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Two Perspectives
on Begriffsgeschichte
[History of Meaning]:
Francis Bacon
and
Reinhart Koselleck
Alan Kimball, University of Oregon
Francis Bacon
It's hard to believe
that nearly four centuries have passed since Francis Bacon
[ID] tried to teach us the dignity
and benefits of what he took to be actual knowledge, as opposed to the
crude approximations he observed in the realms of history, politics and literature. We
should not forget what Bacon said about plodding historians and affected poets =
All History,
excellent King, walks upon the earth, and performs the office rather of a
guide than of a light; whereas Poesy is as a dream of learning, a thing sweet
and varied, and that would be thought to have in it something divine, a
character which dreams likewise affect. [...] But now it is time for me to
awake, and rising above the earth, to wing my way through the clear air of
Philosophy and the Sciences.
{_{ De
Dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, book 3, chapter 1
[Bacon,Selection:411].}_}
Before we let Bacon
wing off and into the bright realm of true scientific knowledge of exact numbers
and physical measurements, we might listen
to his critique of words =
...words plainly
force and overrule the understanding and throw all into confusion, and lead
men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
{_{ The New
Organon, xlii) [337].}_}
Thus the great
wordsmith Bacon spoke out against words. He warned us of the “Idols of the
Market Place” [ID] =
Now words, being
commonly framed and applied according to the capacity of the vulgar, follow
those lines of division which are more obvious to the vulgar understanding.
And whenever an understanding of great acuteness or a more diligent
observation would alter these lines to suit the true divisions of nature,
words stand in the way and resist change.
{_{ Ibid., lix
[341].}_}
This is close to the
heart of what all historians want to do, to alter the lines of some of our
favorite words "to suit the true divisions of nature". But Bacon wouldn't let
historians off that easily =
Yet even
definitions cannot cure this evil in dealing with natural and material things;
since the definitions themselves consist of words, and those words beget
others....
{_{ Ibid., lix
[342].}_}
Bacon was writing
about "natural and material" things, while historians often deal with less
substantial aspects of human experience, e.g., "civil society". Historians do
not often ask questions of physics or biology but of human history. Historians,
in fact, often have as their central topic the historical meaning of key words
within a given cultural vocabulary.
Bacon understood
that there was a lot of superficiality in much that is called history, but he
went much further than this. He expressed a large measure of disdain for the
whole enterprise:
Hence Civil
History is beset on all sides with faults: some (and these are the greater
part) write only barren and commonplace narratives, a very reproach to
history; others hastily and disorderly string together a few particular
relations and trifling memoirs....
Bacon concluded that
"among all the writings of men there is nothing rarer than a true and perfect
Civil History."
{_{ De Dignitate
et augmentis scientiarum, book 2, chapter 5, "On the Dignity and Difficulty
of Civil History," Bacon,Selection:405-6.}_}
Given his distrust
of our feeble words, I think he meant to say, "nothing more impossible
than a true and perfect Civil History".
Reinhart Koselleck
One of the pioneers
of Begriffsgeschichte, Reinhart Koselleck, has written =
Without common
concepts there is no society, and above all, no political field of action.
Conversely, our concepts are founded in politicosocial [sic] systems that are
far more complex than would be indicated by treating them simply as linguistic
communities organized around specific key concepts. A "society" and its
"concepts" exist in a relation of tension which is also characteristic of its
academic historical disciplines.
{_{ Reinhart
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten
(Frankfurt am Main:1979), translated by Keith Tribe as Futures Past: On the
Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge MA:1985), p. 74.}_}
The relationship
between institution and concept is complex. Koselleck continues =
There exists
between concept and materiality a tension which now is transcended, now breaks
out afresh, now appears insoluble. Between linguistic usage and the social
materialities upon which it encroaches or to which it targets itself, there
can always be registered a certain hiatus. The transformation of the meaning
of words and the transformation of things, the change of situation and the
urge to rename, correspond diversely with each other.
{_{ Koselleck,
On the Semantics:85.}_}
<>Bacon's
simplicities about words and reality, with which this page opened, are here at
the end made very complex. It would appear that so long as we seek to
understand human experience in time there will be no escaping the various idols
that Bacon deplored, because the experience itself consists in some measure of
relationships and transformations of those idols. More Koselleck =
In the absence of
linguistic activity, historical events are not possible; the experience gained
from these events cannot be passed on without language. However, neither
events nor experiences are exhausted by their linguistic articulation. [...]
Language and history depend on each other but never coincide.
{_{ Koselleck,
On the Semantics:231-232.}_}
Now we're in the
soup. The situation is fundamentally more complicated than Bacon thought. He
made a comfortable but unwarranted distinction between the faulty mind and the
perfection of matter. Koselleck tells us not to do that =
Concepts within
which experiences collect and in which expectations are bound up are, as
linguistic performances, no mere epiphenomena of so-called real history.
Historical concepts, especially political and social concepts, are minted for
the registration and embodiment of the elements and forces of history.
{_{ Koselleck,
On the Semantics:232.}_}
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