PARTICIPANTS

BACKGROUND BIBLIOGRAPHY
BACKGROUND DOCUMENT

Core Concepts of Historical Thinking Workshop

23-24 February, 2019

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland

PARTICIPANTS

Aranha, Patricia Brazil Mittag, Achim Germany

State University of São Paulo, São Paulo Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen
de Benoist, Augustin France Nicodemo, Thiago Brazil
Independent Scholar, Paris Universidad Estedual de Campinas, Campinas
Cha, Sangyeob South Korea Ram, Ronki India
Geumgang University, Nonsan Panjab University, Chandigarh
Domańska, Ewa Poland Rogacz, Dawid Poland
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Gluck, Carol USA Via Streaming Rüsen, Inge Germany
Columbia University, New York City Independent Scholar, Bochum
Gniazdowski, Andrzej Poland Rüsen, Jörn Germany
Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, Essen
Jain, Abhishek India Sato, Masayuki Japan
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Yamanashi University, Kofu
Kola, Adam F. Poland Saussy, Haun USA
Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń University of Chicago, Chicago
Kołodziejczyk, Dorota Poland Skonecka, Anna Poland
Wrocław University, Wrocław Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Kragh, Ulrich Timme Poland Sung, Chia-fu Taiwan
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Taiwan National University, Taipei
La Greca, María Inés Argentina Waligórska-Olejniczak, Beata Poland
Universidad de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Linchenko, Andrei Russia
Zachariah, Benjamin Germany
The Financial University under the
University of Trier, Trier
Government of the Russian Federation, Lipetsk

ABSENT COLLABORATORS

Berger, Stefan Germany Palti, Elías José Argentina

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Buenos Aires
Bouton, Christophe France Partner, Nancy Canada
Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, Pessac McGill University, Montreal
Browarczyk, Monika Poland Wang, Ping Australia
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań University of New South Wales, Sydney
 BACKGROUND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goering , D. Timothy
2013 - “Concepts, History and the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons: A Defense of Conceptual History”
Journal of the Philosophy of History 7, pp. 426-452

Jordan , Stefan
2002 - Lexicon Geschichtswissenschaft: Hundert Grundbegriffe
Stuttgart: Reclam

Lehmann , Hartmut & Melvin Richer (ed.)

1999 - The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte
Washington D.C.: The German Historical Institute

McGregor , Heather Elizabeth

2017 - "One Classroom, Two Teachers? Historical Thinking and Indigenous Education in Canada"
Critical Education, 8.14, pp. 1-18
https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/186182

Partner , Nancy & Sarah Foot (ed.)

2013 - The Sage Handbook of Historical Theory
London: Sage

Pernau , Margrit
2012 - “Whither Conceptual History? From National to Entangled Histories”
Contributions to the History of Concepts, 7.1, pp. 1-11

Seixas , Peter
2017 - "A Model of Historical Thinking"
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49.6, pp. 593-605

Skinner , Quentin
1999 - “Rhetoric and Conceptual Change”
Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought 3, pp. 60-73

Steinmetz , Willibald & Michael Freeden & Javier Fernández-Sebastián (ed.)

2017 - Conceptual History in the European Space
New York: Berghahn Books
 BACKGROUND DOCUMENT

Research Theme - Core Concepts of Historical Thinking

The comparative study on the research theme "Core Concepts of Historical Thinking" is a global study
of core concepts of historical theory and belongs to the history of ideas with ramifications for sociology,
literature, and cross cultural studies.
The study is concerned with identifying, describing, and comparing theoretical terms, which here
shall be referred to as 'core concepts'. A core concept is defined as a term that is historically or currently
significant to humanist research methods, in particular concepts that are of theoretical relevance.
While the selected core concepts in principle could be drawn from any humanist discipline or from
non-academic areas of culture, media, arts, and literature, the specific area chosen for the comparative
study is focused on historical thinking, in particular the theory of history. That is to say, it concerns core
concepts pertinent to theorizing how humans relate to their past through forming a historical
consciousness. The reason for this choice of focus is that historical thinking is a fundamental component
in most research areas of the humanities, and it is therefore anticipated that the comparative study's
focus on theory of history will give an output of the widest possible reception and relevance for the
humanities.
In order to avoid linguistic and cultural one-sidedness, core concepts from a broad range of
languages and academic cultures worldwide will be included in the study right from the outset, thereby
making it transcultural and translinguistic. This approach not only makes the foreseen output more
readily adoptable by other humanities projects and departments across the globe, but it also aims to
avert the general problem of a Eurocentric bias that is still widespread in the global humanities today.
Most importantly, it allows non-western indigenous modes of thinking of para-historical cultures into
the debate.

Connections to Existing Traditions of Conceptual History

The proposed theme for the workshop has been inspired by existing research in conceptual history and
the history of ideas. Over the last decades, there have been two primary trendsetters in these areas of
study. On the one hand, significant contributions have been made to the history of political thought
and social history by the so-called "Cambridge School" through the work of Quentin Skinner, J.G.A.
Pocock, Peter Laslett, and John Dunn. On the other hand, major work on conceptual history
(Begriffsgeschichte) has been carried out in Germany especially by Reinhart Koselleck. Aside from
Koselleck's own theoretical writings, Koselleck and a team of editors and contributors published from
1972 till 1997 an eight-volume lexicon covering 122 basic concepts for social-political history, e.g.,
'nation', 'people', 'socialism', 'crisis', and 'worker'. 1 The concepts were specifically explained from the
perspective of German social-political history and the German historiological tradition, with some
broader references to the European Antiquity and Middle Ages.
While the Cambridge School and the German tradition of conceptual history certainly are not the
only existing trends in the history of ideas, it is notable that these two traditions in particular have
yielded broad international influence, attracting attention and citation in numerous research articles
and monographs published by leading academic presses and research journals over the past two
decades.
It should be underlined, however, that in comparison to these existing trends in conceptual history,
there are two fundamental aspects, which set the proposed comparative study apart from the earlier
work on conceptual history. First, unlike the Cambridge and the German schools, the study's focus is
specifically on theoretical concepts. 2 Secondly, the study is thoroughly cross-cultural and comparative

1 Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (editors), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur
politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 8 vols, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972-1997.
2 For Koselleck's explicit exclusion of methodological and theoretical concepts, see Brunner, Conze, & Koselleck,

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 1: xiii.

in its scope and not limited to a single national context, such as Germany as in the work of Koselleck.
These two features aim at staging an intercultural comparative dialog from the perspective of the
theoretically highest common denominator, which makes the study's research output useable across a
bigger range of applied studies on heterogeneous social-historical contexts worldwide.
The comparison of societies and intellectual traditions is generally hampered and in some cases
even outright impossible due to the untranslatability of distinct ideas, each belonging to its own social-
historical setting, inextricable from the place, language, and society to which it belongs. 3 Yet, by
focusing the comparative work specifically on theory and methodology, it becomes possible to draw
broad comparative strokes between basic principles of diverse traditions and cultures, while
maintaining due reference to the distinctness of each culture.

Existing Work on Core Concepts of Historical Thinking

The proposed study on core concepts of historical thinking is rooted in an effort that has been underway
for some time by the German philosopher of history, Professor Emeritus Jörn Rüsen, and a large
international network of collaborators coordinated by Ulrich Timme Kragh.
As the Director (1997-2007) of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, Professor Rüsen has
focused considerable time and effort on promoting intercultural communication in the humanities,
establishing long-standing collaborations with humanists in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin
America, and Africa. These networks served as a general basis for the pilot study. More specifically, in
2014-2017, we held five international workshops and meetings in Beijing, Taipei, Bochum, and Poznan
on European and East Asian core concepts of historical thinking, the outcome of which has been a pilot
study of 152 core concepts drawn from four languages: English, German, Chinese, and Japanese. Each
core concept in the pilot study has been translated into all four languages. For example: English:
philosophy of history, German: Geschichtsphilosophie, Chinese: lìshǐ zhéxué 历史哲学 (歷史哲學), and
Japanese: rekishi tetsugaku 歴史哲学. The majority of the concepts in the study have been furnished
with explanatory comments written by top specialists from across the four traditions. This pilot study
serves as a starting point for the present endeavor.
Now, the present comparative study intends to broaden the scope and number of languages
included in the initial pilot. While strengthening and expanding our existing work on English, German,
Chinese, and Japanese core concepts, the new study will build up a large dataset of approximately 500
selected core concepts drawn from the traditions of theory of history in English, Chinese, Dutch,
German, French, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tibetan, and
Scandinavian languages. This is the first time ever that an undertaking on this scale is being attempted
in order systematically to cover theories of history and historical thinking from such a wide range of
Western and non-Western traditions.

Digital Platform

The output of the study will be presented online in open access on a sophisticated digital platform. On
the website, each core concept will be represented in its original source language and with translation
or paraphrase into all the other employed languages. The core concepts will be furnished with
explanatory comments from the perspective of its source language and additional comparative
comments clarifying the use of the translations or associated concepts in other traditions, as relevant.
For example, the Chinese term jīngshì 經世 will appear with its English translation "statecraft," German
"politische Gestaltungsmacht," Japanese "keisei 経世," and so forth, with a main comment explaining
the concept's history and meaning in the Chinese tradition, and additional comments comparing the
specific meaning of 'statecraft', etc., in the other mentioned languages. Moreover, each core concept
will be digitally cross-referenced with other related core concepts across languages and traditions.

3 See, among many, the extensive work on untranslatability by the French research project Dictionnaires des
Intraduisibles, Vocabulaire des philosophies and the resultant publication Apter & Cassin, Dictionary of Untranslatables:
A Philosophical Lexicon (Reference Work, 2014).
https://web.archive.org/web/20150415152514/http://intraduisibles.org/
 At this prime level, the core concept database consists solely of words and text. However, in order
to create an innovative digital environment that is fully tuned to the conceptual possibilities of digital
evolution, we wish to go beyond the mere use of text and transform parts of the dataset into a
multimedia design. We therefore plan to enhance the online presentation of approximately a hundred
of the most popular or important core concepts through image, audio, and video. Through training and
tasking the scholars with creating multimedia contents for the digital platform, the vision is to illustrate
selected core concepts through audio reading of written comments by the academic contributors,
pertinent images, video-filmed interviews with scholars and specialists, short documentaries, filmed
interaction with artists and performers, or short animations and illustrations. The effort to incorporate
multimedia design into the digital environment obviously has a strong positive effect on the research
output dissemination. Yet, in fact, it also ties creatively into the research and thinking process itself,
because it provokes and inspires the participating researchers to think of their ideas and contents also
in terms of image, story, and analogy rather than exclusively in the traditional format of written text.

Postscript

With this workshop, we are here given a unique opportunity to engage in a rare type of cultural
comparison across a great span of languages, cultures, and ways of historical thinking. Even more rare
is to be able to include cultures that generally have not been parties to the global discourse on the
theory of history and the history of ideas. One of the best experiences from the pilot project was the
realization that the best research that was produced was in the cases when it was possible to have
sustained dialogue about specific concepts among the entire group of participants across languages
and histories. Therefore, a major aspiration for our workshop will be to create conditions where
emphasis is put on exploring ideas and each others' scholarship by gathering as many collaborators as
possible under the roof of the upcoming workshop. We are convinced that an atmosphere of shared
creativity is bound to yield production of something new and exciting in a common frame and yet with
individual strands of depth and nuance.