Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 62: Jean Starobinski

Als Interpret Montaignes, Montesquieus, Diderots und vor allem Rousseaus, als Ideen- und Kulturhistoriker des Zeitalters der Lumières und der FranzösischenRevolution, als Archäologie des medizinischen, philosophischen und poetischen Diskurses der Melancholie, als Literaturtheoretiker und Literarhistoriker desmenschlichen Blicks, des Schleiers, der Maske und anderer Embleme der Imagination und des Imaginären, als Editor und Kommentator der Anagramm-StudienFerdinand de Saussures und überragend kundiger Vermittler zwischen Literaturwissenschaft und Psychoanalyse hat der Schweizer Jean Starobinski (1920–2019)Weltruhm erlangt.1 Auch in Deutschland sind seine Schriften seit langem kanonisiert, akademisch in mancherlei Kontexten zitierpflichtig und dank vorzüglicherÜbersetzungen auch Leserinnen und Lesern zugänglich, denen die Lektüre der französischen Originalausgaben unmöglich oder beschwerlich wäre.2Für die Begriffsgeschichte und ihre Belange freilich bleibt Starobinskis Werk hierzulande noch immer zu entdecken. Selbst in der mit Abstand ausführlichstenInformationsquelle, dem von Ernst Müller und Falko Schmieder erarbeiteten und mit einem Umfang von über 1000 Druckseiten ersichtlich um Vollständigkeit bemühten Kompendium Begriffsgeschichte und historische Semantik3, taucht der Name des Genfer Gelehrten nicht auf: eine Fehlanzeige, die umso erstaunlicherist, als Starobinski seinerseits über sehr genaue Kenntnisse der deutschsprachigen Szene und der von Deutschland ausgegangenen Entwicklungen im Bereich derhistorischen Semantik und Begriffsgeschichtsschreibung verfügte. Dass er in den Sinn und die Subtilitäten des Studiums der Bedeutung und des Bedeutungswandels von Wörtern und Wendungen durch keinen Geringeren als Leo Spitzer eingeführt wurde, auf dessen Einladung er von 1953 bis 1956 am romanistischen Department der Johns Hopkins University lehrte, ist das eine. Das andere ist Starobinskis in punktgenauen Bezugnahmen greifbare Vertrautheit mit den begriffsgeschichtlichen Arbeiten Hans-Georg Gadamers, Joachim Ritters, Odo Marquards und Reinhart Kosellecks. Ausgiebige Benutzung des HistorischenWörterbuchs der Philosophie und der Geschichtlichen Grundbegriffe war ihm selbstverständlich. Dennoch ist es eine völlig eigene und durchaus besondere Zugriffsweise, die Starobinskis historisch-semantische und spezifisch begriffsgeschichtliche Studien – genannt seien hier nur die schon vom Titel her einschlägigen Remarques sur l’histoire du concept d’imagination4, der große Essay über das Wort Zivilisation5 und die monumentale, eine Vielzahl von Diskursdomänen und Begriffsfunktionen durchmessende Monographie Action et réaction6 – auszeichnet. Als Theoretiker der Begriffshistorie hat Starobinski sich freilich nicht eigens betätigt, Überlegungen zur Methode vielmehr stets am thematischen Objekt, im Zuge der konkreten Arbeit an Texten oder – dies ein besonders markanter und, wie uns scheint, belangvoller Zug – historischen Bildquellen entwickelt. Umso wünschenswerter ist es, Aufschluss über die Maximen zu erlangen, nach denen Jean Starobinski das Leben von Begriffen und Bedeutungen rekonstruiert und rekonstruktionsgemäß auch erzählt hat. Wir haben einen Philosophen und einen Literaturwissenschaftler, den Begriffsgeschichtstheoretiker Dieter Teichert (Konstanz/Luzern) und den Aufklärungsforscher Daniel Fulda (Halle) gebeten, sich unter den genannten Aspekten mit Starobinskis Werk zu beschäftigen. Die nachstehenden Essays dokumentieren den Ertrag.

In his book Action et Réaction (1999), Jean Starobinski examines the history of a pairof concepts that seems at first peripheral, initially implemented in the natural sciences by Newtonianphysics in particular. Starting with Newton, however, the dyad ›action and reaction‹ migratedinto multiple fields of discourse (biology, medicine, psychology, literature, politics). Founded methodologicallyon the conception of polysemy introduced by the French linguist Michel Bréal, Starobinksi’sdistinctive version of conceptual history provides precise reconstructions of the varioustheoretical and practical constellations into which ›action‹ and ›reaction‹ have entered. Thus, as thisarticle argues, the history of concepts is grasped and explained not as a teleological sequence ofdistinct conceptual variants but rather as a multi-faceted process of polysemisation.

The two books that Jean Starobinski dedicated especially to the eighteenth century— The Invention of Freedom (first published in French in 1964) concerning the ancien régime and The Emblems of Reason (1981) about the period of revolution — are lavishly illustrated, displaying a trust in the visual medium to convey insights that cannot be achieved through language. Contrary to what one might expect, Starobinski does not often act as an interpreter of the period images that his books display. Rather, he expects that the images themselves will provide an interpretation of the epoch’s themes, which goes beyond what people at the time could consciously express in words and what can be formulated retrospectively. Starobinski composed his »image stories« at the time when Reinhart Koselleck was developing conceptual history in Germany, but the two enterprises are not to be understood as methodologically parallel. As this article shows, the current discussion about an image-oriented extension.

Over the last century, scholars have studied and debated the emergence of the modernconcept of culture. Whereas some have claimed that it was Samuel Pufendorf who invented theconcept in the 1680s, others have argued that it emerged first with the works of Johann GottfriedHerder and others about a century later. In this article, I complicate both these pictures by highlightinga hitherto overlooked case: that of the Czech philosopher, theologian and educational reformerJohn Amos Comenius. In 1650 Comenius delivered a speech that was published in 1657 under thetitle De cultura ingeniorum oratio (Oration on the Culture of the Natural Dispositions). In De culturaingeniorum, Comenius presents a concept of culture that fulfills many of the criteria that scholarshave associated with the modern concept of culture while at the same time distancing itself fromthe idea of national character as the essential feature of a people. In place of this, Comenius arguesthat differences in culture are always the result of differences in educational and cultural institutions,and that the goal therefore must be to provide a pampaideia, a universal education availablefor all, rich and poor, men and women alike.

In framing his theory of personal identity, John Locke introduced »the self« as a philosophicalterm, and the concept has remained current in English to this day. The translations ofLocke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2nd edition of 1694) into French (1700) and German(1757) established »le soi [-même]« and »das Selbst« in the philosophical discourse of the eighteenthcentury, but the noun forms of Moi and Ich have persisted in these languages as enduringalternatives to »the Self.« This philologically oriented contribution sketches the linguistic backdropand the translational repercussions of Locke’s immensely influential, if still controversial, conceptformation.

The ›Leap‹ is a central category in Kierkegaard’s thought. It is a point of convergence for manifold and multifaceted issues and inquiries; and with regard to Kierkegaard’s reception history, the ›leap‹ has proven an extremely fruitful object of investigation. After introductory remarks on the etymology and denotation of the word ›leap,‹ a systematic exploration is made of Kierkegaard’s theory of the leap, first of its preconditions and developments, and next of its essential features and contexts. Following this exploration, the reception of Kierkegaard’s ›leap‹ in the intellectual discourses of the 20th century is presented in brief.

Under the label »Problemgeschichte« (history of problems), the representatives of both the South-West and Marburg Schools of German neo-Kantianism advanced the search for structures in the socio-cultural world that transcend the bounds of time in order to settle the debate over historicism and relativism. Problems are intellectual questions to which we cannot find answers, but which prompt us, time and again, to consider them anew. Around 1900, a broad consensus emerged about the existence of such basic or primary problems of thought, for example the mind-matter problem or the antinomy of freedom and necessity in human action. Among the epistemological and anthropological explanations, as well as those in the theory of values and the philosophy of life, Nicolai Hartmann’s approach to the history of problems and his conception of intellectual altruism stand out. So far, they have received little attention in research concerning the historiography of philosophy. Taking into account the criticism that Hans-Georg Gadamer has raised against »Problemgeschichte, « this article provides a sympathetic reconstruction of Hartmann’s position.

Among the achievements for which Reinhart Koselleck has been praised as one of the most important historians of the 20th century, his groundbreaking approach to conceptual history deserves a systematic reconstruction that would throw into relief what might aptly be called the pragmatic turn in conceptual history. In order to highlight its key features and some of its still unexhausted historiographical potentials, the following essay will proceed in three steps. In a first step, it distinguishes Koselleck’s theory and practice of Begriffsgeschichte with regard to the wideranging social and political use of concepts from the more narrowly defined goals and procedures of a discipline-immanent history of philosophical terms. In a second step, the essay expounds and critically discusses the theoretical premises, methodological claims and explanatory criteria of Koselleck’s primarily (but not exclusively) actor-centered version of a historical pragmatics of politicaland social concepts. Finally, it offers some methodological considerations for discussion in reference to a recent project, propagated by prominent German historians, which aims to extend the scope of the research program Koselleck developed for the investigation of the epochal processes of the »saddle period« (Sattelzeit) between roughly 1750 and 1850 to the 20th century.

In historical studies, »deep history« means going back far behind Greek antiquity and even the first written cultures: right up to the early development of mankind. Can intellectual history follow this preponement? Using the example of the reconstruction of early legal thinking, this essay outlines how a research program can be developed that discovers early imprints which only later crystallize in terms and theories. It should do so by a combination of linguistic reconstruction and the expansion of the history of concepts to include the history of symbolic forms, integrating even cognitive archeology, body history and archeogenetics.