UNDISCIPLINED AND PUNISHED

The title of Robert Doran's collection of essays on Hayden White proves provocative and evocative. Provocative because it claims to mark a move within philosophy that pivots on the work of Hayden White, and this despite the fact that White himself explicitly resists inclusion within such a classification, that is, as a philosopher of history. Indeed, another contributor, Arthur Danto, had as of 1995 declared passé the whole subfield of philosophy of history. Doran situates White, then, in a niche White rejects and in any case one largely abandoned by those who do academic philosophy. Thus a question that this title evokes concerns why—whatever philosophy of history happens to be before Hayden White—after him it becomes a topic of philosophical lack of interest, one pursued almost exclusively by those not associated with departments of philosophy. Given White's professional travails, his acquaintance with another undisciplined academic, Richard Rorty, and his long‐standing friendship with preeminent philosophers of history such as Louis Mink, one might well assume that White eschews Doran's disciplinary labeling for a reason. In this regard, reframing him as this book's title does invites a worry that, if only unwittingly, the book elides discussion of why certain positions excite not merely disagreement but prompt rather a type of professional shunning. In failing to confront White's reception (or rather lack thereof) by historians and his position (or rather lack thereof) within philosophy, Doran passes over in silence a highly salient aspect of White's work.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Hans Nielsen Hauge

In this article, the author examines the role Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824) played in encouraging literacy in Norwegian peasant society in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, an aspect of his ministry rarely discussed. This poorly educated son of a peasant broke the unwritten rule of never publishing texts for a large readership without the necessary educational skills. Thus he opened up a new literate space where the common person could express him-or herself on paper. Hauge printed around 40 different texts, 14 of them books, in a language the peasants could understand. This inspired his followers not only to read, but also to write, mainly letters to Hauge and to Haugeans in other parts of Norway. Some even became authors. Women played a central role in this wave of literacy spreading throughout the country. Based on Hauge’s original texts, the author presents some crucial aspects of his mentality and shows how his ministry served as a catalyst to the growth of literacy among peasants during the period.     

REOCCUPYING SECULARIZATION: SCHMITT AND KOSELLECK ON BLUMENBERG'S CHALLENGE

This article analyzes the compound of the categories of secularization and reoccupation in its variations from Hans Blumenberg's philosophy to Carl Schmitt's political theory and, ultimately, to Reinhart Koselleck's conceptual history. By revisiting the debate between Blumenberg and Schmitt on secularization and political theology with regard to the political‐theoretical aspects of secularization and the methodological aspects of reoccupation, I will provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly tension‐ridden elements at play in Koselleck's theorizing of modernity, history, and concepts. For Schmitt, secularization is inherently related to the question of political conflict, and, correspondingly, he attempts to discredit Blumenberg's criticism of secularization as an indirectly aggressive, and thereby hypocritical, attempt to escape the political. To this end, I argue, Schmitt appropriates Blumenberg's concept of “reoccupation” and uses it alternately in the three distinct senses of “absorption,”“reappropriation,” and “revaluation.” Schmitt's famous thesis of political concepts as secularized theological concepts contains an unmistakable methodological element and a research program. The analysis therefore shows the relevance of the Blumenberg/Schmitt debate for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and Koselleck. I scrutinize Koselleck's understanding of secularization from his early Schmittian and Löwithian theory of modernity to his later essays on temporalization of history and concepts. Despite Blumenberg's criticism, Koselleck holds onto the category of secularization throughout, but gradually relativizes it into a research hypothesis among others. Simultaneously, Koselleck formalizes, alongside other elements, the Schmittian account of reoccupation into his method of conceptual analysis and uses the term in the same three senses—thus making “reoccupation” conceptually compatible with “secularization,” despite the former notion's initial critical function in Blumenberg's theory. The examination highlights a Schmittian residue that accounts for Koselleck's reserved attitude toward Blumenberg's metaphorology, regardless of a significant methodological overlap.     

Rehabilitating political parties: an examination of the writings of Hans Kelsen

This paper focuses on Hans Kelsen’s reflections on political parties. During the interwar period, Kelsen participated in a controversy over whether political parties were a necessary part of the democratic process. The debate forced Kelsen to produce a defence of political parties to emphasise their functionality and define their place in his particular definition of democracy. This contribution considers the following aspects. First, the reasons why Kelsen thought political parties are necessary for democratic life are explained. Second, the doctrinal oppositions against which he elaborated his defence of political parties are clarified. Third, the programme that Kelsen conceived of to enhance political parties in a constitutional democracy is examined. Finally, the contemporary questions that have arisen in relation to Kelsen’s conception of political parties are scrutinised. Kelsen’s contribution to the debate about the role of political parties was intimately related to the presence of strong criticisms of that role. This makes his reflections even more interesting today, considering the present relative decline of the political role and appeal of parties.     

Auf der Suche nach der Politik in der Wissensproduktion: Plädoyer für eine historisch‐politische Epistemologie

In Search of Politics in Knowledge Production. A Plea for a Historical‐Political Epistemology. Knowledge production has an intrinsic political dimension. Starting from this presupposition, it is argued that the systematic integration of and reflection on the political dimension is necessary for an adequate understanding of historical processes of knowledge production in the sciences. The consecutive plea for a historical‐political epistemology proceeds in two steps: First, it is illustrated that in a number of recent historical science study cases, the political dimension is frequently marginal, or even absent. After a short discussion of previous theoretical concepts to describe the impact of politics for the production of scientific knowledge, an approach is sketched which builds on Hans‐Jörg Rheinberger's historical epistemology and Bruno Latour's symmetrical anthropology. It is argued that in addition to Rheinberger's program to describe epistemic systems, the political dimension is intrinsic to three stages of the process of data production: First to an initial phase which consists in the arrangement socio‐technical configurations to produce new evidence. Here, factors such as the culturally shaped perception and evaluation of ?relevant”? problems, as well as the perception of career resources have to be taken into account. Second, the political dimension is relevant in view of the continuous re‐adjustments of the configuration of epistemic systems, e. g. towards newly available financial, technical, or intellectual resources and ?relevant”? challenges from outside the system. Thirdly, the data produced and represented by epistemic systems – “evidence” – are yet in need of interpretation. This process is in itself imbued with continuously shifting mechanisms of selecting and creating hierarchies amongst the pool of available data.     

4. EVENTS GETTING AHEAD OF THEMSELVES: RETHINKING THE TEMPORALITY OF EXPECTATIONS

Whereas most theoretical and historiographical accounts of the event have focused on its present and past dimensions, this article addresses the relatively underexplored phenomenon of the future event. As temporal junctures, events often already elicit effects before they come to pass, and even if they never do. Building on foundational work on the relation between experience and expectation by Hans‐Georg Gadamer and Reinhart Koselleck as well as on current historiographical debates on “past futures,” I develop a threefold typology of the future event, distinguishing between the assumption of the routine event, the expectation of the relative event, and the adumbration of the radical event. Engaging with case studies like the year 2000, the ambivalent character of so‐called media events, and ongoing debates about a possible climate collapse and the COVID‐19 pandemic, I show how reconsidering the complex temporalities of the future event can shed new light on the ways in which past societies made their futures present.     

LÖWITH,LÖWITH'S HEIDEGGER,AND THE UNITY OF HISTORY

This article is about the problem of the unity of history as seen through the writings of Karl Löwith. By “unity of history” I understand the notion that all history constitutes one and only one range of kinds of objects and/or one field of knowledge. The article argues that the problem of the unity of history—though often neglected as a matter of mere argumentative infrastructure—is central to a number of wider problems, most prominently the possibility of a plural understanding of historicity and the possibility of ultimately avoiding a unified historical teleology. The article revisits Löwith's writings and proposes a variety of novel interpretations with the aim of evincing the centrality, and of exploring diverse aspects, of the problematic of the unity of history. This problematic is shown to have informed Löwith's work on the secularization thesis as well as his debate with Hans Blumenberg. The foundations of Löwith's discussion of the problem are pursued across his ambivalent critique and appropriation of Heidegger's model of an ontology of historicity as marked by inevitable internal conflict and thus disunity. The paper reconstructs the manner in which, after the Second World War, Löwith's philosophy of history sought to salvage basic traits of the Heideggerian model when it tried to establish the possibility of plural historicity from a notion of the natural cosmos. It is demonstrated that the motives for this salvage operation ultimately extended beyond the problem of Löwith's reception of Heidegger and concerned the possibility of continuing any debate on the philosophy of history.