Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 44

The early Greek understanding of time is characterized by the fact that it develops various concepts of different forms of time but it is itself not exhausted bythe total sum of its own concepts. Homer already employs a differentiated concept of time, depending on whether he speaks of chronos, émar (day) or aión. From Hesiod comes the earliest literary record of the concept kairós. Even richer than substantivized time is time in its epic form, unfolding three-dimensionally, historically.That is why an adequate understanding of the early Greek conception of time can only be reached through literature. Pre-socratic philosophy is embedded in a context which includes lyric poetry and tragedy as well as Homer and Hesiod. Predominant here is Pindar, whose work supplied Plato with key words and who resolved the traditional concepts of time in the movement of his fundamental idea.

Modern research on mythology suggests that ancient Greek philosophy attempts to save, rather than destroy, mythical thinking by the methods of a new rationality. Although we realize today that this has been done by Plato and some of the pre-Socratic philosophers the philosophy of Aristotle is widely held to be free from mythical influences.This article tries to demonstrate that the above opinion should be revised and we can see this through the Aristotelian idea of »hypolepsis«. This particular idea has generated several unsolved questions and we can only answer them, if the concept of »hypolepsis« is interpreted in the light of mythical views.

The skeptic demolition of trust or certainty [pistis, (dia-)bebaiotês], likewise taking aim at the possibility of cognition and knowledge asserted by all dogmatical theories (first of all by the dogmata of the stoics) and the dogmatical statements of ordinary life (bios) abolishes the foundations of assents and (philosophical) judgments. While the academic skeptics set forth criteria – especially the convincing or the persuasion – demanded for conductance of life, owing to the objection of apraxia (as argumentum ad hominem or in propria persona?), the pyrrhonists’ attack against the dogmata and opinions or beliefs (which make a claim to be true and false) because of the epochê, which amounts to the claim, that this goal will be attained by the equipollence as to the equilibrium of trust and distrust.

In his writings De oratione and Contra Celsum Origenes is firmly opposed to the idea, that God is knowable by means of philosophy. Although Origenes, as far asphilosophy is concerned, feels most familiar with Platonism, his ideas about knowing God differ from Plato and the Middle Platonists and from the Greek Apologists as well. According to Origenes God is only to be known by way of the faith. Knowing (ginèskein, gnwr…zein, e„dšnai) God is equal to seeing (blšpein, Ðr©n) or beholding (qewre‹n, qe©sqai) God. In Origenes’ De principiis, a work he wrote in an earlier period, we see a different view on this subject: God, being invisible, cannot be seen and, therefore, seeing God means knowing God. In regard of the idea that God is only knowable through the Christian faith, Origenes agrees with his predecessor Clement of Alexandria. The vigour by which he expresses his conviction obviously represents a reaction to the violent attack on Christianity by Celsus.

The article deals with one of the generally accepted basic human rights: freedom of speech. In the course of its history it was, nevertheless, always disputed.This can already be recognized in the genesis of the concept from its two Greek roots: isegoria and parrhesia. So, from about the 6th century b.C. there existed two rivalling notions, one expression with a negative, the other with a positive connotation. The way of the concept through its history showed content and relating expressions again and again being under pressure, especially from the ruling political instances. On the way becoming a generally acknowledged concept amongst individual human rights the discussion during the time of the French Revolution and then its final ranking as a law in the First Amendment to the American Constitution in 1792 were landmarks. The role of freedom of speech as a highly valued human right is still discussed today on the one hand under the perspective of growing globalization, on the other hand because it is difficult to give foolproof reasons for its existence.

The present essay explores the sources and the scope of a major feature of the scholastic logic and metaphysics: the 16th-century distinction of the reasoningreason (distinctio rationis ratiocinantis) in contradistinction to the distinction of reasoned reason (distinctio rationis ratiocinatae). Depending on whether the nonidentity was meant to refer to first-order or second-order intentions, the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis intervened either between a definition and the term defined or between the two terms of identical propositions: »A = A«. How to save this elusive kind of distinction was a common concern of Thomists, Scotists and early modern Jesuits. Special attention is paid to the logician and metaphysician Bartholomew MASTRI (1602–73). German philosophy up to FREGE will be considered. Quite contrary to a time-honoured prejudice, the ancient metaphysics turns out to have been furnished with a powerful device in order to avoid the traps of reification.

Husserl treats the concept and the problem of ›life-world‹ (›Lebenswelt‹) in his Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften from 1936. In this phenomenological approach the scientific-technical, but also the philosophical knowledge is to be found in a pretheoretical realm, namely the ›life-world‹. Since that time this problem has been critically discussed not only in phenomenology but also in the social sciences. For a long time it has been the prevailing opinion, that it was Husserl who introduced the term ›life-world‹ into the debate. Nevertheless, this essay illustrates the development of the concept in the 19th century by a detailed discussion of the history of sciene and philosophy. Already in 1836 Heinrich Heine used the term, in the second half of the 19th century it turns into a technical term in biology, palaeontology, and geography, and thereby it becomes a catchword in the popular discussions of monism and darwinism. The controversy concerning these attempts to explain ›life-world‹ around the turn of the century finally results in an alternative conception:The experience of sense as a ›life-world‹ replaces the scientific explanation of life. Not only for an adequate understanding of Husserl’s critique of sciences and philosophy but also for an adequate appreciation of phenomenology it is necessary to articulate this tradition.

In the human sciences of eighteenth century Europe,systematic comparison playeda crucial part, generally as a method but also occasionally as a target of criticism. Particularly in the domains of political and social thought, comparison was conceptualized and practiced in sharply contested forms: philosophical, social-scientific, and rhetorical.While some of the meanings now carried by the concept of comparison in the human sciences coincide with what was understood by it in the eighteenth century, others do not. This paper discusses such competing concepts and practices of comparison in Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, and Herder, who contested the very notion of the commensurability of human regimes and societies. Comparison turned out to be a profoundly ambiguous and controversial concept, holding in suspension a number of disparate intentions and methods.Writers could use comparative studies to accentuate differences, establish similarities, or reveal ranges of variation within the same category. Comparisons and contrasts became crucial weapons in all major eighteenth century disagreements dividing Europeans among themselves, as well as in theories of where they stood in relation to the rest of the world.

Conceptual history is no mere auxiliary discipline in the study of politics, and political biases are inherent in the conceptual history.The two ›disciplines‹ are connected with each other by the contestability of concepts that helps to understand their contingent and controversial, i. e. political character. The contestability of concepts is used as a heuristic tool to understand conceptual and political changes. The use of concepts is a part of political struggles and, conversely, these struggles are shaped by conceptual changes. As an approach to political science, conceptual history can partially replace the history of ideas. In addition, a ›lateral‹ history of concepts can serve as a specific perspective on textual analysis, introducing a historical dimension to the analysis of contemporary texts and offering an alternative to the unhistorical and unlinguistic ›comparative politics‹. Furthermore, case studies of past concepts can be used as a distancing subversion of contemporary normative political theory. Finally, conceptual history can infuse new perspectives into the disciplinary history, especially by relating it to the historiography of the concept of politics itself.