Goering (Concepts History and The Game of Asking and Giving Reasons 2013)

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.
1163/18722636-12341260
Journal of the Philosophy of History 7 (2013) 426452 brill.com/jph
*)I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Frank Ankersmit for his helpful com-
ments on an earlier draft of this essay.
Concepts, History and the Game of Giving
and Asking for Reasons:
A Defense of Conceptual History
*
D. Timothy Goering
History Department, Ruhr-University of Bochum
timothygoering@gmail.com
Abstract
This article offers a defense of the theoretical foundations of Conceptual History
(Begriffsgeschichte). While Conceptual History has successfully established itself
as an historical discipline, details in the philosophy of language that underpin Con-
ceptual History continue to be opaque. Specifically the definition of what consti-
tutes a basic concept (Grundbegriff ) remains problematic. Reinhart Koselleck
famously claimed that basic concepts are more than words, but he never spelled
out how these abstract entities relate to words or can be subject to semantic trans-
formation. I argue that to clarify the definition of what constitutes a basic concept
we should turn to the functionalist and inferentialist philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars.
By viewing historical sources as partaking in what Sellars calls the game of giv-
ing and asking for reasons, Conceptual History can accurately trace the seman-
tic changes of basic concepts and thus offer an important tool to the historical
discipline.
Keywords
Conceptual History, conceptual change, Reinhart Koselleck, Wilfrid Sellars
I
One of the most intriguing features of Reinhart Kosellecks (19242006)
thought is that he wrote history while he wrote about history. That is, he
D. T. Goering / Journal of the Philosophy of History 7 (2013) 426452 427
not only articulated new ways of understanding historical developments
since the 18th century, he also underpinned these with keen theoretical
acuity, giving other historians methodological tools along the way. While
Kosellecks studies include a wide range of topics, his most lasting contri-
bution is arguably in what has come to be called Conceptual History
(Begriffsgeschichte), which traces the semantic transformation of basic
concepts (Grundbegriffe) that have shaped the epistemological frame-
work of the modern period.
While Conceptual History has securely established itself as a field of
study, it has occasionally run into unresolved philosophical difficulties.
Kosellecks writings on basic concepts have been very influential, but
when it comes to offering a robust account of the philosophy of language
behind Conceptual History, Koselleck is content to offer no more than sug-
gestive remarks. Specifically the definition of a basic concept and how
there can be such entities as basic concepts that are subject to change,
has remained neglected and problematic.
There are a number of possible options to address the difficulty of con-
ceptual change and the relationship between words and concepts. Some
are better than others, but in general the problems I focus on here pose no
vital threat to the overall project of Conceptual History. This article, then,
will not argue that Conceptual History is in dire straits and in need of res-
cue. That would be setting up a straw man. Rather, the goal of this paper is
to put the approach of Conceptual History on a surer philosophical footing
by turning to the writings of Wilfrid Sellars, whose philosophy, I argue,
bears a family resemblance to Kosellecks writings. My reading of Koselleck
does not claim to remain a faithful one in every aspect. However, I do claim
that if we want to think of Conceptual History seriously, we must seek a
more sound philosophical foundation than has been offered so far.
In a word, I suggest that Conceptual History should integrate functional-
ist and normative categories into its theory of concepts. I argue that Sellars
philosophy and specifically his notion of the game of giving and asking for
reasons sets up the grid on which Conceptual History can be plotted. It
will therefore be the task of this paper to show how Conceptual History can
and should be at home with Sellarsian philosophy.
I will first elucidate the project of Conceptual History, as originally con-
figured by Koselleck (Part II). Then I turn to a more in-depth discussion of
the philosophical difficulties that arise within the horizon of this project
428 D. T. Goering / Journal of the Philosophy of History 7 (2013) 426452
and discuss possible solutions (Part III). Next, I argue that Sellars nominal-
ism addresses a number of the difficulties (Part IV) and finally that Sellars
philosophy gives a robust account of the philosophy of language that is tac-
itly presupposed in Kosellecks Conceptual History (Part V). Before I close,
I turn to a possible objection about representations and concepts (Part VI).
After the heavy lifting has been done, I will conclude with remarks on how
Conceptual History, backed by Sellars philosophy, is an important tool for
the historical discipline as it informs historians how to deal with meaning,
language and truth (Part VII).
II
The fundamental thought which runs through Kosellecks writings on Con-
ceptual History is Kants: intuitions without concepts are blind.1 At the
end of his life, Koselleck characterized Conceptual History as
a part of historical research that does not understand language as an epiphe-
nomenon of so-called reality [. . .] but rather as a methodologically irreducible
guiding authority, without which experiences could not be had, and without
which neither the natural nor social sciences could exist. For Conceptual His-
tory, language is on the one hand an indicator of encountered reality and on
the other hand a factor in the process of finding reality.2
The core statement that Conceptual History wants to commit to historians,
is that language and historical reality can not be examined separately.
Reconstructing the past will inevitably mean reconstructing language,
because of the simple fact that rendering experiences intelligible is only
made possible by the success of using concepts. Another way of saying this
is that the state of knowing cannot be reduced to non-epistemic facts such
1)Koselleck explicitly points to Kant in R. Koselleck, Die Geschichte der Begriffe und
Begriffe der Geschichte, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und
Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frankfurt a.M, 2010), p. 59.
2)R. Koselleck, Stichwort: Begriffsgeschichte, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Begriffsgeschichten:
Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frankfurt a.M,
2010), p. 99.
This quote and all following quotes are translated by the author unless otherwise
indicated.
as sense contents. To know that an apple is on the table, or to know that a
state is experiencing a revolution, is not a kind of knowledge that can be
derived from psychological states and cognitive processes. Sense contents
are necessary, but not sufficient for non-inferential beliefs. The premise of
Conceptual History therefore is the notion that concepts, not intuitions or
sense-data, form the foundation of knowing and knowledge-claims. And
accurately examining the uses of concepts in the past should therefore be
one of the dominant ambitions of every historian.
With that said, Koselleck was an historian and not a philosopher. So
rather than looking at the nature of concepts from an epistemological per-
spective, Koselleck was interested in unearthing the genealogy of concepts
from an historical standpoint. He was interested in studying the historical
origins that lie behind the everyday use of concepts, because they can give
us a glimpse of a past conceptual world. In the introduction to the massive
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. The Historical Encyclopedia of the Political-
Social Language in Germany,3 of which Koselleck was the principal editor
from 1972 to 1997, he stated that the projects purpose was to examine the
dissolution of the old world and the emergence of the new in terms of the
historico-conceptual comprehension of this process.4 All of the 122 articles
of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe examined different concepts (e.g. Anar-
chy, Democracy, State) and reconstructed semantic shifts in the devel-
opment of each concept throughout history. The common thread of all of
the articles and the fundamental discovery of the entire project was that
since the middle of the 18th century a pervasive semantic shift of classical
topoi occurred.5 Koselleck famously called this period around the turn of
the 18th and 19th centuries the Sattelzeit a period in which old words were
not always replaced by new words, but rather the semantic content of old
words were decanted or added to the words already in place.
3)For more information on the purpose and goal of the project, see C. Dipper, Die
Geschichtlichen Grundbegriffe. Von der Begriffsgeschichte zur Theorie der historischen
Zeiten, Historische Zeitschrift, 270 (2000), pp. 281308. For an introduction to Kosellecks
conceptual history in English see: M. Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts:
A Critical Introduction (New York, 1995).
4)R. Koselleck, Einleitung, in O. Brunner, W. Conze and R. Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart,
1974), p. XV.
5)Ibid., p. XV.
Modifying concepts that were constitutive of a language involved con-
ceptually refashioning the world of the late 18th century. The Sattelzeit
ushered in what was experienced as a new epoch. The experience of
modernity [Neuzeit], Koselleck postulated, is at the same time the experi-
ence of a modern time [neue Zeit].6 This semantic shift released a sequence
of chain reactions that reconfigured the semantic contents of concepts and
ultimately inaugurated our own modern age. It essentially gave rise to new
ways of conceptually conveying experiences, hopes, reasons, beliefs and
desires.7
The details of the Sattelzeit thesis have been widely discussed and criti-
cized from various perspectives.8 For present purposes it is more important
to concentrate on Kosellecks methodological and theoretical framework,
rather than on his historical theses.
With Sellars in mind, it might be helpful to stress that for Koselleck, con-
ceptual change is always the result of a social practice. No single person
could purport to change the meaning of a word by herself. Concepts can
only be changed or stabilized in communicative exchange, positioned
inside the framework of a speech community. Like Sellars and the later
Wittgenstein, but unlike Kant, Koselleck identifies the possession of a con-
cept with the mastery of its use in a linguistic community. The meaning of
a concept is constituted by the rules of its use. That is to say that concepts
are first and foremost social phenomena and not independent tools for the
individual subject to inspect his world. As a being endowed with language,
6)R. Koselleck, Die Verzeitlichung der Begriffe, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Begriffsgeschichten:
2010), p. 76.
7)It might be stressed that Koselleck is here not making an ontological claim, but rather an
epistemological one. He does not mean to say that the content of the modern concept love
or future did not ontologically exist before the late 18th century. He simply gives an account
of how a speech community came to be able to apply new concepts non-inferentially to
experiences and so for the first time came to notice and be aware of new thoughts and sense
impressions they might have had earlier.
8)See e.g. G. Motzkin, On the Notion of Historical (Dis)Continuity. Reinhart Kosellecks
Construction of the Sattelzeit, Contributions to the History of Concepts, 1, 1 (2005), pp. 145158;
H. Jordheim, Unzhlbar viele Zeiten. Die Sattelzeit im Spiegel der Gleichzeitigkeit des
Ungleichzeitigen, in H. Joas (ed.), Begriffene Geschichte: Beitrge zum Werk Reinhart
Kosellecks (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), pp. 449481.
writes Koselleck, the human individual originated with social existence.9
Thus, no one makes his own concepts. We are all lenders and borrowers.
Koselleck argued that we have no clear concepts except as these are clari-
fied in the process of being grasped by others.
Unlike some postmodernists, Koselleck argued that there will always
remain a disjunction between non-inferential knowledge and language.10
Linguistic concepts do not mirror the experiences a person makes, nor do
concepts produce the experiences on their own. Although experiences can
only be understood through language, they are independent of language.
He endorsed the Kantian claim that knowledge begins with experience, but
does not arise out of experience. In this sense, Koselleck was an historical
realist. Something must have actually taken place as a prerequisite, he
believed, for someone to say something about it. Language and experience,
thus, are two different ontological animals.11 Both refer to one another,
Koselleck claimed, without being able to supersede each other.12
It follows from this that concepts constitutive of a speech community do
not offer accurate, empirical vocabulary, perfectly tailored to an individuals
experiences. Koselleck repeatedly pointed out that spoken language is
always more or less than actual history.13 By this he simply meant that
concepts cannot perfectly convey the experiences of an individual. In a
similar vein, he also spoke of a hiatus between social contents and the
9)R. Koselleck, Social History and Conceptual History, International Journal of Politics,
Cul ture, and Society, 2, 3 (1989), p. 312.
10)Koselleck therefore did not endorse Jacques Derridas axial proposition that there is
nothing outside the text (il ny a pas de hors-texte. See: J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (2nd
edn, Baltimore, 1997), p. 163). For Koselleck there is a tangible reality beyond language that
can or cannot be made sense of with language. There is a categorical difference between
language and experience for Koselleck. (See e.g. R. Koselleck, Die Geschichte der Begriffe
und Begriffe der Geschichte).
11)He says that language and history have two different kinds of beings (verschiedene
Seinsweisen): R. Koselleck, Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte, in R. Koselleck (ed.),
Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache
(Frankfurt a.M, 2010), p. 32.
12)Koselleck, Social History and Conceptual History, p. 311.
13)Koselleck, Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte, p. 37. See also: Koselleck, Die
Geschichte der Begriffe und Begriffe der Geschichte, p. 70; Koselleck, Stichwort:
Begriffsgeschichte, p. 102.
linguistic usage that seeks to fix this content.14 In a world where every indi-
vidual could use his or her own made up language, language might be used
to give empirical descriptions of experiences. But since language is shared
and semantically determined by a speech community, and since experi-
ence and language are separate ontological species, the primary role of
concepts is not to offer empirical descriptions but to justify claims about
experience. When one argues that the experience X should not be
described with the concept but rather with the concept , one is not
claiming that is the false empirical description for X, but that its use is
not sufficiently justified for that description.
It is precisely because concepts are employed to justify claims that their
use and content often come under attack. Times of social upheaval or polit-
ical transformation tend to be accompanied by semantic shifts because
concepts are used to justify different claims and give various accounts of
experiences. The semantic struggle for the definition of political or social
position, defending or occupying these positions by deploying a given defi-
nition, Koselleck claims, is a struggle that belongs to all times of crises.15
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous Democracy in America, emphasized
precisely this point when he described the ways in which American democ-
racy have altered the English language: The general agitation and intellec-
tual competition [in a democracy] elicit a large number of new ideas. Old
ideas may vanish or reappear or ramify to produce countless subtle vari-
ants. Consequently, some words must be retired from use, while others
have to be introduced.16 This sentiment was also voiced almost a century
later by Victor Klemperer, the famous Jewish professor of literature, whose
diaries detailed his experiences and observations under the Nazi Regime.
The book that eventually resulted from this diary, Lingua Tertii Imperii
(1947), examined how the language of a clique became the language of a
people.17 Nazism, he wrote, permeated the flesh and blood of the people
through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed
on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and
14)R. Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichte and Social History, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Futures Past:
On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York, 2004), p. 87.
15)Ibid., p. 80.
16)Ibid., p. 548.
17)V. Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI Lingua Tertii Imperii. A Philologists
Notebook (London, New York, 2006), p. 17.
unconsciously.18 Conceptual change thus attends the reconstitution of
social change and is itself a species of political innovation, because con-
cepts are always used to justify claims.19
Insofar as concepts are not congruent with experience, Koselleck takes
one step further and argues that concepts have a different internal tempo-
ral structure than events.20 Like trees, concepts have growth rings. The
task of Conceptual History is therefore to retrace the history and the seman-
tic shifts of concepts. When this is successfully carried out, as in many of
the articles of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, the different histories of
concepts become peepholes through which we can peer into past worlds.
Each concept establishes a particular horizon for potential experience and
conceivable theory, and in this way sets a limit. The history of concepts is
therefore able to provide knowledge that is not accessible through empiri-
cal study. The language of concepts is a consistent medium in which expe-
riential capacity and theoretical stability can be evaluated.21 But not only
does Conceptual History reconstruct how single concepts came to justify
and enable different claims and historical processes. Taken together, the
histories of all concepts also elicit temporal patterns of historical develop-
ment that otherwise remain hidden if one simply describes features of suc-
cessive events.
By retracing the historical trajectories of concepts, historians can not
only tell us the history of different interpretations of historical realities,
they also reconstruct the representations of historical reality that are con-
tained within concepts themselves. Like Frank Ankersmit, Koselleck
upholds the priority of representation over interpretation.22 And Concep-
tual History understands itself as an enterprise that is not only interested in
reconstructing various interpretations that people had in the past. Concep-
tual History is not only in the business of interpreting past interpretations.
It is interested in carefully excavating the changing meanings of concepts,
in order to give an account of the representational possibilities. This is why
18)Ibid., p. 14.
19)For conceptual change in the 20th century see: W. Steinmetz (ed.), Political Languages in
the Age of Extremes (New York, 2011).
20)Koselleck, Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte, p. 45.
21)Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichte and Social History, p. 86.
22)See e.g. Frank Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), especially pp. 4886.
Koselleck himself felt a much greater affinity to social history than to
hermeneutics.23 He was not interested in re-enacting the past (Colling-
wood) or fusing the horizons between present and past (Gadamer). Rather,
he aimed at giving a detailed historical account of past social action in
terms of concepts.
To summarize, Conceptual History is committed to the Kantian notion
that concepts are tools with which we can interpret, but not create, reality.
The limits of ones language do not mark the limits of ones world, they
mark the limits of ones conceptual awareness of the world. Conceptual
History concentrates on studying the history of concepts and looks at how
social and specifically political practices change the semantic content of
concepts, in order to regain what Raymond Williams once called an extra
edge of consciousness24 of the past. Conceptual History is not interested in
bygone internal psychological processes, rather it is interested in studying
shifts of the conceptual frameworks that define boundaries or open up new
ways of conceptualizing the world, future, politics or the self. The study of
concepts is thus seen as an essential rather than incidental task of the his-
torical discipline.
III
When we turn to the details of Kosellecks philosophy of language and, spe-
cifically, when we turn to the precise nature of a word and the relationship
between concept and basic concept (Grundbegriff ) respectively, we run
into difficulties that have not attracted enough attention.
Before I start with the constructive part, I must lay out the problems of
Conceptual History, as I see them. The relation between a concept and a
basic concept is the least problematic: the difference between both is not
ontological or categorical, but one of significance. Basic concepts have
played a more significant role in political and cultural debates than other
concepts and can be viewed as, what W.B. Gallie once called, essentially
23)See Reinhart Koselleck, Historik und Hermeneutik, in Reinhart Koselleck, ed., Zeit-
schichten: Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 97118.
24)R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London, 1976), p. 21.
contested concepts.25 Family, laughter, or red, for example, have not
sparked as much political and cultural debate as the concepts revolution,
patriotism, or state. And especially, they have not been used to galva-
nize people into as much political action as the concepts revolution or
patriotism. And so, what should be counted as a basic concept versus
merely a common concept depends on the historical record and the judg-
ment of the historian.
The relationship between a word and a concept is a much greater prob-
lem.26 If one were to write a conceptual history for instance of the concept
state, then one would encounter the use of related words such as admin-
istration, commonwealth, or people. The diverse historical sources do
not use the identical words, but strikingly seem to be talking about one and
the same historical reality. The historian thus immediately encounters the
difficulty of deciding whether or not to include different words in the his-
tory of a single concept. A concept, then, appears to be an entity that is not
identical with a word. The history of a concept goes beyond the history of a
word. But then, what is a concept?
In the introduction to the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Koselleck wrote
that the concept is connected to a word, but is at the same time more than
a word. [. . .] Concepts are the concentrate of several substantial meanings.27
Concepts are more than words and so are extra- or nonlinguistic entities.
But then how do the entities of this non-linguistic world relate to the world
of words? Is the relationship between concepts and words like that of types
and tokens? Are concepts something like Lovejoyean unit-ideas?28 Other
questions arise concerning conceptual meaning. Where does the meaning
of a concept come from? Koselleck clearly states that concepts are not
given in experience, so the source of meaning cannot be found in the
25)W.B. Gallie, Essentially Contested Concepts, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
New Series 56. 19551956, S. 167198.
26)For the problematic treatment of the relationship between words and concepts see:
D. Busse, Historische Semantik: Analyse eines Programms (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 77101 and
166174; H. Schultz, Begriffsgeschichte und Argumentationsgeschichte, in H. Joas (ed.),
Begriffene Geschichte: Beitrge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks (Frankfurt am Main, 2009),
pp. 225263.
27)Koselleck, Einleitung, p. XXII; see also Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichte and Social History,
p. 85.
28)A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge,
1964), pp. 323.
relation between concept and sensation or in their relation to objects for
which they stand. But how then can concepts be meaningful? Are concepts
simply properly basic, abstract entities that are a part of the metaphysical
furniture of the world? And are minds organs that can intuit these non-
empirical entities? This seems to be an unfortunate ontological commit-
ment that Koselleck would not be willing to make.
Koselleck never properly discusses these questions, although they are of
the utmost importance for Conceptual History. In a quite polemic attack
of Conceptual History, Philip Sarasin has recently claimed that any use of
Grundbegriffe is bad metaphysics because he can not discern how a basic
concept would be defined.29 I agree with Sarasin that Conceptual History
lacks what one could call a robust account in terms of philosophy of lan-
guage. And I also agree with Sarasin that filling the gap with postmodern
and hermeneutic philosophy is hardly going to pave the way out of the pre-
dicament. But in contrast to Sarasin, I do not rule out the possibility of
clearing up some of the metaphysical fog around Conceptual History by
turning to other options that present themselves in analytic philosophy. It
is important and feasible, I believe, to clarify the goals of Conceptual His-
tory and offer a robust defense of its basic claims in terms of philosophy of
language.
Now, there are a host of methods and analytical tools one could employ
to understand the nature of concepts and how they relate to words. One
way to grapple with this problem, would be to simply hold that concepts
are universals.30 This would be the answer of the platonic realist. Univer-
sals, it would here be claimed although, of course, there are many differ-
ent forms of this position , are mind-independent and essentially
extralinguistic entities, because they are causally inert and non-spatiotem-
poral objects. These entities populate a more real realm, set apart from the
physical one. Universals are instantiated by numerically distinct objects or
words, but do not consist of them. So the universal tree, for instance,
becomes instantiated when I point my finger at a tree and utter: That is a
tree. The concept tree then becomes instantiated in my use of the word
29)Roundtable: Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Reloaded? Writing the Conceptual History
of the Twentieth Century, Contributions to the History of Concept, 7, 2 (2012), 78128, here
p. 104.
30)The most influential work on universals is: D.M. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific
Realism, vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge, 1978 and 1980).
tree. The concept would then materialize in different words, but retain an
ideal, meaningful unity.
Holding that there are metaphysical units like trees, chairs, kinds, and
properties answers some perennial problems of philosophy, such as how it
is possible that although all trees are physically different, we have no prob-
lem identifying them with the single property tree. It would also explain
how there are such things as concepts that seem to have an abstract exis-
tence and that can find expression in different words. Roughly speaking,
the overall strategy that platonic realism develops is helpful. The idea
that there are ones that stand above and classify manys will play a key
role later.
However, the project of platonic realism in its entirety endorses existen-
tial commitments (e.g. mind-body dualism, metaphysical foundational-
ism) that prove in the end to be problematic and, in reference to our
discussion, pose great problems for Conceptual History. The notion that
concepts should be abstract ideas or units, intuited by non-material minds
or souls runs into the face of most ontological commitments shared by 20th
century philosophers. In fact, Koselleck explicitly states that basic con-
cepts cannot be defined as timeless ideas.31 More to the point, the core
problem is that once a concept is taken to be an universal, tracing the his-
tory of a concept becomes a senseless task. Universals by definition cannot
change over time. And the history of concepts is not the history of various
interpretations of timeless concepts. Thus, platonic realism ultimately fails
to be a live option for Conceptual History.
Another philosophical position that could offer answers to the above
questions would be a logical-positivist position that gives a formally logical
or mathematical account of concepts. One might, for instance, argue with
Gottlob Frege that concepts are functions that correlate objects (or singu-
lar terms) to truth values.32 These concepts are not only mathematical ones
for Frege but also contain concepts such as Caesar or London.33 More
31)Koselleck, Stichwort: Begriffsgeschichte p. 100.
32)See: G. Frege, Begriffsschrift, in G. Frege and T.W. Bynum (eds.), Conceptual Notation,
and Related Articles (Oxford, 1972), pp. 101203; G. Frege, Function and Concept (1891), in
G. Frege and M. Beaney (eds.), The Frege Reader (Oxford, 1997), pp. 130148; G. Frege, The
Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number.
Translated by J.L. Austin (2nd edn, New York, 1960).
33)See: Frege, Function and Concept (1891).
specifically, in his first seminal work, the Concept Notation (Begriffsschrift,
1879), Frege defines conceptual content in virtue of the role it plays in judg-
ments or inferences: Only that part of judgments which affects the possible
inferences is taken into consideration.34
So, for Frege, concepts are more than words, but they are not abstract
entities in the platonic sense. Rather, for Frege, concepts play a functional
role in language. Concepts are not isolated islands of meaning, instead they
are integral parts of a meaningful sentential structure. Conceptual contents
are like pieces on a chess board that make correct moves and advance the
progress of a game. Like a chess piece, a concept has a certain function in a
game that allows one to make a correct move. Concepts in Freges philoso-
phy are not words, but are rather the implicit components of what is actu-
ally being expressed by words. Although this highly formal explication of a
concept and its content is too abstract for our purposes, the strategy of
explicating concepts in functional and inferential terms will be discussed
and adopted later.
However, and here we turn to the problems with Freges concept of a
concept, in order to discover the logical foundations of thinking, Frege is at
pains to analyze away the historical dimension of concepts. He states in
The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) that the historical discipline is itself
not completely meaningless, but he states that:
the historical approach [. . .] has its limitations. If everything were in continual
flux, and nothing maintained itself fixed for all time, there would not longer be
any possibility of getting to know anything about the world and everything
would be plunged in confusion. [. . .] What is known as the history of concepts
is really a history either of our knowledge of concepts or of the meanings of
words.35
I believe that Koselleck would have agreed to a large extent with Frege that
there must be fixed elements built into the fabric of reality or at least into
the human mind, in virtue of which we can make sense of the continual
34)Ibid., 3, p. 103.
35)Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, p. XIX. His effort to de-historicize concepts can a
lso explicitly be seen in his treatment of the concept inhabitant of Germany in 46 of Ibid.,
pp. 59f.
flux.36 But Koselleck is not convinced that these fixed structures must be
concepts that hold everything together. His research, in fact, has argued
against this position and empirically demonstrated that concepts are not
ahistorical or static, but have histories. And the history of concepts is nei-
ther the history of our knowledge of concepts nor of the meaning of words.
Rather it is the history of the possibility and conditionality of certain knowl-
edge and the capacity to articulate this knowledge.37
The formally logical position therefore has a similar problem as that of
the platonic realist. It fails to explain how a concept can have a history or
how a concept could ever change. Could Frege explain why the concept
future is so different in the 13th century compared to the 20th century?
Could there be a Fregean account for the transformation of this concept in
the late 19th century? Frege does give us an idea of how new concepts can
logically evolve out of other concepts.38 But this is a purely logical descrip-
tion. He never goes historical and tries to understand conceptual change
in terms of social practices. In short, a formally logical or mathematical
account of concepts predicates on de-historicizing concepts and is thus
useless for Conceptual History.
Another classical position in this debate would be nominalism. There
are a multitude of different nominalist positions, but what unites nominal-
ists is that they flatly reject the claim that there are abstract, non-spatiotem-
poral and causally inert entities.39 For nominalists there are only particulars.
One argument against universals, perhaps the most famous, is based on
36)The fixed elements for Koselleck, however, are cast in existentialist terms. He argues
that these existentialist categories structure reality. Every historical anthropology must
address presets that protrude into the realm of history as natural conditions. One can call
these conditions [. . .] metahistorical (Koselleck, Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte,
p. 33). He names three pairs of metahistorical, anthropological conditions of historical expe-
rience: before/after; inside/outside; above/below (Ibid., p. 33ff). These anthropological con-
stants can be understood as parameters that structure experience and make reality tangible.
And it is in virtue of this pre-structured reality that language has purchase on experiences.
37)It would not be impossible to reconcile Frege with Koselleck, however, if one took Frege
to be talking about logical meta-concepts that govern normative thinking. Koselleck is not
interested in understanding the logical structure of thinking, but in the cultural and politi-
cal implementation of thinking and applying concepts.
38)He does this when he writes about how the concept of a direction can logically evolve
from the concept of a line: Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, 6469.
39)The most well known nominalist position in the 20th century was arguably held by
Goodman and Quine: N. Goodman and W.V.O. Quine, Steps Toward a Constructive
Occams razor. This lex parsimoniae-argument simply states that abstract
entities are to be shaved off if one can offer a more economical explanation
that make abstract entities obsolete. If concrete entities can explain some-
thing better than abstract entities, then the postulated abstract entities are
superfluous and should be discarded.
While nominalism releases us from some of the metaphysical baggage of
platonism, it has problems of its own. If there are only particulars in the
world, then how can one account for the capacity of humans to use sub-
suming categories such as numbers or properties? To say that there are
only particulars is tantamount to claiming that nothing ever repeats itself.
But on what basis are we able to classify something as being a member of
something else if repeatability is rejected? To hold that there are not such
things as numbers or properties, not even the representations of these, bor-
ders on the absurd. To cut the discussion short, a nominalist would have to
concede that there are such things as numbers and properties, but he could
think of them not as metaphysical, abstract entities, but rather as particu-
lars that classify other particulars. This is precisely the position for which
Sellars will argue.
I have summarized different positions that provide possible perspec-
tives from which one can understand the nature of concepts and the rela-
tionship between words and concepts. Despite the different respective
weaknesses of the platonist, logical-positivist and nominalist positions, I
have also highlighted the arguments that I believe Sellars integrates into
his own philosophical project, to which we now turn.
IV
Wilfrid Sellars worked out his position on universals and abstract objects in
a series of four articles from 1958 to 1963.40 In the end he called himself a
Nominalism, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 12 (1947), pp. 105122; W.V.O. Quine, On
Universals, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 12 (1947), pp. 7484.
40)W. Sellars, Counterfactuals, Dispositions and the Causal Modalities, in H. Feigl (ed.),
Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 2 (Minneapolis, 1958), pp. 225308;
W. Sellars, Grammar and Existence. A Preface to Ontology, in W. Sellars, K. Scharp and
R. Brandom (eds.), In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars (Cambridge,
Mass, 2007), pp. 126162; W. Sellars, Naming and Saying, in, In the Space of Reasons,
pp. 103125; W. Sellars, Abstract Entities, in, In the Space of Reasons, pp. 163205.
nominalist, but he also expressed the feeling that his nominalism entitled
him to certain freedoms that others nominalists usually do not have.41 To
understand Sellars nominalism, I think it is helpful understand it as a dual-
commitment:
1. universals do not exist in any kind of way (ontologically, logically, lin-
guistically, as sets, etc.)
2. there are metalinguistic ones that are not universals but that can clas-
sify manys
While the first commitment is more or less straightforwardly nominalist,
the second commitment needs some illumination.
In Abstract Entities (1963) Sellars makes the point that not all ones
over and against manys are universals (i.e. qualities, relations, sorts, kinds
or classes), and, consequently, to conclude that the problem of the one and
the many is in fact broader than the problem of universals (in a the speci-
fied sense).42 There are things, Sellars is saying here, that do classify other
things, but understanding this relationship can be done without recourse
to universals. The strategy he employs to hold on to both commitments is
to understand these ones in functional terms.
He uses a very Wittgensteinian example to argue on these grounds.
Consider, for example, the various pieces of chess. A familiar dialectic
unfolds. Pawns, for example, are a concrete many. Over and against this
many is the pawn as a one.43 And later he adds:
If [. . .] we can understand the relation of the lion (one) to lions (many) with-
out construing the lion as a universal of which lions are instances; and if the
looked-for singular term pertaining to pawns can be construed by analogy
with the lion indeed, as the pawn then we would be in a position to
41)For good treatments of Sellars nominalism, see: W.A. DeVries, Wilfrid Sellars (Montreal,
2005), pp. 6793; J.R. OShea, Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn, vol. 6 (Key
Contemporary Thinkers, 6, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 4877; M.J. Loux, Metaphysics (3rd edn,
London, 2006), 6471; J. Seibt, Properties as Processes: A Synoptic Study of Wilfrid Sellars
Nominalism (Atascadero, CA, 1990).
42)Sellars, Abstract Entities, p. 166.
43)Ibid., p. 165.
understand how the pawn could be a one as against a many, without being a
universal of which pawns are instances.44
Meaning is therefore not a relation between one universal and many par-
ticulars, but rather meaning is functional classification.45 And so terms
derive their meaning from the role they play in a language, or more specifi-
cally from the inferences they can license in a conceptual framework. For
Sellars the conceptual meaning of a descriptive term is constituted by
what can be inferred from it in accordance with the logical and extra-
logical [i.e. material] rules of inference of the language (conceptual frame)
to which it belongs.46 To expound on this, Sellars introduces a number of
conceptual tools.
1. Distributive Singular Terms (DST): These ones he is concerned with
here, are functional terms that name singular items. He introduces the des-
ignation distributive singular terms (DST) for these ones. He believes
that distributive singular terms are not additional vocabulary for talking
about the manys. Rather he argues that in fact talk of manys is talk of
ones, if one tries to construe logically what is actually being said. DSTs are
expressions of the form the pawn, or the state, or in general: the K,
where K is a common noun. A DST is thus a conceptual tool to emphasize
that something nominalizes sortals and thereby can enable us to make
claims about various Ks, not a single K, but all of them, distributively. So,
the word states in the phrase states are peaceful is, more perspicuously,
in fact talk about the state, when boiled down to what is being said con-
cretely. Thus, Ks are peaceful is more perspicuously construed as the K
(and distributively, the Ks) is peaceful. And K-ness is better understood
as the K and distributively the Ks. In this sense, Sellars postulates that he
can unearth a sense in which ones are reducible to manys.47 This way of
44)Ibid., p. 167.
45)To say what an expression means is to classify it functionally by means of an illustrating
sortal. W. Sellars, Conceptual Change, in W. Sellars (ed.), Essays in Philosophy and its
History (Boston, 1974), p. 180). See also W. Sellars, Meaning as Functional Classification.
A Perspective on the Relation of Syntax to Semantics, in, In the Space of Reasons, pp. 81100.
46)W. Sellars, Is There a Synthetic A Priori?, in W. Sellars (ed.), Science, Perception and
Reality (Atascadero, Calif, 1991), p. 317. See also W. Sellars, Inference and Meaning, in, In the
Space of Reasons, pp. 327.
47)Sellars, Abstract Entities, p. 168.
talking about the ones is more concrete than other ways, especially pla-
tonic ways, of talking about ones.48
2. Dot Quotes: To form a clearer sense of DSTs, he introduces a further
conceptual tool: dot quotes. Dot quotes, Sellars writes, are used to form
the common nouns which refer to the items which play the role played in
our language by the design illustrated between them.49 So, the state is
peaceful should be understood as the state is peaceful; and states are
peaceful as states are peaceful, with state having a certain function
in a conceptual framework. Dot quoted DSTs functionally classify expres-
sions that play a specific role in a language. Just like a chess piece that is
able to move any number of squares diagonally, but may not leap over
other pieces, is called a bishop, a dot quoted DST that tells us that the Ks
are F and G. And Ks that can license the inference if K then X, can be
called called K.
This means that dot quoted expressions are language independent, or
more precisely, dot quoted DSTs can be understood as metalinguistic func-
tional classificatory sortals. And so triangularity-talk, redness-talk, state-
hood-talk is misleading, because it is not explicitly metalinguistic, in its
way of talking about the triangular, red or state. And the metalinguis-
tic duty of these sortals is licensing good inferences. This is the Fregean
insight of Sellars philosophy: that concepts have content in virtue of the
role they play in inferences. In this sense Sellars is a Fregean, and by exten-
sion, I believe Koselleck should be one, too.
Although more could be said about Sellars nominalism, this must suf-
fice for our purposes. Some have found Sellars nominalism a misguided
effort that is basically a Rube Goldberg machine that does a lot of work, but
ends up at a position in which platonists already find themselves.50 Some
take DSTs to be nothing more than sly euphemisms for abstract entities,
strikingly analogous to platonic univerals. Others have been able to make
48)Sellars would nonetheless have to admit in saying: nothing is abstract, every item is
concrete, but some things are more concrete than others.
49)Ibid., p. 167, footnote 5.
50)Sellars himself wrote: I have often been asked, what does one gain by abandoning such
standard Platonic entities as triangularity or that 2+2=4 only to countenance such exotic
abstract entities as functions, roles, rules and pieces. The answer is, of course, that the above
strategy abandons nothing but a picture. Triangularity is not abandoned; rather triangularity
is see for what it is, a metalinguistic distributive singular term. Sellars, Conceptual Change,
p. 184. For criticism of Sellars nominalism see for instance Loux, Metaphysics, p. 70f.
more of Sellars nominalism.51 The overarching idea that Sellars does cash
in, I believe, is that to say triangularity is a property is saying in the mate-
rial mode, what is said more perspicuously in the formal mode, which is for
Sellars the metalinguistic locution triangular is a distributive singular
term. Sellars nominalism thus naturalizes universals by understanding
them as metalinguistic classificatory expressions. And this in turn allows
him to abandon unfortunate ontological commitments, such that univer-
sals actually exist metaphysically.
To come back to Koselleck, I suggest that we should view Kosellecks
basic concepts as dot quoted DSTs. The basic concept state or crisis
should be understood, I argue, as the DST state or crisis.52 It is in this
mode, namely, that we are entitled to the Koselleckian claim that the con-
cept state is connected to a word, but is at the same time more than a
word.53 The state is thus not a nonlinguistic universal, but rather is a
metalinguistic singular term that will be connected to words in the practice
of licensing certain inferences. But state is not the word state. It is a
metalinguistic sortal that plays a certain functional role in a certain con-
ceptual framework. Here we find, so I argue, a more precise way of articu-
lating and construing the notion of a concept that remains blurred in
Kosellecks writings.
Additionally, when we identify concepts with dot quoted DSTs, we can
articulate a robust understanding of conceptual change. Concepts change,
I argue, when the conceptual framework changes, in which a concept has a
51) Michael Loux believes that Sellars is the only nominalist who has actually gone to the
trouble of showing how the project [of nominalism] is to be carried out in detail; and his
efforts have resulted in one of the most impressive pieces of twentieth-century metaphysics
(Ibid., p. 70). See also M.J. Loux, Substance and Attribute: A Study in Ontology (Dordrecht,
1978), pp. 7885.
52)One could also write a conceptual history of a verb. Nominalists are obviously not con-
cerned about verbs in the way they are about common nouns. Concerning verbs, one would
obviously not construe them as DSTs, but there can be no objection to keeping to the
dot quote mechanism. So writing the conceptual history of killing would be to write the
conceptual history of killing.
53)Koselleck, einleitung, p. XXII; see also Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichte and Social History,
p. 85.
certain functional job. Sellars himself offers an example of conceptual
change.54 Suppose that:
(1)at T
1
physicists believe that length is independent of velocity
(2)at T
2
physicists believe that length is a function of velocity
Now, if we say that T
1
is the 18th century and T
2
is the 20th century, then we
can say that the concept length, or more precisely length, has not only
changed due to the belief that physicists have about the concept. But rather
we can say that the concept length has changed because it fulfills a differ-
ent function in the conceptual framework of Newtonian physics compared
to Einsteinian physics. Length plays a different functional role and the
meaning of the concept licenses different inferences in the conceptual
framework of T
1
compared to T
2
.
V
Sellars holistic claim that one can have a concept only by having a whole
battery of concepts55 and that conceptual change is part of a transforma-
tion of a conceptual framework would remain a fragile philosophical posi-
tion, were it not part of a larger project. Sellars nominalism and his
functionalist account of concepts form small pieces of a much larger philo-
sophical picture that Sellars worked out throughout his career. I now turn
to sketching very briefly Sellars larger philosophical work, in order to show
the family resemblance it bears to Conceptual History.
Sellars life-long project was to attack the myth of the given, that is, the
idea that humans have sensations that are simply given in perception and
then use language instrumentally to describe the sensations they have of
the world. It might be helpful to illustrate where Sellars disagrees with
empiricism. Take a child who is taught that when it sees an apple, she is to
54)This example is taken from the Wilfrid Sellars: Notre Dame Lectures 19691986 (Boot-
leg Version) at Robert Brandoms webpage at: http://www.pitt.edu/~brandom/phil-2245/
downloads/Sellars.The.Notre.Dame.Lectures.March.1.pdf. These lectures can also be found
in manuscript form at http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=ascead;
cc=ascead;q1=sellars;rgn=main;view=text;didno=US-PPiU-asp199101.
55)W. Sellars, R. Brandom and R. Rorty, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (3rd edn,
Cambridge, 2000), p. 44.
utter apple. After this learning process has continued for a while, the child
develops the ability to utter tree under the appropriate circumstances.
Both Sellars and empiricists would agree so far, that humans have sensa-
tions and learn to describe the world with language. But Sellars points out
that this story is by all means not complete. In the story so far, humans do
not differ from parrots or even dogs barking. Learning the meaning of the
word apple is not completed when we utter the word in response to a
sense episode. The idea that sensing a sense content apple entails the
non-inferential belief that there is an apple is what Sellars calls the myth
of the given.
What makes human communication categorically different from other
animal communication, is that humans not only describe the world, they
know how to describe the world. That is, humans not only learn concepts to
describe objects, but more importantly learn how to appropriately use con-
cepts to justify knowledge-claims. In characterizing an episode or a state
as that of knowing, Sellars wrote, we are not giving an empirical descrip-
tion of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons,
of justifying and being able to justify what one says.56
It is important to stress that Sellars is not an anti-foundationalist or post-
structuralist la Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault.57 The main reason is
that Sellars is committed to the Kantian claim that reason is governed by
normativity. The logical space of reasons is essentially a space structured
by norms. To be able to think is to be able to measure ones thoughts by
standards of correctness, of relevance, of evidence.58 Thus we are subject
56)Ibid., p. 76.
57)There is clearly some point to the picture of human knowledge as resting on a level of
propositions observation reports which do not rest on other propositions in the same
way as other propositions rest on them. On the other hand, I do wish to insist that the meta-
phor of foundation is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical
dimension in which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is
another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former. [. . .] For empirical knowl-
edge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational, not because it has a foundation
but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though
not all at once. Ibid., p. 78f.
58)W. Sellars, Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, in, In the Space of Reasons,
p. 374.
to the peculiar force of the better reason59 because reasons are part of a
normative metalanguage that we rely on to make claims. So like Koselleck,
Sellars does not believe that the limits of ones language mark the limits of
ones world. In saying that the empiricist and instrumentalist view of
language is radically mistaken, and arguing that thinking is essentially a
verbal activity,60 he does not fall prey to the relativistic pitfalls of anti-
foundationalism or post-structuralism.
Sellars philosophy manages to climb out of the mind of isolated thinkers
and understand language as a social project. Language for Sellars is essen-
tially an intersubjective achievement.61 If speech is located in the norma-
tive space of reasons then we are always caught up in the social practice of
giving and asking for reasons. Sellars writes: The essentially social charac-
ter of conceptual thinking comes clearly to mind when we recognize that
there is no thinking apart from common standards of correctness and rel-
evance, which relate what I do think to what anyone ought to think. The
contrast between I and anyone is essential to rational thought.62
Sellars linguistic community is interactive and one that carries the entire
weight of meaning without handing it over to any other metaphysical
bearer. All matters of meaning and authority are, in the end, matters of
social practice, not ontology. Intersubjective interaction, the game of giv-
ing and asking for reasons, is a practice that stabilizes or destabilizes knowl-
edge. But this linguistic community does not fall prey to unrestrained
relativism. It would be impossible for Sellars linguistic community, unlike
Hobbes community, to ever pretend to believe that three angles of a tri-
angle should be equal to two angles of a square, even if this doctrine were
enforced by a tyrannical ruler.63 This is not due to ontology, but rather to
the normative space of reasons that governs social practice.
59)R. Brandom, Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment
(Cambridge, 1994), p. 5.
60)Sellars, Conceptual Change, p. 177.
61)Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, p. 107.
62)Sellars, Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, p. 384.
63)Thomas Hobbes seems to have believed that a very authoritative ruler could suppress
laws of geometry if it were important enough and served his interest. For I doubt not, but if
it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion, or to the interest of men that
have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square,
that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry
Once we place Sellars nominalism and functionalism into this wider
framework, a well-rounded and coherent picture emerges. Although obvi-
ously many aspects of Sellars thought have been left out and many ques-
tions could be posed, I believe that Conceptual History can and should
adopt this framework in justifying and legitimizing its own enterprise.
VI
Before I conclude, let me briefly digress and reply to a possible objection
that involves the role of representations. Frank Ankersmit has put much
effort into raising awareness of the precarious nature of representations for
historians.64 Representations (which can be a text, or a picture or a con-
cept) can be so tricky for historians, and possibly for Conceptual History,
because they have two dimensions: on the one hand, a representation can
be about something (a presented, as Ankersmit calls it65) that refers to an
object in the world that is beyond the representation itself (this can be
called extensional representation). On the other hand, a representation can
also be about a presented that points to a state of affairs that is contained
within the representation itself (this can be called intensional representa-
tion). By saying for instance that the king of France is bald,66 as John
Searle points out in his book Intentionality, we are not representing any-
thing extensionally, because there is no king of France at least not cur-
rently. But this does not mean that the phrase the king of France is bald is
devoid of any meaningful content. For a representation to be contentful,
there does not necessarily need to be any reference to the world. Under-
stood as not referring to any object in the world, the representation the
king of France is bald makes perfect sense. So we must note that there are
two dimensions of representations: one in which the representation refers
to something extensionally beyond itself, and one in which a representa-
suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able. (T. Hobbes and E.M. Curley, Levia-
than: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 (Indianapolis, 1994), p. 61.)
64)An effort that can be dated back to the 1980s. See e.g. F. Ankersmit, Narrative Logic:
A Semantic Analysis of the Historians Language (Den Haag, 1983), especially chapter 8;
F. Ankersmit, Historical Representation, History and Theory, 27, 3 (1988), pp. 205228.
65)F. Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation (Ithaca, 2012),
p. 72.
66)J.R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, 1983), p. 17.
tion intensionally points to a state of affairs that might or might not exist in
the world.
This two-dimensionality of representations can theoretically create a
number of pitfalls for historians. Specifically two dangers come to mind.
First of all, a historian might use a term that is important for organizing
his argument (much like Max Webers ideal type), but that is completely
anachronistic. This term does not represent any object in the historical
world in a strong sense, but it can nonetheless be used to organize ones
argument perfectly well. In this sense the historian is using the term
intensionally. For instance, when a contemporary historian uses the term
an intellectual for a person in the 15th century, then he is not using the
historically accurate term, because the term and the entire concept of
an intellectual (i.e. a social agent in the public sphere) arises for the first
time only in the late 19th century in France (les intellectuel). Before the late
19th century, the terms the intellectual, les intellectuel not der Intellek-
tueller did not exist. So when the historian loses sight of the fact that some
of his terms might not represent a historical object extensionally, but rather
a state of affairs intensionally, then there is a danger that he could be delud-
ing himself into giving an empirically exact description of the past.
The second danger crops up when an historian approaches a text that
was written in the past a primary source. By the same logic, when the
historian reads this text, he could be mislead in assuming that the text was
referring to some extensional object in the world, while it was only repre-
senting a state of affairs that entailed no reference to any objects of the
world. So the point is that the two dimensions of representations can cre-
ate dangers for historians.
Now, I want to point out that both Koselleck and Sellars would not want
to overstress these dangers, because it is not possible for the gap between
both dimensions of representation (intensional and extensional) to be as
big as some skeptics or deconstructivists would like us to believe. Although
the two-dimensionality of representation did not attract Kosellecks atten-
tion, I believe he was roughly aware of the problem whenever he would talk
about the verschiedene Seinsweisen67 of language and experience. And
he would argue that extensional and intensional representations are not
67)R. Koselleck, Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Begriffsge-
schichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frank-
furt a.M, 2010), p. 32.
that different once they become articulated in a language community and
partake in discursive interaction. While language can be an intensional
representation of states of affairs without referring to anything extension-
ally, experience must be articulated linguistically in order for it to gain con-
tent, and so also language will always refer to something external
(experiences) once it is used. This is roughly what Koselleck means when
he writes: For Conceptual History, language is on the one hand an indica-
tor of encountered reality and on the other hand a factor in the process of
finding reality.68 Or also when he writes: History does not evolve without
speech, but it is never identical with it, it cannot be reduced to it.69
Frank Ankersmit has made the point that every representation is a three-
point operator: from a logical point of view, representation is a three-place
and not a two-place operator: a representation (1) defines a represented (2)
in terms of which the world (3) is seen.70 Koselleck would argue that (3),
the represented reality that concepts offer, always has political, ideological
and utopian implications that offers a layout of how the world should be.
And precisely because every concept offers a represented reality that
might be closer or further away from the experienced reality, it can be
contested and replaced by a concept that offers a different represented
reality. So pragmatically the gap between extensional and intensional rep-
resentation will never be too large.
Koselleck gives an example where one represented reality offered by a
concept is contested and replaced by another represented reality offered
by a different concept:
In 1847 Marx und Engels were asked to write a Communist Confession of
Faith for the Communist League. The specifically German and the theological
implications are unmistakable. That is why Marx and Engels decided to radi-
cally rephrase the document. Instead of writing a Confession of Faith for the
Communist League they wrote a Manifesto of the Communist Party. This was
68)R. Koselleck, Stichwort: Begriffsgeschichte, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Begriffsgeschichten:
2010), p. 99.
69)R. Koselleck, Social History and Conceptual History, International Journal of Politics,
Culture, and Society, 2, 3 (1989), p. 312.
70)F. Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation (Ithaca, 2012),
p. 72.
a deliberate act of language politics which was innovative and effective in the
long run.71
Neither the word Glaubensbekenntnis (confession of faith) nor Mani-
fest (manifesto) refer to any extensional object in the world in any narrow
sense of the term, but the represented realities that are offered by these
concepts are very different and have different political and ideological
implications. And it is because concepts offer represented realities that
are continually compared to ones own desired reality and ones experi-
enced reality that concepts develop a dynamic history.
Koselleck would probably agree that there are two dimensions of repre-
sentations that should be kept in mind, but once a representation/concept
is pragmatically used in discursive debate, the political and ideological
implications of the representation (whether the representation is com-
pletely intensional or extensional) will urge the participants to contest or
confirm the legitimacy of the concept. And this means that the two dimen-
sions become more or less conflated in practical discourse. It is only in an
abstract thought experiment that the dangers of the two-dimensionality
appear to be imminent for historians.
Koselleck is very aware of the fact that most contemporary historians
use terms in their writings that do not refer to any objects of historical real-
ity. The terms historians use are often anachronistic, which of course does
not mean that they are worthless or meaningless, it just means that the
terms organize the historical writings in their own way. One of the main
motivations of Conceptual History, however, is the practice of avoiding
using contemporary terms for past realities, and rather to trace the exact
terms and concepts that people used to describe their own (desired or
experienced) reality. Koselleck wanted historians to be aware of the con-
cepts employed and be aware of the differences in use between contempo-
rary concepts and past concepts.
71)R. Koselleck, Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte, in R. Koselleck (ed.), Begriffsge-
schichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frank-
furt a.M, 2010), p. 47.
VII
I have argued that Conceptual History, if understood in light of Sellars phi-
losophy, is a reliable and important tool to investigate history. By tracing
basic concepts, historians can discover shifts of conceptual awareness and
possibilities of articulation; and by accumulating many conceptual histo-
ries, historians can discover important social developments that remain
hidden if one only otherwise examines events and social movements.
To summarize and conclude, I have argued that we should view con-
cepts as metalinguistic distributive singular terms. With this analytic tool,
we can endorse Kosellecks claim that a concept is connected to a word,
but at the same time is more than a word. Secondly, I have also argued
that the meaning of locutions does not arise by reference to experiences,
objects or universal ideas. Rather, meaning is functional classification that
occurs in a conceptual framework, and conceptual content arises in the
inferential use of metalinguistic sortals. Thirdly, conceptual change is the
result of a shift that occurs in the conceptual framework. And so while a
word might remain the same, it can happen that a concept metalinguisti-
cally adopts a new functional role. Finally, because Sellars argues that the
use of concepts always takes place in the logical space of reasons, which is
a space structured by norms and is bound to the logical rules of normativ-
ity, this philosophy of history does not fall prey to relativism or a relativistic
account of truth.
The challenge I have taken up has been to defend Conceptual History
without resorting to relativistic accounts of truth. Concepts cannot be
applied irrationally and no matter what kinds of concepts might arise in
the future, it will not be possible to convincingly argue that for instance
three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square. Because
concepts follow normative rules that are governed by social practice, con-
ceptual change is possible. Thus, meaning and conceptual change are sub-
ject to history, but because truth is held in check by the normative rules
that govern social practices, we can reasonably reject relativistic accounts
of truth.

Goering (Concepts History and The Game of Asking and Giving Reasons 2013)

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Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.

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