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Linguistic Change and the History of Events Author(S): Reinhart Koselleck Source: the Journal of Modern History, Vol Linguistic Change and the History of Events Author(s): Reinhart Koselleck Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 649-666 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881462 Accessed: 11-09-2017 07:07 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Modern History This content downloaded from 128.214.211.195 on Mon, 11 Sep 2017 07:07:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Linguistic Change and the History of Events* Reinhart Koselleck Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin University of Chicago "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words (or names) will never hurt me." Like all sayings, this one contains an evident truth. Anyone who has been struck knows from experience that something more has taken place than language can accomplish. But, like all sayings, this one gives us only a partial truth-for it might be verbal aggression that causes one to resort to "sticks and stones." Words, too, can destroy. Herodotus relates that the mere reading of Darius's letters was sufficient to incite Oroites's bodyguards to murder the very man they were supposed to protect, Oroites himself.' Concerning the relationship between history and language, we can at any rate draw from these observations the following conclusion: history in the actual course of its occurrence has a different mode of being from that of the language spoken about it (whether before, after, or concomitant with the events). The current methodological debate about intellectual history tends to relativize the sharp antitheses between reality and thought, being and consciousness, history and language.2 In their place weaker antitheses are employed, ones whose terms can more easily be brought into relation to one another, as for instance "meaning and experience," where the terms mutually condition or elucidate one another, or "text and context," behind which both linguistic and nonlinguistic conditions are hidden. The sociology of knowledge and linguistic analysis converge, so to speak, when "meaning" and "experience" are set in relation to one another. I do not wish to contest the justification of such a methodological procedure. All language is historically conditioned, and all history is linguistically conditioned. Who would want to deny that all the concrete experiences we have only become experiences through the mediation of language? It is just this which makes history possible. But at the same time I do want to insist * Originally delivered on November 15, 1988 as "Language and History," the seventh Georges Lurcy Lecture at the University of Chicago. Translated for the Journal of Modern History by Stephen Duffy. 1 Herodotus, History 3.128. 2 Compare John E. Toews, "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience," American Historical Review 92 (1987): 879-907. [Journal of Modern History 61 (December 1989): 649-6661 ? 1989 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801/89/6104-0001$01.00 All rights reserved. This content downloaded from 128.214.211.195 on Mon, 11 Sep 2017 07:07:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 650 Koselleck that language and history be kept separate analytically, because neither one can be related in its entirety to the other. Between language and action-and, one might also say, between language and passion-there remains a difference, even if language is an act of speech, and even if action and passion are mediated by language. It is this difference, then, with which this paper will be concerned. I shall proceed in three steps.3 First, I want to call attention to some pre- and extralinguistic conditions of human history. Second, I want to describe in outline the relation between language and history in the process of coming- into-being of the events, of the happenings themselves. And, third, I want to sketch out the relation between language and history ex post, that is, after the uniquely experienced event and its context. I. THE PRELINGUISTIC CONDITIONS OF HUMAN HISTORY There are numerous natural givens, be they geographical, biological, or zoological, that mankind has in common with the animals but that also make history possible. Historical anthropology has to be concerned with these givens, which thrust their way, like quasi-natural conditions, into the realm of history. We might call these conditions, which mankind shares with the animals and which are to that extent pre- and extralinguistic, "metahistori- cal." I want to discuss three such metahistorical conditions of all possible histories. In the first place there is the span of time between birth and death which men have in common with animals. In conjunction with this there is the bipolarity of the sexes and generativity, without which there would be no succession of generations. For mankind the span of time between birth and death is a condition of finitude that both makes history possible and calls it forth. The succession of generations leads to the existence of a plurality of experiential spaces that overlap each other and, like different strata, are distinct from each other and exclude one another. This forms the basis for diachronic conflicts, which cannot be mediated without institutional rules and 3To avoid overburdening the notes I would refer the reader to three essays that deal principally with the three steps of the argument put forward in this lecture: (1) R. Koselleck and H. G. Gadamer, Hermeneutik und Historik, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jahr- gang 1987, Bericht 1 (Heidelberg, 1987); (2) R. Koselleck, "Sozialgeschichte und Begriffsgeschichte," in Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland, ed. Wolfgang Schieder and Volker Sellin (Gottingen, 1986), 1:89-109; (3) R. Koselleck, "Erfahrungswandel und Methodenwechsel: Eine historisch-anthropologische Skizze," in Historische Methode, ed. Christian Meier and Jorn Rusen, Theorie der Geschichte, Beitrage zur Historik, vol. 5 (Munich, 1988), pp. 13-61. This content downloaded from 128.214.211.195 on Mon, 11 Sep 2017 07:07:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Linguistic Change and the History of Events 651 regulations. The tension between "earlier" and "later" -and, indeed, the very notions of "too soon" and "too late," which are fundamental for all history-is based upon just these natural givens of generativity, birth, and death. And it is death which, as we know all too well, mankind is capable of forcefully preempting-in order, supposedly, to obtain better control over history. It is not just the necessity of death, which with proper care can be delayed, but also the ability to kill, by which we shorten another's life span, which belong to the naturally conditioned, anthropological givens of numer- ous histories with which we are familiar. Second, man shares with the animals the ever significant difference between inner and outer. No unit of human social activity ever comes into being without being able to delimit itself inwardly and outwardly. In this formal opposition, too, lie the seeds of various potential histories. Whether it be the embattled retreat into a cave, or the forcible enclosure of a house; whether it be the drawing of a border that occasions, or concludes, a conflict, or the rites of initiation; whether we are talking about grants of asylum, or secret societies, or the examination systems and admissions qualifications that create modern social entities, or membership in a political community into which one normally is born-in all these cases the difference between "inner" and "outer" remains fundamental for the conflicts that arise and for their resolutions, fundamental, in short, for the histories with which we are all familiar. This remains true even today when the increased complexity of the various domestic and foreign domains that overlap and interpenetrate one another has made the comprehension of world history enormously more difficult. There is a third kind of differentiation that man shares with his zoological relatives; the pecking order, or, in classical terms, the hierarchy of master and slave. Formally this is the opposition between "above" and "below." The political art of organizing communities may set up rules of procedure that aim at making "above" and "below" interchangeable and, to that extent, at equality; or it may seek to subject the lines of authority to a consensual process and, to that extent, to secure freedom. But that makes no difference with regard to the formal given of a necessary relation between "above" and "below." Nor can the supposed transformation of personal rule into anony- mous administration, that is, the functional differentiation of our society, abolish the functional existence of relations of "above" and "below." To sum up: "earlier/later," "inner/outer," and "above/below" are three sets of contraries without which no history can come to be, regardless of the forms they take on in particular cases-economic or religious, political or social, or something involving all these empirical factors. This sketch is simplistic, of course, but it should serve to confirm my first argument, namely, that language and history cannot be related to each other in their This content downloaded from 128.214.211.195 on Mon, 11 Sep 2017 07:07:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 652 Koselleck entirety.
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