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Begriffsgeschichte

Begriffsgeschichte, literally “history of concepts,” is a field within historiography and the humanities that studies how the meanings of key concepts in political, social, and cultural discourse develop and shift over time. Rather than focusing solely on events, it examines how terms such as state, rights, liberty, revolution, or democracy acquire normative force and how their semantic fields evolve across periods and languages.

Developed in German historiography and crystallized by Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006), Begriffsgeschichte combines historical semantics with linguistics,

Key contributions include the multi-volume Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, a historical dictionary of political language in Germany, and

Begriffsgeschichte offers a method for understanding the politics of language and the contingency of political meanings,

philosophy,
and
political
theory.
It
emphasizes
the
interaction
between
language
and
social
practice
and
how
concepts
shape
political
claims,
collective
memory,
and
policy.
Koselleck
introduced
the
idea
of
semantic
history
(Historische
Semantik)
and
the
interplay
of
horizons
of
expectation
(Erwartungshorizonte)
and
experiential
horizons,
as
well
as
the
notion
of
the
saddle
period
(Sattelzeit)
around
1450–1650,
when
modern
political
vocabularies
emerged.
Koselleck’s
influential
analyses
within
Begriffsgeschichte
and
historical
semantics.
The
field
has
been
applied
across
German-speaking
Europe
and
beyond
to
study
transformations
in
rights
discourse,
citizenship,
sovereignty,
nationhood,
and
liberalism,
among
other
topics.
supplying
tools
for
cross-temporal
and
cross-cultural
comparison.
It
has
influenced
social
history
and
political
theory
but
faces
critique
regarding
methodological
subjectivity,
potential
teleology,
and
the
risk
of
reducing
complex
social
processes
to
linguistic
analysis.