idylls in com

parison

to

this battle.

The

old gods rise from their graves to take

up

their o ld strife,

but

disenchanted

and-we are

compelled to add nowadays-with new ordnances,

no

longer arms,

but

abominable weapons

of

extinction and extirpation, atrocious

products

of

value-free science and

of

its handmaidens industry and engineering.

The devil to one man becomes god t o another:'

87

Otto Brunner's incentive to "smash the

outmoded

conceptual apparatus

of

the

I

9'h

century"

88

has been emulated in the tradition

of

history

of

concepts, thereby

inheriting the problematic "transformation

of

,external' modes

of

explanation

and cultural

ways of

perception i n disciplinary procedures a nd figures

of

speech,

[which], even after a drastic political upheaval, remain ingrained

on

a level, where

they can . . . enjoy a much longer and undisturbed persistency:'

89

The insightful

suggestions in Koselleck's nuanced studies

of

semantic precedence and semantic

petrification in relation

to

political and cultural circumstances await their applica

tion t o the parlance and practice of Begriffsgeschichte

90

.

Koselleck's interpretation

of

the Enlightenment subsisted with the episte

mological and methodical guidelines and the interdisciplinary richness

91

of

his

Heidelberg curriculum. Koselleck's intellectual milieu enabled him

to

deflect the

The

Enlightenment

on

Trial

I

33 I

overarching conservative neo-Rankean methodologies that dominated the Geschich

tswissenschcift in the 1950s, epitomized by Gerhard Ritter's call "Ahead to Ranke"

(Vorwiirts zu

Ranke).

92

His

intellectual socialization furnished Koselleck with the

means to scrutinize ideological simplifications (e.g. in the debates over the Ger

man

Sonderwel

3

) and

to

chisel

out

political asymmetries,

and

thus to become one

of

the

most

sagacious critics

of

German identity politics (compare the debates

over the memorial m onuments in Berlin

94

).

III.

The

strategies

of

misappropriation and repudiation revolving around the Enlight

enment have their own history.

95

Georg G. Iggers has grappled with these logics

of

appropriat ion since his The

Cult

if

Authority:

The

Political

Philosophy if

he

Saint-Simo

nians,96 and with

The German Conception if History,

he has contributed to a scrutiniz

ing reassessment and redescription of the tricky, multi-directional relations be

tween the Enlightenment and historicism. Prerogatives and persuasions pertinent

to

"postmodernist" theories

97

a

urnace

of

anti-Enlightenment resentment

98

-

may suggest tha t there

is

a constitutive resemblance

or

analogy linking these theo

ries

to

Koselleck's i nterpretat ion

of

the Enlightenment.

99

According

to

this "post

moderni st" perspective the Enlighten ment encapsulates the evils

of

humanity and

cherishes the dogma it killed,

100

a dogma which it took on its mantle in the very

act

of

destroying it, by substituting a rationalist form

of

arcane dogmatism for

another, based

on

faith and shrouded

in

incense:'

101

The Enlightenment project

led

to

the Holocaust;'

102

a recent compilation boldl y asserts. Condemn atory asser

tions-driven by quasi-existential fear

of

an invincible Enlightenment-concep

tualize the Enlightenment as self-unfolding, relentless rage of reason, a social and

mental delusion consequentially resulting in the feasibility

of

twentieth century

fascist and communist regimes, in mass homicide and organized collective extinc

tion.103

This absurd politics

of

stigmatization produced a counter-faction pur

porting

to

safeguard

the-illusively coherent- Enlightenment

project"

104

post

modernism endeavors to reject. In his

book

The

Law if Peoples,

John Rawls made

a pledge

to

tolerate liberal democracies and people he calls "decent;' and does

not hesitate

to

call those he will not include-and thus not tolerate- outlaw

peoples;' "wrongful, evil and demonic"; he

is

fascinated with maligned "redemp

tive" anti-Semitism, of the Inquisition a nd Hitler: "how could people believe such

fantasies?"

105

Rawls asks.

As

John

C.

Laursen aptly observed when pinpointi ng the

fallacy

of

Rawls's self-assumed moral superiority, "the ignorance

of

what others

are thinking makes it harder

to

deal with them:'

106

In fact these sweeping attacks

of

vilification

do

not transgress the aberrations they reject; they clearly pinpoint

mirror

opposites

of

self-adulation and complacency.

In

this sense, "Enlightenment,"

as

a

term

to include those whom

it

should and

to exclude those whom it should not,

is

increasingly relevant regarding world

political vicissitudes. The absence

of

genuine toleration gives rise

to

a

Thomist



332

I


ideology

of bellum iustum

fought

as

a battle against infidels who

are-in t u r n

portrayed as the fiercest attackers

of

what one holds in esteem, Christianity or

"Enlightenment" respectively

107

:

Restricted by these blinders

of

pettiness and xe

nophobia, the events of September I I h 200 I are understood as "attack on the

Western Enlightenment:'

108

Thereby all political and social antagonisms in the

societies presumably representing this "enlightened" West, in the Islamic world

that is perceived

as

inescapably backward and antimodernist, and between both are

single-handedly ignored

109

•

"[T]yrants murdered millions with the same justifica

tions [i.e. progress and Enlightenment, FFJ. Reactions to the rationalist dreams

of

Eastern tyrants or Western empires have been just as bloody. The Islamist revolu

tionary movement that currently stalks the world, from Kabul

to

Java, would not

have existed with out the harsh secularism

of

Reza Shah

or

the failed experiments

in state socialism in Egypt, Syria or Algeria:'uo

The assumption that all positions are essentially biased and indicative of a cer

tain perspective is nothing to be boasted

of as

revolutionary (and, in a prolepsis, I

am aware that my argument may also be attacked

as

an attempt at annihilation by

partial acceptance by those who accept the

"innovative" character of postmodern

ism ). There is

acumen in the suggestion that the conflation

of

value-judgment an d

knowledge

acquisition-equating

a self-justifying claim with a

truth-claim-rep

resents an attempt to break the vicious circle

of

Enlightenment's self-reflective

epistemologies.U

1

It

is beneficial to see these recurrent ascriptions in the light

of

more general mechanisms

of

dissociation: Advocates

of

the historische Schule (his

torical school) wielded the derogatory cliche

of

an Enlightenment whose abstract,

anemic generalizations are to be extirpated root and branch whereas followers

of

positivism and phenomenology rebuffed historicist frameworks

as

solipsistic so

liloquies

or

sheer antiquarianism.

There

may be a kernel

of

truth in lumping these

diverse strands together as modern (even

if

the inspiration behind this move is

to

identifY oneself

as post-modern)-modern

in the sense that, notwithstanding

their actual needs for self-fabrication, they share the epistemological and stylistic

legacy

of

the Enlightenment. Postmodernists can be said to have reproduced, with

bedazzling accuracy, the elder politics

of

dissociation (which

is, as

we

are com

pelled

to

add in a conjuring trick, a salient feature

of

all "meta-narratives:')II2

The

declared dismissal

of grand

narratives," the diversification

of

histories,

and the attack against the contended naive optimism

of

a presumably coherent

"Enlightenment Project," these are the points

on

which the vanguard

of

post

modernism might methodologically agree with the assumptions underlying Kritik

und

Krise.

The

disentanglement

of

politically despised positions and epistemo

logically praiseworthy assumptions remains precarious, especially for

postmod

ernism, whose emancipative aspirations are often haunted by self-contradictions

and inconsistencies. This is an inevitable condition of intellectual exchange and

cross-fertilization,

but

the very possibility

of

transgressing the truncating iso

morphism of

"world" and

thought or

"practice" and "theory" is among the

interpretative and theoretical achievements

of

historians like Koselleck, who

teach us

that

it would be unwise

to

neglect concrete contextual situations and

The

Enlightenment on Trial I 333

tensions, purpo seful t emporary alliances, m implicit strategies, and deliberately

obfuscating self-descriptions.II4

This insight may forestall futile misidentifications and interpretative distor

tions. However, autoreferential epistemological hyperboles seem inevitable. Re

inhart Koselleck's political theory, informed by Schrnittian political interpreta

tion-which maintains the alleged irreconcilability and political motivation of all

knowledge-claims-is. unable to escape the very defect he ascribes

to

Enlighten

ment

epistemology:

It

precludes insight into its own presuppositions.

Notes

Research. for this article

was

done at the Max-Planck-Institute for History, Gottingen. My affilia

tion as doctoral researcher in the International Max Planck Research School for the History and

Transformation

of

Cultural and Political Values

in

Medieval and M oder n Europe [ www.imprs-hist.

mpg.de] has furnished me with an inestimably stimulating intellectual environment. I am pleased

to

express

my

gratitude to Wilma and Georg G. Iggers, whose unfailing encouragement, friendship, and

hospitality was a constant source of support since we first met.

I. The Enlightenment as such rules only by veiling its rule;' Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise:

Eine Studie

zur Pathogenese

der biirgerlichen

Uilt

[Freiburg an d Munich,

I959]

(Frankfurt

am

Main,

1973), I39, English translation:

Critique

and

Crisis:

Enlightenment and the

Pathogenesis

of

Modern Society,

trans. by Keith Tribe, (Cambridge, Mass., I988). All trans lations in the text are mine unless

otherwise indicated. I have incorporated the German excerpts in the annotations in several

cases

to maintain the flavor

of

the original.

The

English edition

of

Kritik

und Krise

is referred

to as C&C in the annotations. Two collections of Koselleck's essays have appeared in English,

Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans.

Tod

Samuel Presner, (Cambridge, MA, I985)

and, more recently, The

Practice of

Conceptual History: Timing History,

Spacing Concepts,

trans.

by Todd

Samuel Presner et al., (Stanford, 2002).

2. "[D]er katastrophisch gesehene Prozess der Neuzeit; ' Rudolf Vierhaus, "Laudatio auf Rein

hart Koselleck;'

Historische

Zeitschrift 25 I (I 990): 529-38, 533.

3. This term's meaning might be rendered

as modern

age, notwithstanding the distinct

force

of

self-designation expressed in the assumption

of

a genuinely new, hitherto unexperienced age

implicitly endowing the conception of Neuzeit with a peculiarly demanding pressure joining

experience and expectation;

see

especially Koselleck, "Neu zeit. Zur Semantik neuzeitlicher

Be

wegungsbegriffe" in Koselleck, T ergangene

Zukurift:

Zur Semantik historischer Zeiten (Frankfurt am

Main, I 979). Later Werner Conze's Arbeitskreisjiir moderne in Heidelberg served

as instituti onal base for Koselleck's work, compare Werner Conze, "Die Griindung

des

Arbe

itskreises fur moderne Sozialgeschichte," Hamburger

Jahrbuch jiir

Wirtschojts- und

Gesellschojtspolitik

24

(I979): 23-32.

4. This term

was

coined by Koselleck as a reverberation of Karl Jasper's Achsenzeit and Hans Frey

er's Schwellenzeit,

see "Begriffsgeschichte, Sozialgeschichte, begriffene Geschichte. Reinhart Ko

selleck im Gesprach mit Christoph Dipper," Neue politische

Literatur

SI (I998): I87-205.

5.

Kollektivsingular

is

Koselleck's term. These correlative conceptual dualisms often frame Ko

selleck's suggestions. Analogously to the subject-object dualism,

we

find the assumption that

basic concepts are both factors and indicators affecting and manifesting the political,



334

I


and cultural history of a given time. See Koselleck' s impor tant article "Geschichte, Hist orie"

in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, eds.,

Geschichtliche Grundbegr ffe:

lexikon

zur

politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland.

8 vols., 2 (Stuttgart, I975): 647-7I7. A

fine

propaedeu

tic discussion on Begr ffsgeschichte in English may be found in Melvin Richter, The

History

c f Political

and

Social Concepts:

A Critical

Introduction (New York, I9 95).

6.

There is a terminological vagueness in the English rendering of the term, the translation more

plausible would be "philosophy of history;' but "historical philosophy" is more appropriate in

alluding to the pejorative insinuations of "Geschichtsphilosophie."

7. Four factors and indicators are central to the program

of

Koselleck's conceptual history

of

the

"Sattelzeit" as articulated in his Einleitung to Geschichtliche Grundbegr ffe: temporalization ( Verzeitli

chung),

politicization (Politisierung) ideologization (

deologisierung),

and democratization; compare

Reinhart Koselleck, "Einleitung," in Brunner, Conze and Koselleck,

eds., Geschichtliche

Grund

begr ffe: Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache

in

Deutschland, 8 vols., I (Stuttgart, I 972), xix-xx. The

four categorical heuristic presuppositions are now delineated in Melvin Richter, Michaela W.

Richter, "Introducti on: Translation of Reinhart Koselleck's 'Krise' in Geschichtliche Grundbegr ffe,"

Journal

c f the

History

c f Ideas 67 no.

2

(2006): 343-56,

349-SI.

8. Frank Kelleter has expounded analogies connecting

Kritik

und Krise and Dialektik der

Aujklarung:

"In this sense a book like

Kritik

und Krise could justly be understood as a conservative counter

part to Dialektik

der Atifklarung

published twelve

years

earlier, which postulates Enlightenment's

close affinity to the ,other' twentieth-century totalitarianism, Fascism:' Neither Koselleck nor

Horkheimer and Adorno "criticize the anachronism of Enlightenment thought but rather its

actuality, its precarious connection to the daunting worldly ideologies of salvation [Heilsideolo

gien

J

of the present." Frank Kelleter, Amerikanische Atifkliirung: Sprachen der Rationalitiit

im

Zeitalter

der

Revolution

(Paderborn, 2003), I28-29.

9. Kritik und

Krise

echoes Cad Schmitt's formula coined in Donoso

Cortfs

in

gesamteuropiiischer

Interpre

tation

(Cologne, I9 50); the original typescript subtitle reads Eine

Untersuchung

zur Entstehung des

dualistischen Weltbilds im

18.

Jahrhundert.

IO. Thus Helge Jordheim's assertion "t hat . . . [Koselleck'] assumptions constitutes a break with

the traditional conception of Aufklarung need not be further elaborated" is utterly mislead

ing, Helge Jordheim, "Die Hypokrisi e der

Aufklarer-oder:

War Wieland ein Liigner?" in Zeit,

Geschichte und Politik:

Zum

achtzigsten Gehurtstag

von Reinhart

Koselleck, ed.

Jussi Kurunmaki and Kari

Palonen Qyvaskyla, 2003), 35-54, 35.

I I. Max Wundt defined the Enlightenment as the "scapegoat of German intellectual history"

(Prngelknabe der dt?Utschen

Geistesgeschichte);

cited in Dieter Narr, Studien zur Spiitatifkliirung

im

deutschen

Siidwesten

(Stuttgart, I979 ), 201.

I 2. A preliminary stocktaking is found in Jochen Schmidt, ed., Atifkliirung und Gegenaujkliirung

in

der

europiiischen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Darmstadt, I 989).

13. "In June I983 , in the most acerbating moments of the confrontation over the deployment

of

intermediate-range missiles in Western Germany and Western Europe, [Joschka

J

Fischer,

freshly inaugurated member of the Bundestag, compared the logic

of

nuclear deterrence and

the reciprocal threat of annihilation with the ,logic of modernity' [

Systemlogik

der Moderne

J

that

paved the way to Auschwitz. Heiner GeiBler,

CDU

secretary general, unleashed a tempest

of

indignation in the Bundestag, when he accused Fischer and the peace movement

of

an intellec

tual complicity with the kind of pacifism and politics of conciliation vis-a-vis Germany in the

thirt ies tha t had made Auschwitz possible.; ' Jeffrey Her£, "Die Appeaser: Schroder und Fischer

haben nichts gelernt;' Franlifurter Zeitung, I I February 2003, 33.

I 4. Compare Karl Lowith,

Min

Hegel zu Nietzsche: Der revolution/ire Bruch im Denken

des

19. Jahrhunderts

(Hamburg, I 977) and Helmuth Plessner, Die verspiitete Nation:

Ober

die Veifiihrbarkeit biirgerlichen

Geistes,

Gesammelte Schrijten,

ed. Giinter Dux et al.

IO

vols., (Frankfurt

am

Main, I982-I989),

6,

and for a t houghtful survey

of

German historiographic etiologies

of

Nazism Moshe Zuck

ermann, Das

Trauma

des

,Kifnigsmodes':

Franzosische

Revolution

und

deutsche Geschichtsschreibung

im

Mirmiirz

(Frankfurt am Main, I989),

II-I9.

IS.

I6.

I7.

I8.

I9.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

The Enlightenment on Trial I 335

Particularly important

is

the oeuvre of Rudolf Vierhaus, Deutschland im

18.

Jahrhundert: Politische

Veifassung,

soziales Gefiige, geistige

Bewegungen

(Gottingen, I987) and Vierhaus,

Wt s

war Atifkliirung?

(Gottingen, I995).

There is a certain tendency to reverse cause and effect in this

case,

claiming that the experience

of

Nazism

as

atavistic experience (Zivilisationsbruch) provoked the renunciation

of

Enlighten

ment. It should be noted that many of the relevant authors did not change their attitude toward

Enlightenment bu t toward National Socialism, which many of them had h itherto welcomed.

For the attempt to reconstruct cosmopolitan, "liberal" Enlightenment historiography

as

a pris

tine and benign counter-tradition to implicitly nationalist

Historismus

see Georg G. Iggers,

The

German Conception c f History: A

Critique

c f

the traditional German view c f history from Herder to the present

(Middletown, CT, I 968) and Peter H. Reill, The German Enlightenment

and the

Rise

c f

Historicism

(Berkeley and Los Angeles,

I975).

Jorn Riisen and his school tenaciously replicate their version

of all-embracing methodological innovation embodied by

Historismus;

compare Jorn Riisen,

Historische Vernulift: Grundziige

einer

Historik,

vol. I: Die Grundlagen

der Geschichtwissenschiift (

Gottin

gen,

I983),

a similar approach in Ulrich Mulack,

Geschichtswissenschiift im

Humanismus

und in der

Aujklarung: Die

Mirgeschichte

des Historismus (Munich, I 99 I).

Bernhard Faulenbach, Ideologie

des

deutschen Weges: Die deutsche Geschichte

in

der Historiographie zwischen

Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus (Munich, I 980 ) and Waiter Asendorf, Aus der Aujkliirung

in die

permanente

Res au ration: Ceschichtswissenschiift

in Deutschland (Hamburg, I 974

.

Peter H. Reill,

The

History of Science, the Enlightenment and the History

of

,Historical

Science"' in Konrad H. Jarausch, Jorn Riisen, Hans Schleier ed.,

Geschichtswissenschiift

vor 2000:

Perspektiven

der Historiographiegeschichte, Geschichtstheorie, Sozial- und

Kulturgeschichte. Festschrift

for

Georg

Ig

gers

zum 65.

Geburstag

(Hagen, I 99 I),

2I

4-3

, 23

I,

and Hors t Waiter Blanke, "Die

deckung der Aufklarungshistorie und die Begriindung der historischen Sozialwissenschaft" in

ed. Wolfgang Prinz and Peter Weingart, Die

sogenannten Geisteswissenschaften:

Innenansichten (Frank

furt am Main,

I990),

IOS-33,

esp.

II4-26.

Dilthey's efforts to reinterpret the eighteenth century resulted from his emotional and intellec

tual ties to the Atifkliirung finely and sensitively protrayed in Carlo Antoni, From History to Sociol

ogy:

The Transition

in German Historical Thinking, trans. Hayden V.

White

(Detroit,

I959),

I-38.

When

Rickert's book

Die

Grenzen

der naturwissenschiiftlichen Begriffsbildung

(Tiibingen,

I902)

ran

through its thir d edition in I 92 I, a new chapter was added entitled "Die irrealen Sinngebilde

und das geschichtliche Verstehen:'

Edmund Husserl's position-the insufficiency of

Historismus

and Lebensphilosophie--is elaborated

in a specific subchapter to his Philosophic als strenge Wissenschiift entitled "Historismus und Weltan-

schauungsphilosophie;' Logos I (I9II): I89-34I.

Most assessments

of

Koselleck's work have unduly neglected its epistemological

like the recent, loquacious contribution by Jan Maria Sawilla, "'Geschichte: Ein Produkt der

deutschen Aufklarung?: Eine Kritik an Reinhart Kosellecks Begriff des ,Kollektivsingulars' Ge

schichte," Zeitschriftjiir historische Forschung

3I,

no. 3 (2004): 38I-428.

The

material may be found in Martin Heidegger,

Friihe Schriften, Gesamtausgabe,

vol. I (Frankfurt

am Main, I978) and in

Prolegomena

zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 20 (Frankfurt

am Main, I979), the polemic against Rickert, 20-21. Compare

Martin

Heidegger's important

early paper "Wilhelm Diltheys Forschuilgsarbeit

und

der gegenwartige Kampf urn eine histo

rische Weltanschauung" in Dilthey-Jahrbuch 8

(I992/93):

I43-77. Hans Freyer, who amalgam

ated Diltheyean and Hegelian conceptions, laid out the conception

of

Wirklichkeitswissenschiift

which also had a profound impact on Koselleck.

Historik und

Hermeneutik in Reinhart Koselleck,

Zeitschichten: Studien

zur Historik (Frankfurt am

Main, 2000) , IOS "This category (historicality) has transformed the experience

of

relativ

i ty-an experience crucial to historicism-into a positive pattern," ibid., IIO. Enno Rudolph

noted that Koselleck's ontological presuppositions do not try

to

establish a dialogue with

historical evidences [Data

J

but force them into a theoretical structure [Fugung]," Enno Rudolph,

Ernst Cassirer im

Kontext

(Tiibingen, 2003), I 57.



336

I Franz Leander Fill<ifer

26. See Ulrich Sieg: '"Deutsche Wissenschaft' und Neukantianismus: Die Geschichte einer Diffam

ierung," in Hans Lehmann and Otto Gerhard Oexle ed.,

Nationalsozialismus

in den Kulturwissen

schciften,

vol. 2: Leitbegr ffe-Deutungsmuster-Paradigmenkiim fe: Erfahrungen und Transformationen

im

Exil

( Gottingen,

2004 ,

I

99-222.

27. Koselleck's self-descriptions

of

the

Geschichtliche Grundbegr ffe-project as

pursuing a "solid histori

cism" or "reflected historicism" seems sound for two possible aspects

of

the polyvalent term:

the staunch anti-positivism and the conceptual histories of progressive self-unification. Ko

selleck's point for the historicality of Atifkliirung dissociates his work clearly from the traditional

historicist role model

of

ahistorical Enlightenment embodied in Friedrich Meinecke,

Die

E)Jt

stehung

des Historismus [I936J

in Werke

3 (Munich, I953), Meinecke's

review of

Ernst Cassirer's

Philosophie

der

Atifkliirung

is illuminating in this respect: I regard the tendency to ascribe a specific

'historical sense' to Aujkliirung as utterly misleading, because the no tion 'historical sense' denotes

a particular concept that does

not

merely signify

an

intense historical striving for knowledge

which the proponents of Enlightenment did no t lack-but a singular, deeper sense

of

the his

torica1 that evolved with the intellectual revolution of Herder and Maser:' Historische

Zeitschrift

I49 (I934): 582-586, 586. Isaiah Berlin's portrayal of a "monisC:' universalistic, profoundly

ahistorical and intellectually coercive Enlightenment deserves separate treatment, Isaiah Berlin,

The Pursuit of the Ideal" in Berlin, The Crooked Timber if Humanity: Chapters in the History if deas,

ed. Henry Hardy (London, I990 ): I-I9.

28.

This

anticultural thread undergirded the intellectual and material expulsion

or

rejection of

Simmel, Weber, Troeltsch, Mannheim, Cassirer, and Aby Warburg as described

by

Otto Get

hart Oexle, who counts these authors among the ancestors of historische Kulturwissenschcift

and -

I

think questionably-accuses Meinecke

of

having conflated historicism and Romanticism,

Otto Gerhard Oexle, "Troeltschs Dilemma;' in Ernst

Troeltschs

,Historismus' [Troeltsch-Studien I I],

ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Giitersloh, 2000):

23-64.

29. Compare Otto Gerhard Oexle, "Sozialgeschichte-Begriffsgeschichte-Wissenschaftsgeschichte.

Anmerkungen zum Werk

Otto

Brunners" in

Vierteljahresschrift

fur

Wirtschc fts-

und

?I

(I 984):

305-341,

and more generally the controversial study

ofWilli

Oberkrome, VOlksgeschichte.

Methodische Innovation und volkische Ideologisierung in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschcift

1918 1945

(Got

tingen, 1993), for justified skepticism concerning the ascriptions of "innovation" to VOlksge-

schichte see Peter Schottler, "Die intellektuelle Rheingrenze: Wie lassen;,sich die franzosische

Annales und die NS- VOlksgeschichte vergleichen?" in Die Nation

schreiben:

Geschichtswissenschcift im

interna

tionalen Yergleich eds.

Christoph Conrad and Sebastian Conrad (Gottingen, 2002),

271-296.

30. Compare Jiirgen Kocka, Geschichte und Atifklarung (Gottingen, I989) and Hans-Ulrich Wehler,

Modernisierungstheorie

und

Geschichte

(Gottingen, I 975). Atifkliirung became a multipurpose formula

of

interpretation and repudiation in various historiographical conflicts; take the mutual assess

ments, embarrassments, and sidewipes between

historische Sozialwissenschcift

and

Historische

Anthro

pologie as a pivotal example:

The

dubious ideological simplifications of modernization theory

and the conceptual insufficiency

of

were pitted against presumably naive, par

ticularist, irrationalist, and anti-enlightened

Alltagsgeschichte.

In

turn

critical historians delineate

the intellectual formation of the new as essentially depending on the epistemo

logical and institutional forbearance of VOlksgeschichte and Historicism. C £ Winfried Schulze,

ed.,

Alltagsgeschichte, Mikrohistorie:

Eine Diskussion

(

Gottingen, I994 . Philipp Sarasin

distinguishes three historiographical strategies, "the classical strategy

of

historicism, departing

from the intentions of famous historical actors; the renunciation

of

such questions by historische

Sozialwissenschcift

[social history]; and finally the history of everyday life [AlltagsgeschichteJ

as

a nee

variant of historicism (as far as these historians misappropriate Geertz for purposes of sub

ject-theory)," Sarasin, "Subjekte, Diskurse, Korper. Oberlegungen zu einer diskursanaly tischen

Kulturgeschichte;' in Kulturgeschichte heute [Geschichte und Gesellschcift, Sonderhefr I 6], ed. Wolfgang

Hardtwig and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Gottingen, I 996) , I3I-64,

I33.

31.

Thus

Otto Brunner is identified with "contemporary Neo-historism;' Hans Mommsen, Die

Geschichtswissenschcift

jenseits des

Historismus

(Diisseldorf, I971), 23, Anm. 39. Notwithstanding

The

Enlightenment

on

Trial

I 337

the appropriately established connection between Brunner and ascendant the

Bielefeld school is mistakenly labeled "historist ische Sozialgeschichte;' Hans Mommsen, "Ge

genwartige Tendenzen in der Geschichtsschreibung der

Geschichte und

Gesell

schcift

7 (I98I): I49.

32. For the alleged irreconcilability of Aufklarung and Historismus see Peter H. Reill, "Aufklarung

und Historismus: Bruch oder Kontinuitat," in

Historismus in

den Kulturwissenschciften:

Geschichtskonz

epte, historische Einschiltzungen, Grundlagenprobleme, eds. Otto Gerhard Oexle and Jorn Riisen ( Co

logne, Weimar and Vienna, I 996), 45-68.

33.

Horst

Waiter Blanke, editor

of

the outstanding

Theoretiker

der deutschen

Atifkliirungshistorie,

2

vols.,

[Fundamenta Historica I] (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt,

I990),

perpetuates the reevaluated dichot

omy between

progressive-Gottingen-Enlightenment

historiography and monolithic

Rankean-Historismus,

perceiving Enlightenment historiography [

Atifkliirungs

ton as benevo

lent testatrix and "historische Sozialwissenschaft"

as

mighty heiress, Historiographie eschichte

als

Historik

[Fundamenta Historica 3] (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, I99I), 708. A critical survey is pro

vided by Georg G. Iggers, "Ist es in der Tat in Deutschland friiher zu einer Verwissenschaft ic

hung der Geschichte gekommen als in anderen europaischen Landern?" in

Geschichtsdiskurs,

2, ed.

Wolfgang Kiitrler, Jorn Riisen, Ernst Schulin (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 73-86.

34. Eric A. Johnson and Rei nhart Koselleck, "Recollections of the

Third

Reich;' NIAS Newsletter

(I999): 5-16, 14, compare Heinrich Scheel's recollection: "After the end of the 1000-year

Nazi empire, German historians grappled with the problem of writing a new German history

. . . that

was

how I came to do research on Jacobinism;' Michael Schlott in conversation with

Heinrich Scheel, Michael Schlott, "'Politische Aufklarung' durch wissenschaft iche 'Koppe

lungsmanover"' in Michael Dai nat and Wilhel m VoBkamp eds.,

A1ifkliirungiforschung in Deutschland

(Heidelberg, I99I),

79-98,

83.

35. Among his teachers Koselleck counts the physician Vikt or von Weizsacker, who admittedly

inspired Koselleck's terminology

of Pathogenese,

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Alfred Weber, Ernst

Forsthoff, Werner Conze, and Koselleck's uncle, the historian Johannes Kiihn. Koselleck em

phasized the importance of having attended seminars

given by

Heidegger; see "formen der

Biirgerlichkeit: Reinhart Koselleck im Gesprach mit Manfred Hett ing und Bernd Ulrich" in

Mittelweg 36 12, no. 2 (2003): 76-78.

36. Die

verlorene Generation

(Generation

lost) was

the title of a journal planned

by

Koselleck's friend and

fellow student Nicol aus Sombar t with Alfred Andersch in I946.

37. "We were convinced, that Europe's destiny

was

decided at that time: this decision [the French

revolution, FFJ predestinated almost all later turning points of European history, the disas

trous

as

well as the reasonable ones: Ivan N age ,

Der

Kritiker der Krise;' Neue Zurcher Zeitung,

8 and 9 December 2004.

38. Cad Schrnitt's influence on Koselleck has been established in the margins

of

Dirk van Laak's ex

ceptional

Gespriiche in der

Sicherheit

des

Schweigens: Car/ Schmitt in

der

Geistesgeschichte

der

riihen Bundesrepublik

(Berlin, 1993). C£ Reinhard Mehring, "Car Schmitt and

his

Influence on Historians;' Cardozo

Law

Review, I

(2000):

I653-64.

Regrettably I could

not

get hold

of

Niklas Olsen,

'Af

alle

mine l<£rere har Schmitt v<£ret den vigrigste: Reinhart Koselleck's intellektuelle og personlige

relationer til Cad Schmitt;' Historisk Tidsskrift 104, vol. I (2004): 30--60. Schmitt

was

no resident

of

Heidelberg,

but

he continued to visit the town, meeting with friends and students.

39. Eric A. Johnson and Rei nhart Koselleck: "Recollections of the Third Reich;' 14.

40. "[Enlightened critique J

was

an exclusively moral vision, self-deluding in its blindness to its own

political will to power and self- righteous in its refusal to grant moral legitimacy to 'political'

alternatives;' Anthony La Vopa, "Conceiving a Public. Ideas and Society in Eighteenth Century

Europe," Journal

if Modern

History 64 no. I

(I992):

79-1 I6, 83.

4 I. Reinhart Koselleck, "Ober die Verfiigbarkeit der Geschichte;' in Koselleck, Yergange Zukurift,

260-277, 261. Machbarkeit and Machenschciften strongly echo Heideggerian terminology.

42. This Heidelberg fan

club,

"Schmitts Kreis;' is described

by

Nicolaus Sombart as "[ . . . J

the most fertile centre of German intellectual life after the war . . . and the true connection



338 I Franz Leander Fillajer

inspiring our work [referring to Riidiger Altmann, Kesting, Koselleck, Roman Schnur, Giinther

Krauss, Waiter Warnach, FFJ was made visible to our advantage," letter to Car Schmitt, 5 Feb

ruary I957,

cit. after Dirk van Laak, Gespriiche

in

der

Sicherheit des

Schweigens, 268.

43. Reinhart Koselleck, C&C, I 83. "[EineJ geschichtsphilosophisch abgeschirmte Beschworung

des Umsturz(es) [dieJ proportional zu ihrem ProzeB der Entlarvung politisch verblindet,;'

Kritik und Krise, I 54. l

44. Reinhart Koselleck, C&C, I35, "

...

vom Standpunkt staatlichen Ordnungsdenkens," Kritik

und Krise, I I3, reviving Schmitt's

konkretes

Ordnungsdenken, Koselleck cites Gochhausen: "cosmo

politan feelings

[lliltbiirgerg:fiihQ.

What

does this mean? You are a citizen, or you are a rebel.

There is no third option." See Ernst August von Gochhausen,

Enthiillung

des Systems der

Republik, in Briefen aus der

verlassenschtift

eines Freymaurers (Rome [Leipzig]),

I786, I76.

A recent

• critique forcefUlly criticized Koselleck's reliance on this source as symptomatic of his outlook:

"Koselleck's main sources Fay, Rossberg, and Gochhausen all adhere to a conspiracy theory

that Koselleck himself claims to reject. But the very structure of his narrative, leading from the

Illuminati conspiracy to t he French Revolution, belies his claim . . . Koselleck radicalizes the

Enlightenment, ignores the alliance of the secret societies with Enlightened Absolutism, and

makes a shaky attempt to establish a link between this radicalized Enlightenment and fascism:'

Daniel Wilson, "Shades of the Illuminati Conspiracy: Koselleck on Enlightenment and Revo

lution" in Enlightenment and

Its

Legacy: Studies in German Literature in Honor if Slessarev, ed. Sarah

Friedrichsmeyer et a (Frankfurt am Main, I99I), I5...:.25, 22.

45. The defeated writes history as his insights are more profound than those

of

the victor:' Car

Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus (Berlin,

I950),

25-27; compare Koselleck's elaboration of this

problem in "Erfahrungswandel und Methodenwechsel " in Koselleck, Zeitschichten,

27-77.

46. Ernst Forsthoff, one of Koselleck's teachers, rejected shallow juridical value-statements of

the Bundesveifassungsgericht dismissing civil servants, describing these decisions as "drittkiassige

Philosopheme:' See Forsthoff, "Die Umbildun g des Verfassungsgesetzes," in Festschriftjiir Car/

Schmitt zum

70. Geburtstag, ed. Hans Barion, Ernst Forsthoff and Werner Weber (Berlin, I959),

35-62.

It

is

the bitter fate of the

Berujsbeamtentum,

Forsthoff writes, "that in times of political

upheaval a civil servant [

Berujsbeamtentum

J is scarcely

if

at all protect ed by the state, whereas any

one else can conduct his business without any hindrance [ orwuifslos]:' Forsthoff, "Das Bundes

verfassungsgericht und das Berufsbeamtentum,"

Deutsches

verwaltungsblatt 3

(I954):

72.

4 7. Hans Rothfels,

Die

deutsche Opposition gegen

Hitler

[Krefeld, I 949] (FrankfUrt, I 960).

48. See Klaus von See,

Die

Ideen von 1789 und die Ideen von 1914: Volkisches

Denken

in

Deutschland

zwischen

Franziisischer Revolution und Erstem lliltkrieg (FrankfUrt am Main, I 975), the concept was introduced

by the linguist Ru dolf Kjellen,

Die

Ideen von 1914:

Eine weltgeschichtliche Perspektive

(Leipzig, I 9 I 5).

49. " . . . the disintegration of values allegedly instigated by the Kantianer . . . , the relativism

of knowledge [Erkenntnis] they allegedly propagated [had beenJ a cause for the emergence of

national socialism:' Otto Gerhard Oexle, "Ranke-Nietzsche-Kant. Uber die epistemologische

Orientierung deutscher Historiker;'

Internationale

Zeitschriftfiir Philosophie 2 (200I):

224-44,241.

Similarly a certain brand of relativism and exceptionalism was hailed emphatically as force

unveiling pseudo-objective truth-assertions, historicism, positivism, rationalism, Western En

lightenment a nd individualism.

One

could

receive

the impression, that after I945 old contro

versies governing the profession before I933 are being resumed, and that National Socialism

was utilized as new argument in these controversies:' Otto Gerhard Oexle, "'Zusarnmenarbeit

mit Baal: Uber die Mentalitiit deutscher Geisteswissenschaftler I933-und nach I945," Histo

rische

Anthropologie

8, no. I (2000): I-27, 24. For the "legend, according to which the resistance

against National Socialism was undermined by legal positivism," see Ulrich Sieg, "Deutsche

Wissenschafi: und Neukantianismus;'

2I8-I9.

50. Quine, Sellar, Feyerabend, Kuhn and Haberm as are accused of anti-enlightened "romantic

reaction"

(romantische

Reaktion), invoking Gadamer ( ),see Her mann

Ley, Geschichte

der

Aujkliirung

und

des

Atheismus

4,2 (Berlin, I984),

10-I

I: The new romantic reaction counters the ideal

of

Enlightenment, it consists of a restoration of pre-scientific structures and alleges the superior

The Enlightenment

on

Trial

I

339

wisdom of the prehistoric man. In this, as Gadamer clearly observes, the neoromantic reaction

reproduces prehistoric stupidity."

Ley, Geschichte der AJifkliirung,

3 I. Victor Klemperer's

Geschichte

der

jranziisischen

Literatur im

18. jahrhundert,

vol. I: Das jahrhundert V&ltaires (Berlin, I 954) is a nu

anced masterpiece.

SI.

Horst

Moller, "Die Interpretation der Aufkliirung in der marxistisch-leninistischen Geschich

tsschreibung" in Zeitschr ft

jiir historische

Forschung 4

(I977): 438-472,

466, compare Helmuth

Plessner: "Exploring philosophies, religious teachings, world-outlooks and conceptions of life

solely respective to thei r own notions of the societal reality they participate in, to Marxists this

means to remain in the sphere

of

deception and fraud disseminated

by

the respective ideology

to conceal the true motives of class battle.;' Die verspiitete

Nation,

23, and Andreas Dorpalen: "At

one point [ . . . Jbourgeois and marxist attitudes concerning this pace of development [of

revolutions in the Germ an lands J intersect: Both sides concur that I

848

is the decisive phase

in the history of German bourgeoisie, after the bourgeoisie proved incapable

of

or unwilling

to assume/usurp political power." Andreas Dorpalen, "Die Revolution von 1848 in der Ge

schichtsschreibung der DDR;' Historische

Zeitschrijt

210 (I970): 368.

52.

Dirk

van Laak, "Wide rstand gegen die Geschichtsgewalt:Zur Kritik an der , Vergangenheitsbe

wiiltigung"' in

Geschichte

vor Gericht, ed. Norbert Frei (Munich, 2000),

II-28, 20-21.

The recru

descence of civil wars of competing Gesinnungen after I 945 is also crucial to Panajotis Kondylis,

who collaborated with Koselleck in Heidelberg and to Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe with

the articles Reaktion and

Wiirde,

see Kondylis' Der

Niederg/mg

der

bu\gerlichen Denk-und

Lebeniform:

V&n

der liberalen Moderne zur massendemokratischen Postmoderne

(Weinheim, I

99 I).

53. Jeffrey

Her£

Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture

and

Politics

in lliimar and the

Third

Reich (Cam

bridge, 1986),

233.

54. Jacob Talmon described The Origins if

Totalitarian Democracy

(London, I955). Eric Voegelin ar

gued that eighteenth-century thinkers polarized the terms of world representation and over

simplified the ambivalent tensions of percepti on and j udgment; Eri c Voegelin:

From

Enlightenment

to Revolution (Durham, I975), viii-ix. See further Isaiah Berlin's condescending review of

Ernst

Cassirer's Philosophic der

AJifkliirung

in English

Historical

Review 68 (1953):

6I7-I9.

55. For brilliantly argued objections against postmod ernism similar to those raised against the

Enlightnement see Gerald Graff, The Myrh of the Postmodernist Breakthrough;' TriQ:<arterly,

26

(Winter, I973):

383-417,

the original was unavailable to me, I used the reprint in Postmod

ernism in American Literature:

A Critical

Anthology,

ed. Manfred Piitz and Peter Freese (Darmstadt,

1984), 58-81.

56. Brunner's stress on the historicality of concepts ("the epistemological complexity of Brunner's

frequently emphasized tension between theoretical clarification and source-based substantiation

of our sets of concepts;' Oexle, "Sozialgeschi chte-Begri ffsgeschichte --Wissenschafi:sgeschichte;'

325) fUrnished him with the means t o herald and justifiy his own "konkretes Ordnungsdenken"

as historically enforced concept in accordance to the "Zeitgeist:'

The

privileged insight into one's

own historical inevitability constitutes a considerable advantage, but it

is

in total accordance w ith

the isomorphism of "Wesen" and "Ordnung" of a specific time that permeates much of Brun

ner's work, see fUrther Gadi Algazi, "Ott o Brunn er- 'Kon kret e Ordnung' und Sprache der Zeit ;'

Gtschichtsschreihung als Legitimationswissenschcift. 1918-1945,

eel.

Peter Schottler (FrankfUrt am Main,

1997),

166-203.

"Liberales Trennungsdenken" is characterized as "separation of idea and ex

istence, 'being' and 'shall' [Sein und Sol/en], culrure and nature, static and dynamic, mechanism and

organism, church and state, science [ Jt ssenschtift] and state, soldier and citizen, capital and work, na

tionalism and socialism

are

fUrther examples drawn fi:om the chaos of juxtapositions . . . [rooted]

in liberalism's capacity of abstraction which lacks the vigor to concrete unity:' Ernst Ru dolf Hube r,

"Die deutsche Staatswissenschafi:;' Zeitschrift fiir

die

gesamte Staatswissenschcift 95

(I935): I-65,

25, for

strikingly similar formulations by Schmitt see Algazi, Otto Brunner;' 200, Anm. 87.

57. I owe this insight to Hans Erich Bodeker.

58. Reinha rt Koselleck, "Adam Weishaupt

und

die Anfiinge der biirgerlichen Geschichtsphiloso

phie in Deutschland" in

Tijdschrijt

voor

de Studie

van

de

verlichting 4 (I976):

3I7-328,

3I9.



340 I

Franz Leander Fillafer

59.

60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

70.

A similar critique of this intellectual disposition may be found in Hannah Arendt,

The

Ex

Communists" [1953] in Jerome Kohn, ed., Essays in

Understanding

1930-1954: Uncollected

and

Unpublished Works

by HannahArendt

(Ne w York, 1994 ).

Koselleck, C&C, 147, "[in Ermangelung] sozial greifbarer Trager [des] den Ausnahmefall

bestimme nd( en) . . . Gewissens . . . verfliichtigt sich die politisch eigenclich relevante Frage

in ein anonymes ,Man;" Kritik

und Krise,

S. 124. This idea clearly reverberates Heidegger's con

ception, The public is impervious to all differences of niveau and authenticity [Echtheit], [itJ

obscures everything and pretends to present what is occult [das rfrborgeneJ s known and acces

sible:'

Sein

und Zeit

(Tiibingen, 1967),

164-66.

Koselleck, C&C, 151,

n.

35. "[DieJ verhangnisvolle humanitare Kampfposition, die im poli-.

tischen Sinn so inhaltsleer und variabel [ist ,

daB

mit der Berufung auf den Menschen jeder

politische Feind ins Unrecht gesetzt werden kann, indem er zum Unmenschen deklariert wird,"

Kritik und Krise, 218; Anm. 72. See also the remark by Hanno Kesting, Koselleck's Heidelberg

colleague:

The

experience [

YMedeifahrnis

J f two world wars and its consequences

have

enforced

evidence to the worldview directed against the Enlightenment;' in "Utopie und Eschatologie:

Zukunftserwartungen in der Geschichtsphilosophie des I 9. Jahrhunderts;'

Archiv

fur Rechts- und

Staatsphilosophie

2 (1954): 202-30, 229.

"[Dieses Buch bedeutetJden ganz konkreten Vollzug der geschichclichen Einsicht, daB jede

Zeit in den Fragen und Antworten ihrer eigenen Situation ihren eigenen Begriff des Politischen

realisiert und erst mit dessen Verstandnis begriffen und bewaltigt ist. Die groBen Gestalten der

Aufklarung, Na men wie Hobbes und Locke, Voltaire und Turgot, Rousseau

und

Raynal, aber

auch Lessing, Kant und Schiller erscheinen in einem Licht, das scharfer ist,

als

das der ,lumiere;

und eine Aufklarung potenzierten Grades leuchtet in die Arcana und die Geheimnisse, die

Distinktionen und die Schlupfwinkel der indirektesten Gewalten:'

Das

Historisch-Politische

Buch

7

(1959): 301-302, 302.

"Zeit, Zeiclichkeit

und

Geschichte--Sperrige Reflexionen: Reinhart Koselleck im Gesprach

mit Wolf-Dieter Narr und Kari Palonen;' in

Zeit,

Geschichte

und

Politik,

9-34,

I

I.

This interpret ation clearly adhers to Car Schmitt's Politische

Romantik

and

Begr ff

des Politischen; the

quotation is from Ian Hunter, Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy

in

Early

Modern

Germany

(Cambridge, 2001), 12.

Peter Hanns Reil ,

"History and the Life Sciences in the Early Nineteenth Century. The Case

of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Leopold von Ranke;' in Leopold von

Ranke

and

the

Shaping if he

Historical Discipline

ed.

Georg

G.

Iggers and James M. Powell (Syracuse, 1990) , 21-35, 33.

For highly perceptive contributions to the debate over intentionalism and contextualism in

intellectual history see Gad Prudovsky, "Can we ascribe to past thinkers concepts they had no

linguistic means to express?" History and Theory 36 no. I (1997): 15-31 and Vivienne Brown,

On some problems with weak intentionalism for intellectual history;' History and Theory 4

I

no.

2 (2002):

I

98-208, the latter article being a thoughtful response to Mark Bevir, The Logic if he

History if deas (Cambridge, 1999).

Koselleck, Kritik und Krise, 126

C&C, 151,

n.

35. "[M]oralischer Schleier, hinter dem sich die Burger im 18. Jahrhundert gesa

mmelt und den sie schlieBlich bewuBt iiber ihre Plane geworfen hatten;' Kritik

und Krise,

217,

Anm. 72.

See Sophia Rosenfeld, A Revolution

in Language: The Problem

if Signs

in

late Eighteenth-century France

(Stanford,

2001)

and Franz Leander Fillafer, " Das Josephinische Trauma und die Sprache

der osterreichischen Aufklarung;' in

Schauplatz Kultur Zentraleuropa. Transdiszipliniire Anniiherungen,

ed. Johannes Feichtinger, Elisabeth GroBegger, Gertraud Marinelli-Konig, Peter Stachel and

Heidemarie Uhl (Innsbruck and Vienna, 2006): 249-258.

See Jessica Riskin, Science

in

the

Age if

Sensibility:

The

Sentimental Empiricists

if

the French Enlighten

ment

(Chicago, 2002), and Michael Albrecht, "1\ber ich folge dem Schlechteren': Mendels

sohns mathematische Hypothese zum Problem des Handelns wider besseres Wissen," in Moses

71.

72.

73.

74.

75.

76.

77.

78.

79.

The

Enlightenment on

Trial I

34 I

Mendelssohn im

Spannungifeld

der

Aujkliirung,

ed. Michael Albrecht and Eva

J.

Engel (Stuttgart-Bad

Cannstatt, 2000), 13-35. ·

Ivan Nagel, "D er Kritiker der Krise;'

Neue Zeitung,

8 and 9 'oecember 2004.

See Peter Harms Reill's recent Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles,

2005), Peter Kapitza, Die Friihromantische

Theorie der

Mischung (Munich, 1968) and Dietrich. von

Engelhardt,

Hegel

und die

Chemie.

Studien

zur Philosophie

und YMssenschaften

der Natur urn 1800

(Wies

baden,

I976).

The locus classicus for the exploration and elucidation of continuities which refute irreversible

political caesuras

is

Alexis de Tocqueville,

L'Ancien Regime

et la

Revolution

(Paris, I 967), parti cu

larly third book, chapter

6.

"Crisis and historical philosophy thus proved to be a complementary, internally linked phe

nomenon;' C&C, I 83 ("Krise und Geschichtsphilosophie erweisen sich damit als eine gegen

seitig sich erganzende, innerlich zusa mmenhangende Erscheinung.," Kritik und Krise, 154), ''The

verdicts of the moral inner space saw the existing situation simply as an immoral being tha t

provoked its indictment so long as, and to the extent which the moral judges themselves were

powerless to execute their verdicts:' C&C, I84 ("Die Richtspriiche des moralischen lnnen

raums erkennen in der herrschenden Wirklichkeit nur noch ein unmoralisches Sein, das seine

Verurteilung so lange und so sehr provoziert, als die moralischen Richter selber macht os sind,

ihre Urteile zu vol strecken;' Kritik und

Krise,

I 55).

Compare Nicholas Jardine, "Inner History: or,

How

to end Enlightenment" in The Sciences in

enlightened Europe, ed. William Clark, Jan Golinski and Simon Schaffer (Chicago, I 999), 4

77-94,

esp. 484-86.

With

rhis normative interpretative presupposition in mind Koselleck strives to avoid the Schmit

tian "worst confusion . . . when concepts . . . are utilized for political objectives, to

. . .

legitimize rhe very own political aspirations and to disqualifY and demoralize the opponent.;'

Car Schmitt,

Der

Begrilf

des

Politischen [1932] (Berlin, 1963), 65. Some examples derived from

Kritik und Krise: "But since the political reality was regarded as the exact negation of the moral

position which in rhe lodges was already realised . . . political absence in rhe name

of

morality

turned out to be an indirect political presence:' C&C, 83 ["Da aber die politische Wirklich

keit gerade als die Negation der moralischen Position betrachtet wird, die innerhalb der Logen

bereits verwirklicht wird ... erweist sich die politische Abwesenheit im Namen der Moral

als eine indirekte politische Anwesenheit;' Kritik

und Krise,

67]; "Absolutism, which consciously

separated rhe two spheres, gave rise to a criticism which by polemicising about an established

situation found the appropriate response to Absolutism."

C&C,

102

["Der Absolutismus, der

bewuBt eine Trennung dieser beiden Bereiche vollzogen hatte, rief eine Kritik hervor,

die nur

einen zuvor schon akzeptierten Tatbestand polemisch aufZuladen brauchte, urn die dem Ab

solutismus gemaBe Antwort

zu

finden," Kritik

und

Krise,

86];

The

uncertainty

of

crisis was

identical wirh the certainty

of

Utopian historical planning:'

C&C,

183 ["Die UngewiBheit

der

Krise ist identisch mit der GewiBheit der utopischen Geschichtsplanung" Kritik

und

Krise, I 54].

C£ Oliver Lepsius,

Die

gegensatzmifhebenede Begriffsbildung: Methodenentwicklungen in der Weimarer Republik

und ihr

rfrhiiltnis

zur

Ideologisierung

der Rechtswissenschaft

im

Nationalsoziaiismus (Munich, I994).

Car Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der

Staatslehre

des Thomas

Hobbes:

Sinn und Fehlschlag eines

politischen

Symbols,

ed. Giinther Maschke (Cologne, 1982), 92.

Nicolas Sombart, Rendezvous mit dem lteltgeist (Frankfurt am Main,

I999),

256-57. "Koselleck

was

the melancholic realist and pragmatic . . . Koselleck

was

the critical

[ideologiekritisch]

histo

rian, for whom reality hat not yet dissolved into signs and interpretation, for whom there still

were facts.;' Sombart, Rendezvous, 265.

"Es zeigt sich, daB die diskriminierende Aufspaltungskraft des amerikanischen Fortschritts

und SendungsbewuBtseins kaum weniger stark ist als die des Bolschewismus, so verschieden

artig beide im iibrigen sein mogen. Beide verwandeln den Krieg in einen Kreuzzug und in

einen Biirgerkrieg, die Bolschewismen bewuBt, die Amerikaner unbewuBt. Beide appellieren



342 I Franz Leander Fillafer

an das Yolk gegen die Regierung, denn beide vertreten die Partei des ,Menschen' gegen die des

,Unmenschen; womit

sie, wie aus

der Geschichte des europaischen Burgerkriegs hinlanglich

bekannt, die Unterscheidung von Feind und Verbrecher aufheben und die Auseinandersetzung

vergiften. Im Westen wie im Osten wird die Geschichtsphilosophie des europaischen Burger

krieges aufgegriffen, weitergefuhrt und in die praktische Politik eingebrachr:' Hanno Kesting,

Geschichtsphilosophie und

Weltbiirgerkrieg,

cit. in Jurgen Habermas, "Verrufener Fortschritt-verkanntes

Jahrhunderr;'

Merkur I4

no. I47 (I960): 473.

80. Hann o Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie

und

Weltbiirgerkrieg.

Deutungen

der Geschichte von derJranzosischen Rev

olution

bis

zum Ost-West-Konj/ikt

(Heidelberg, I959).

Doppelschlag is

Kurt Schilling's term in his re

view of both books in Archiv

_fiir

Rechts-

und Sozialphilosophie

(I 960): I 47- I 53; c£ Peter Scheibert's

review in Jahrbuchfur die Geschichte Osteuropas

Neue Folge

I2 (I964):

460. Similarly critical is the

Czech historian Bedi'ich Loewenstein's

review

on

Kritik und

Krise pinpointing the books utterly

ideological character, "[T]o equate continuous democratic-critical reflection with permanent

revolution is demagogy;' Journal

of Modern History 48

no. I

(I976): I22-I24,

I23.

See

also

Michael Schwartz, "Leviathan oder Lucifer: Reinhart Koselleck's 'Krit ik und Krise' revisited,"

Zeitschriftfiir Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 45 (I993): 33-57. For reasons

of

completeness I men

tion Sisko Haikala, "Criticism in the Enlightenment: Perspectives on Koselleck's Kritik und

Krise Study;' Finish

Yearbook of Political Thought

I

(I997): 70-86.

81. Hanno Kesting translated Lowith's

Meaning in

History in close collaboration with Reinhart Ko

selleck. He later presented his anti-Habermas Habilitationsschr ft,

Oifentlichkeit

und Propaganda. Zur

Theorie

der q[Jentlichen Meinung (I968) as Gehlen's assistant in Aachen. On the apogee of anti

fascist basic consensus of all disciplines in the humanities . .

.-most

prominently political

science and social

theory-[Hanno

Kesting] enunciated

ex

cathedra

e.g. that the dictatorship

of

Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal were exemplary forms of government for Europe:' Som

bart, Rendezvous,

26

.

82. In his autobiographical novel

Capriccio

Nr.

1

(Frankfurt am Main, I

94

7), 23, Nicolaus Sombart

observes: The mechanics

of

social texture are essential . . . as soon as one grasps this struc

ture of arrangement, one can escape its constraints [Gesetzmii}Jigkeit]:'

83. Helmu t Kuhn, "Review of Kritik und

Krise,"

Historische Zeitschrijt I92 (I96I): 666-68, 668,

compare Jurgen Habermas: "This worldview purports to be specialist and thus defends its

ideological alibi [ . . . J the new conservatives outbid philosophy of history deploying its

methods." Jurgen Habermas, "Verrufener Fortschritt-verkanntes Jahrhunderr;' 4 69.

84. For a thought-provoking redescription of the Enlightenment's "epistemology of error"

see

David William

Bates, Enlightenment Aberrations:

Error and

Revolution in France

(Ithaca,

NY,

2002).

85. "Leifaden des identischen Wortes;' Reinhart Koselleck, "Einlei tung;' in Brunner, Conze and

Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegr ffe vol. I,

xxi.

86. "Unbehagen uber unsere historische Sprachverwirrung," Werner Conze cit. after Thomas

Etzemuller, als

politische

Geschichte:

Werner

Conze

und die

Neuorientierung

der westdeutschen

Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (Munich, 200I), I 72. A similar forceful call calling for the evalu

ation of historical Grundbegr ffe (basic concepts) is found in

Otto

Brunner's work rejecting mod

ern

Trennungsdenken

(disjunctive thought, related to dichotomies like public-private and state

society); Otto Brunner, "Politik und Wirtschaft in den deutschen Territorien des Mittelalters"

in vergangenheit und Gegenwart 27

(I937):

405-22, for Brunner's conceptual amputation of his

Land und Herrschaft [I 943 , jettisoning the

key

copula of

volk

and replacing it with

Struktur

in

the new

I959

edition

see

Brunner, Land and

Lordship,

ed. Howard Kaminsky and James van

Horn Melton, (Philadelphia, I992). The editors' explanation that Brunner wished to give the

book the appearance of "Nazi trailblazing" by "salting it with 'fashionable slogans"' that did

not

cumber the intellectual substance of his work ("In the fourth edition he could strip

away

the modish jargon without affecting the substance;' Land and

Lordship,

xliii) rests on a doubtful

rehabilitation

of

"ostensible allegiance" and on a

naive

conception of interchangeable, isolated

conceptual equivalents (this is particularly ironic given Brunner's stress on the historicality

and circumstance-based force of concepts). Brunner's political transfiguration of "Schutz" and

)

The

Enlightenment on Trial

I

343

"Schirm" as unhesitating submission

of

peasantry-which purports to present a recovery of

social structures in t heir own terms-is scrutinized in Gadi Algazi, Herrgengewalt

und Gewalt

der

Herren im

spiiten

Mittelalter: Herrschaft,

Gegenseitigkeit

und Sprachgebrauch (Frankfurt am Main and

New

York,

I996),

97-I27.

87. "[die Wertsetzungsfreiheit fiihrt] zu einem ewigen Kampf der Werte und Weltanschauungen,

einem Krieg aller mit allen, einem bellum

omnia

contra

omnes,

im Vergleich zu dem das alte bellum

omnia

contra omnes

und sogar der morderische Naturzustand der Staatsphilosophie

des

Thomas

Hobbes wahre Idyllen sind. Die alten Got ter entsteigen ihren Grabern und kampfen ihrer alten

Kampf weiter, aber entzaubert

und-wie

wir heute hinzufugen

mussen-mit

neuen Kampf

mitteln, die keine Waffen mehr sind, s ondern scheuBliche Vernichtungsmittel und Aurottungs

verfahren, grauenhafte Produkte der wertfreien Wissenschaft und d er von ihr bedienten Indus

erie

und Technik. Was fur den einen der Teufel ist, wird hier fur den anderen der Gorr:' Car

Schmitt, "Die Tyrannei der Werte" [I959] in Die

Tyrannei

der Werte ed. Sepp Schelz (Hamburg,

I979),

3I-32,

referring to Max Weber, "Wissenschaft

als

Beruf" in Weber,

Gesammelte Alifsiitze

zur Wlssenschtiftslehre,

ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 3r d ed. (Tubingen, 1968), 605: " The many old

gods, disenchanted and in the form of impersonal forces emerge from their graves, strive for

control over our

lives,

and again start their eternal war:'

88. Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschtift: Grum fragen der territorialen verfassungsgeschichte Sudostdeutschlands im

Mittelalter (Vienna, I939), 505.

89. Algazi,

Otto

Brunner;' I69-70.

90. For the question

of

the priority of semantic/conceptual change over sociocultural change or

vice-versa, which of course reflects the concentration on the "factor/i ndicator" dualism of con

cepts that lies at the heart

of Begr ffsgeschichte

see Koselleck, "Sprachwandel und sozialer Wandel

im ausgehenden Ancien Regime;' Deutschlands kulturelle

En faltung

(Studien zum achtzehnten

]ahrbundert

2/3),

Rudolf Vierhaus ed. (Munich, I980), IS-30 and Koselleck, "Probleme der Relations

bestimmung der T exte zur revolutionaren Wirldi chkeir;' Die Franziisische Revolution als

Bruch des kul

turellen Bewj3tseins,

Reinhart Koselleck and

Rolf

Reichardt

eds.

(Munich, I988),

664-6.

9 I. For Koselleck's recollections of the Volkerpsychologie-lectures

of

Hellpach, the Gestaltkreis

by

Victor

von Weizsacker, and readings of Gehlen, embedded in a curriculum blend of "art, philoso

phy,

sociology,

law,

medicine and theology": "Formen der Burgerlichkeit: Reinhart

Koselleck

im

Gesprach mit Manfred Hettling und Bernd Ulrich" in Mittelweg 36 I2, no.2 (2003): 62-82, 74.

92. Christoph CorneliBen, Gerhard

Ritter:

Geschichtswissenschtift

und Politik im 20. Jahrhundert (Dusseldor£

200I),

37I-560. Meinecke suggested to search the paths to the "times

of

Goethe [Goethezeit]"

through the "ruins

of

the present"; Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe: Betrachtungen und

Erinnerungen

(Wiesbaden, I964 , I 68. '

93. Reinhart Koselleck,

Deutschland-eine

verspatete Nation?" in Koselleck:

Zeitschichten.

Studien

zur

Historik,

359-79.

94. Compare Koselleck's criticism

of

the installation

of

Kathe Kollwitz's

Pieta

and the proclama

tion of Schinkel's guard house Neue

tache as

the German central memorial [Zentrale Gedenkstiitte

der

Bundesrepublik Deutschlandj,

see

the interview with Koselleck, "Mies, medioker

und

provinziell"

in

die tageszeitung,

13 November 1993, reprinted in Thomas

E.

Schmidt, Hans-Ernst Mittig,

Vera Bohm, eds., Totenkult: Die

Neue

Wache,

eine

Streitschr ft zur zentralen deutschen Gedenkstiitte (Berlin,

1995), 107-IO and Koselleck's contri bution "Differenzen aushalten und die Toten betrauern;'

Neue

Ziircher

Zeitung, 14 May 2005, 67.

9 5. For stimulating attempts to elucidate the structures of refutation of the Enlightenment around

I800 see Darrin McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment

and

the Mak

ing of

Modernity (Oxford, 200I) and Christine Strange-Fayos, Lumieres et

obscurantisme

en

Prusse:

Le

dtibat autour des edits

de

religion

et de

censure (1788-1797) (Bern and Frankfurt am Main, 2003).

96. Georg G. Iggers, The Cult of Authority:

The

Political Philosophy of the Saint-Simonians. A Chapter in the

Intellectual History of Totalitarianism

(The

Hague, I958), reissued without the subtitle

in

I970.

97.' I shoul d like to stress this polyphony of "theories": There is no coherent postmodernist project

and it seems highly questionable whether there is a distinctly "postmodernist" historiography



344 I

Franz Leander

Fillajer

(which might be a vain ascription), compare Georg G. Iggers, "Historiography between scholar

ship and poetry: reflections on Hayden White's approach to historiography;' in Rethinking

History

4 (2003):

373-90.

98. In fact, the anti-Enlightenment impetus might be seen as the lowest common denominators

unifying postmodernist approaches, for highly illuminating contributions

see

Daniel Gordon,

ed.,

Postmodernism and

the

Enlightenment:

New

Perspectives in

Eighteenth-Century

French Intellectual History

(New York and London, 200I).

99. Koselleck remarked: " I did not work with the concept postmodernism, I can't operate with

this concept. This suggestive notion presupposes that our world has fundamentally changed.

But the problems

of

atomic energy and the problems

of

ecology, the problems of genetic en

gineering persist. We try to tackle recurrent, unsolved questions th at still have to be solved case

by case:' "Interview mit Reinhart Koselleck;' Berliner Zeitung, 25 October I 999 [http ://www.

bbpp.de/ agesnachrichten/koselleck.htm .

100. Robert Wokler summarized this view developing the Freudian model of a "First Patricide of

Modernity" to characterize the intellectual patrimony

of

Enlightenment,

see his essay The

Enlightenment, the Nation-state and the Primal Patricide of Modernity" in The Enlightenment

and Modernity, ed. Norman Gerad and Robert Wokler (Basingstoke and London, 2000), I 6I -

83 and, more generally, Keith Michael Baker and Peter

H.

Reil , eds.,

What's

Left

' f Enlightenment?

(Stanford, 200I).

IOI. Robert Wokler, "Mu ticu turalism and Ethnic Cleansing in the Enlightenment" in

Toleration in

Enlightenment Europe, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (Cambridge, 2000) , 69-85, 79.

I 02. Thoma s Docherty, ed.,

Postmodernism:

A

Reader

(New York, I 99 3

,

I 2.

I 03.

This

inversion

of

horror

is

exemplified in Lyotard's

Heidegger

et

les

,juifs

(Paris, I 988).

Lyotard argues that Auschwitz

was

the self-evident outcome of the Seinsvergessenheit Heidegger

had amply criticized, and that the mass murder

was

the tautological replication of having

mentally excluded ("forgotten") Jewry. George Braque and Rene Char remained unflinching

supporters of Heidegger's silence after I 945.

104. It is far from clear how the interdependencies connecting Enlightenment and empire can be

described. Sankar Muthu's recent Enlightenment

against

Empire (Princeton,

2003)

maintains the

Enlightenment's sharply critical position toward "empire;' b ut

we

need a more nuanced discus

sion of Enlightenment's eighteenth-century coercive and etatist strategies (and of its world

views, which often persisted in the colonies when regarded as obsolete or antiquated in the

respective mother countries).

IOS. John Rawls, The Law ' f Peoples (Cambridge, MA, I99 9), 22; a similar program

is

developed in

Paul Berman's recent Liberalism and Terror (New York and London, 2003) calling for

a-pur

portedly

liberal-regime

of zero tolerance against an illiberal enemy: Islam (synonymous with

uterror in Berman's

survey .

I06. John C. Laursen, "Introduction;' in Laursen, ed., Histories ' f Heresy in Early Modern Europe (Lon

don and New York, 2002), 5.

107. A similar penchant for stigmatizing ,alien' and irredeemably backward segments of society

prevails in the penultimate writings of Alain Finkielkraut and Andre Glucksmann, for whom

the recent riots

in

Parisian

banlieus

seem to epitomize berserk assaults on

all

Western

values.

I08. Simon Shama, "Islam and Enlightenment" in

The

New

Yorker

September 2001, www.newyorker.

corn/

shamal.

I 09. This neglect

of

social and political antagonisms

is

shared

by

defenders

of

Western seculariza

tion hypotheses-lamenting the recalcitrance of the Islamic world-by Islamic fundamental

ists, and by illiberal ultraorthodox

Jewry.

For a well-argued attempt at comparison

see

Martin

Riesenbrot, Fundamentalismus als patriarchalische

Protestbewegung:

Amerikanische

Protestanten

(191 0-28)

und iranische Schiiten (Z 961-79)

im V'ergleich (Tiibingen, I990).

I I0. Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma, "Seeds of Revolution;' The New York Review ' f Books 5 I no. 4

(2004):

I2.

"Religious authority, especially in the United States, is already having a dangerous

influence on political governance:' Ibid.

The Enlightenment

on

Trial I 345

I I I. It is all about a recurrence into

an

epoch,

in

which t he awful 'disjunctive thought'

(Trennungs

denken)

0.

Brunner) of modernity since the end of the I8'h century is abandoned and the

antagonistic oppositions finally coincide again,

Wissenschaft

and art,

Wissenschaft

and philosophy

shall be re-united, judgments

of

values shall be judgements of vice-versa:' Otto

Gerhard Oexle, "Sehnsucht nach Klio: Hayden Whites

,Metahistory'-un wie

man dariiber

hinwegkommt," Rechtshistorisches

Journal I l

(I992): I-I8, 10. I refrain from Identifying White's

essentially formalist project with postrnodernist propensities, but it is true that in White's

book the "ironical" thinkers of Spiitaufkliirung (namely Hume, Gibbon and Kant)

are

dealt with

somewhat condescendingly

because

they consciously reflect the "figurative" conditions and con

ventions of their own work, conditions and conventions White

is

eager to

reveal

as subcon

scious "deep structure" in the philosophers and historians he devotes most attention to. For

some insightful reflections Peter Burke, "Die Metageschichte von 'Metahistory;" in

Metageschichte.

Hayden

White und

Paul

Ricceur: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der europi:iischen

Kultur

im Knntext von Husserl,

We

ber,

Auerbach und

Gombrich,

ed. Jorn Stiickrath and Jiirg Zbinden (Baden-Baden, I 997): 73-85.

I I2. "I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives:' Lyotard, The Postmodern

Condition. A Report

' f

Knowledge (Minneapolis, I984

[I979]), xxiv.

"Lyotard's notion of ,in

credulity' does serve a useful purpose: it orients the reader in favor

of

skepticism. But the

disadvantage of this rhetoric is that it leads the reader to perceive skepticism as a new form of

self-consciousness rather than a literary and philosophical tradition that certain Enlightenment

thinkers worked with." Daniel Gordon, On the

supposed Obscolescence ' f the French Enlightenment

in

idem, ed., Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (New York, London, 200I): 20 I

-22

I, 202.

I 13. For those right-wing extremists trying t o decide whom they hate most, Jewry or Islam, the

Iranian president's recent tirades denying the Holocaust considerably facilitated orientation:

now they rally to support Ahmadinejad and attack the public memorial presence of the Ho

locaust as a cryptoreligious veneration of an arbitrary truth, whose scrutiny is forbidden. "Re

visionists" like Robert Faurisson take this situation

as

pretext for lamenting what they

see as

detrimental restrictions of the public freedom of expression, Robert Faurisson, "It's Time the

Arab Leaders Ended Their Silence on the 'Holocaust' Imposture;' http:/ www.ihr.org/jhr/

v

20/

v20n3pI 3_Faurisson.html.

I I 4.

In

this aspect there is fair argeement between the brand of intellectual history advocated by

Quentin Skinner and that

of

Koselleck; see the articles in

Hartmut

Lehmann and Melvin

Richter, eds., The Meaning ' f Historical Terms and

Concepts:

New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte [German

Historical Institute Occasional Paper IS] (Washington, D.C.,

I996). The

recent cumulative

volume with two disjointed chapters on the

dioscuri

Skinner an d Koselleck

by

Kari Palonen, Die

Entzauberung

der Begri.ffe: Das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin

Skinner

und

Reinhart

Koselleck

(Munster, 2003) presents Max Weber as tertium comparationis. It should be noted t hat Koselleck's

emphasis on unintended illocutionary forces and on the disjunction

of

linguistic precepts

and socio-cultural circumstances (see Koselleck,

Sprachwandel

und

Ereignisgeschichte

in Merkur

43/7

[I989J: 657-73, English version: "Linguistic Change and the History of Events," journal

' f

Modern History 6I no. 4 [I989]: 649-66) distinguishes his work from Skinner's.

the enlightenment on trial reinhart kosellecks interpretation of atifklarung

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