Geschichte im Widerstreit

Overview & Synopsis

On the Relevance and Limits of Reinhart Koselleck’s Work. The historian Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) remains to this day one of the most inspiring, yet also most critically debated, figures in his field. His work focuses on the catastrophic experiences of modernity: on violence and terror, as well as the problem of history taking on a life of its own and accelerating. They remain topical and controversial not least because of their political implications; for Koselleck, bourgeois society was by no means an unquestionable foundation of his thinking. The authors explore his works through various thematic areas such as his relationship to the Enlightenment, the philosophy of history, apocalypticism, liberalism and Marxism, or through the concepts of crisis, revolution and catastrophe, drawing connections to other theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Bernhard Groethuysen and Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, who have played scarcely any role in previous research on Koselleck.