Melvin Richter

This entry contains the German text of Reinhart Koselleck’s response to the papers given at the meeting in December, 1992 at the German Historical Institute, Washington to commemorate the completion of the lexicon, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Published in English translation, Koselleck’s Offene Fragen an die ›Geschichtlichen Grundbegriffe‹, presented inter alia, the fi rst major confrontation between German Begriffsgeschichte, as practiced by Koselleck, and J. G. A.Pocock, speaking for the Cambridge School dominant in the English-speaking world, Koselleck’s German text is accompanied by a Note summarizing his reply to the critique by Pocock, who invoked arguments previously made by Quentin Skinner. Also included are the views on Begriffsgeschichte now held by Skinner and Pocock twenty years later.

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.