KOSELLECK,ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well‐known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti‐totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience.     

The EU as a conflict manager? The case of Georgia and its implications

This article offers an analysis of the EU's engagement in Georgia as a standpoint from which to assess the EU's role as a conflict manager. The article begins with a brief narrative account of the development of EU—Georgia relations in the context of the country's two unresolved conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It then proceeds to the analysis of two sets of factors—those within, and those external to, the EU—that are crucial for understanding the nature and impact of EU efforts to manage the two Georgian conflicts. On the basis of this case-study analysis, the authors offer a wider analysis of the EU's potential for assuming a wider role as an international security actor. This is undertaken by considering both the limitations of the EU's existing capabilities for conflict resolution and the new developments contained within the Lisbon Treaty. The final part of the article asserts that the EU has suffered from two key weaknesses that have prevented it from living up to its aspirations of becoming a globally significant and effective conflict manager. The first is structural—the lack of, to date, a permanent External Action Service; the second is conceptual—the lack of a coherent and comprehensive conflict management strategy. The article concludes with five substantive principles that should guide the EU's approach to conflict management.     

THE ALLURE OF DARK TIMES: MAX WEBER,POLITICS, AND THE CRISIS OF HISTORICISM

This article argues that realist invocations of Weber rely on an unrealistic reading of Weber's realism. In order to escape the allure of Weber's dramatic posture of crisis, we place his seminal lecture on “Politics as a Vocation” (1919) in its historical and philosophical context of a revolutionary conjuncture of dramatic proportions, compounded by a broader crisis of historicism. Weber's rhetoric, we argue, carries with it not only the emotion of crisis but is also the expression of a deeper intellectual impasse. The fatalistic despair of his position had already been detected by some of his closest contemporaries for whom Weber did not appear as a door‐opener to a historically situated theory of political action but as a telling and intriguing impasse. Although the disastrous history of interwar Europe seems to confirm Weber's bleakest predictions, it would be perverse to elevate contingent failure to the level of retrospective vindication.