When I was a kid, I read the Asimov 'Foundation' novels & thought it would be cool to have a 'theory of history' which would permit me to predict what would happen in the manner of Hari Seldon. Sadly, I was too stupid to get a PhD in Math & thus had to settle for some off the peg theory of an Economistic type- maybe this is the 'law of increasing functional information'. The problem is that the 'fitness landscape' features Knightian Uncertainty- i.e. is arbitrary. Thus history will always remain something which happens to us, rather than something we can shape to some grander purpose.
Koselleck, when I was young, was considered the Prince of 'Conceptual History' but- my memory is- his work wasn't available in English & thus one heard of him only from smart people who had studied in Germany.
Wikipedia gives the following account of his first book (which was translated in 1988)
Critique and Crisis
In his dissertation and 1959 book, Koselleck argues that contemporary understandings of politics have become dangerously depoliticized by Enlightenment utopianism:
This was around the time that the SDP embraced the Bad Godesberg program. Koselleck represents the Right-Wing reaction to it just as Habermas represents the left-wing reaction to this 'Butskellite' convergence to Mixed Economy Keynesianism.
A reaction against absolutism (the Hobbesian state), which was itself a reaction against the religious wars of the Reformation period in Europe. Koselleck closely follows Carl Schmitt's argument from The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes by arguing that the absolutist state had made morality a matter of strictly private and individual judgement, disallowing moral conscience any role in political decision-making.
This could be said of 'Enlightened despots'- Fredrick & Catherine the equally great- but wasn't a feature of 'limited monarchies'.
This overcame religious civil war and gave rise to the early modern, centralized state, which had a clear, narrow and authoritarian conception of politics as the monopolization of legitimate violence and the guaranteeing of obedience, security and order.
But those centralised states tended to fall behind bourgeois societies.
Consequently, within the absolutist state, the private realm grew in power,
it really didn't. In limited monarchies, power passed to the third Estate as it became the main generator of revenue.
enabled by the degree of civil liberalism afforded by the regime toward private life.
Unless you were a serf.
This private moral sphere was nurtured by the Enlightenment (especially, claims Koselleck, in the Republic of Letters and in "non-political" bourgeois secret societies such as the Illuminati and the Freemasons), consolidating itself around a self-conception as an emergent bourgeois "Society" during the 18th century.
But if the land was the primary source of income & wealth, the bourgeoisie would be restricted to small urban enclaves.
"Society" constituted a countervailing power which, by upholding the legitimacy of "critique" against existing political authoritarianism, eventually challenged the state, but in an apolitical, utopian way. "In the process," writes Victor Gourevitch in his foreword to Critique and Crisis, "existing political societies came to be judged by standards which take little or no account of the constraints which political men must inevitably take into account, standards which for all political intents and purposes are therefore Utopian."
In other words, if you are poor & powerless, you indulge in day dreams of the Land of Cockaigne.
The problem is that the moralism and utopianism of modern ideologies is purely speculative and can offer no viable alternatives to prevailing institutions and practices. Hence, Enlightenment's anti-statism creates a "permanent crisis", a relapse into a kind of ideological civil war, which had culminated in enduring political instability and particularly in the 20th-century phenomena of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism and the ideological conflict of the Cold War.
I think Germany changed over the Fifties because everybody could see that 'Sovietization' had failed miserably in the East. Thus the shibboleth of 'collective ownership of the means of production' was given up.
Koselleck argues that politics is better understood from the point of view of public servants, politicians, and statesmen who are embedded within political institutions and immanently aware of their constraints and limitations, rather than from the supposedly disinterested perspective of philosophers and other social critics.
This may have been true of Germany. It wasn't true of Anglo-Saxon countries where the statesman might have started off as a merchant or manufacturer.
His aim is to re-politicize contemporary discussions of politics and infuse them with a sense that conflict is an inevitable part of public life and an unavoidable factor in all political decision making, an argument reminiscent of Carl Schmitt, Koselleck's most important mentor
In other words, he was rebelling against the post-war 'convergence hypothesis' such that a technocratic 'mixed economy' became the rule.
Koselleck's portrayal of the Enlightenment public sphere in Critique and Crisis has often been criticized as reactionary and anti-modernist.[11] His emphasis on the "secrecy" and "hypocrisy" of the 18th-century German Enlightenment, and his preoccupation with Enlightenment as a source of conflict and crisis, has been read as an overly pessimistic account of the origins of modern world-views. It sits in stark contrast to the work of Jürgen Habermas, whose account of the 18th century Enlightenment holds it up as a model of democratic and deliberative politics.[12] Moreover, his claim in the introduction of Critique and Crisis that the 20th century was gripped by a catastrophic "world crisis," has been criticized as being guilty of the same sort of secular eschatology he warns against within the text itself. In fact, for Koselleck modern philosophies were a form of a secularized version of eschatology: that is, theological prophecies of future salvation, an interpretation he adopted from Karl Löwith, his teacher at Heidelberg University.[13] Others insist that the accusations against Koselleck of reactionary pessimism are overstated, and that he is rather attempting to engender a more reflexive and realistic use of political and social concepts.[14]
The question is whether such concepts actually exist in any useful manner. No doubt, they may be useful for teaching history, but history isn't its own pedagogy. It is a data set which can help us test our 'Structural Causal Models'.
In his book 'Futures Past' Koselleck writes-
HE HISTORICAL-POLITICAL SEMANTICS OF ASYMMETRIC COUNTERCONCEPTS Pugnant ergo inter se mali et mali; item pugnant inter se mali et boni; boni vero et boni, si perfecti sunt, inter se pugnare non possunt. —Augustine, De Civ. Dei XV, 5
This means 'Thus the wicked fight among themselves; likewise the wicked and the good fight among themselves; but the good and the good, if they are perfect, cannot fight among themselves.'
Sadly, this isn't true. Some people fight. Others don't. One might say 'the perfect don't fight' but they might do if that is what is required. Two perfectly good people may have different theories of a useful sort. They may fight each other with relevant empirical evidence.
Names for oneself and for others belong to the everyday life of men and women.
I was once taught Statistics by a Professor Thambi (which means younger brother). I asked him what his actual name was. He didn't know. His elder brother, who had raised him from the age of 5, thought it might be either Sadasivaramamurthy or Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta. He had sent his Bengali peon with the boy to get him admitted to School. Sadly, he had neglected to tell him the boy's name. So the peon gave his name as 'Thambi' and it stuck.
They articulate the identity of a person and of that person’s relation to others.
No. They are merely names. Robertson isn't the son of a guy named Robert.
In this process there might be agreement on the use of such expressions, or each might use for his opposite a term different from that employed by the latter.
In some societies one's name is a secret. You have a pet name & a social name but, to reduce the possibility of hostile magic, the actual name is only known to the Family Priest.
It makes a difference whether mutually recognized names are spoken (e.g., Hans and Liese), or whether these are replaced by abusive nicknames.
Not really. Saying 'Hans is a swine' is just as bad as referring to him as a fucking pig.
So, for instance, among relatives there is a difference between the use of “mother” and “son,” and “old bag” and “layabout.”
Not if it is said affectionately.
In the same way, it makes a difference if certain functions are defined as “employer” and “employee” or as “exploiter” and “human material.” In the one case, one’s names for oneself and names others call one coincide, whereas, in the other, they diverge.
Not really. What is said matters less than what is meant.
...The effectiveness of mutual classifications is historically intensified as soon as they are applied to groups.
Not necessarily. Both 'Whig' & 'Tory' were originally insults. Then they were embraced by those so designated. 'Yid' is a pejorative term for Jews unless it is used by supporters of Tottenham Football Club for whom it is a rallying cry.
The simple use of “we” and “you” establishes a boundary
No. Prof Thambi would often say 'today we are going to learn about heteroscedasticity'. Nobody thought he didn't know all about it already.
and is in this respect a condition of possibility determining a capacity to act. But a “we” group can become a politically effective and active unity only through concepts which are more than just simple names or typifications.
Nonsense! Nobody knows how or why Tottenham supporters decided to refer to themselves as 'Yids'. We guess that it was a slur used against them at football matches & they took it up as a matter of pride.
A political or social agency is first constituted through concepts by means of which it circumscribes itself and hence excludes others, and therefore, by means of which it defines itself.
Nonsense! A Tory, like Rishi Sunak, is not an Irish Catholic rebel nor is Ken Binmore, who describes himself as a Whig, a Scottish Presbyterian who thinks it great fun to smash up Catholic chapels.
A group may empirically develop on the basis of command or consent, of contract or propaganda, of necessity or kinship, and so forth; but however constituted, concepts are needed within which the group can recognize and define itself,
They are wholly unnecessary. True, if there is a market for the thing, some Professor or Journalist may invent a more or less bogus 'concept' for some collective which pre-exists.
if it wishes to present itself as a functioning agency.
You can have a concept & yet achieve nothing- i.e. fulfil no function (e.g. the Institute of Socioproctology) while there are plenty of functioning agencies whose 'concept' is not specified. (like the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Clearly, it is different from the Institute of Certified Accountancy, but there is no functional difference between a Certified & Chartered Accountant.
In the sense used here, a concept does not merely denote such an agency, it marks and creates the unity.
Because it has magical properties. Did you know that if you have the concept of Beyonce, you can turn into a beautiful superstar?
The concept is not merely a sign for, but also a factor in, political or social groupings.
Concepts are like opinions- every asshole can have plenty of both.
There are innumerable concepts of this kind which, while being concretely applied, have a general utility.
Some concepts are useful- up to a point. But they don't actually exist nor do they 'constitute' anything. Also if you are fucking the concept of Supermodel, you are merely a wanker.
An acting agency
is like a modelling agency. Mine promised to get me the lead in 'Pretty Woman'. Sadly, the producer thought I looked to Jewy & so Julia Roberts got the part.
might, therefore, define itself as a polis, people, party, Stand, society, church, or state without preventing those excluded from the agency from conceiving of themselves in turn as a polis, people, and so on.
The Institute of Socioproctology may define itself as a place for real bright people. Sadly, those who refuse to join (including me) because they can't afford the twenty pence membership fee, are welcome to conceive themselves as supersmart gigolos who spend their time sexually servicing Super-models (female ones).
Such general and concrete concepts can be used on an equal basis and can be founded upon mutuality.
This is also true of masturbation. Who is to say Supermodels aren't fisting themselves thinking of me?
They are transferable. It is certainly true, however, that historical agencies tend to establish their singularity by means of general concepts, claiming them as their own.
No. They establish their singularity by own property & paying wages & receiving revenue.
For a Catholic, “the Church” might mean only the one he attends; similarly, there is only “the Party” for a Communist, and “the Nation” for the French Revolutionary.
Nonsense! The educated Catholic knows that there are some quite historically distinct churches which are in full communion with Rome. Some such have married priests. Most ruling Communist parties contain historically different smaller parties- e.g. China Zhi Gong party. The French Revolutionaries generally considered Corsica to be part of the Nation but not all agreed re. the French speaking parts of Belgium.
The use of the definite article here serves the purpose of political and social singularization.
When you say 'I've got to go the office'- people understanding you are going to work. Your wife may reply 'me too. See you tonight.' This doesn't mean you work at the same place as your wife.
In such cases, a given group makes an exclusive claim to generality, applying a linguistically universal concept to itself alone and rejecting all comparison.
Nonsense! Saying 'I'm going to the office' doesn't mean there is only one office where everybody works.
This kind of self-definition provokes counterconcepts which discriminate against those who have been defined as the “other.”
It may do. It may not. Protestant Churches, in Europe, protested against Catholicism. But some currently Protestant Churches- e.g. Mar Thoma or Byzantine Rite Lutheran- don't consider themselves to have reacted to Catholicism.
The nonCatholic becomes heathen or traitor;
No. Some non-Catholic Churches were and are in full communion with Rome.
to leave the Communist party does not mean to change party allegiance, but is rather “like leaving life, leaving mankind” (J. Kuczynski);
in some places, not others.
not to mention the negative terms that European nations have used for each other in times of conflict and that were transferred from one nation to another according to the changing balance of power.
Sticks and stones may break our bones. Names can't hurt us.
Thus there are a great number of concepts recorded which function to deny the reciprocity of mutual recognition.
None fulfil any such function. Saying 'la, la, la, I can't hear you' does not mean that you have turned into a ghost.
From the concept of the one party follows the definition of the alien other,
No. The alien other needs to be further defined- e.g. class enemy, right deviationist, left adventurist, etc.
which definition can appear to the latter as a linguistic deprivation, in actuality verging on theft.
When people call you a cunt, they deprive you of your penis- thinks nobody at all.
This involves asymmetrically opposed concepts.
No. There are 'uncorrelated asymmetries' such that my wife isn't your wife even if I refer to her as 'the wife'.
The opposite is not equally antithetical.
It may be.
The linguistic usage of politics, like that of everyday life, is permanently based on this fundamental figure of asymmetric opposition.
So what? Words don't matter greatly- unless they are witty or alethic or informative in some manner.
This will be examined in the course of the following discussion. There is one qualification, however: we will deal here only with pairs of concepts that are characterized by their claim to cover the whole of humanity.
There are none such.
Thus we are dealing with binary concepts with claims to universality. The totality of humanity can, of course, also be comprehended without remainder by classificatory couples involving a mutual recognition of the parties involved (for instance, men and women,
some people may be difficult to classify on this basis
parents and children,
paternity tests are a thing.
juveniles and adults,
a movable feast. Sometimes kids are tried as adults.
the sick and the healthy).
a matter for Medical Science & the Social Security system. Is so-and-so too sick to work? What level of Disability Allowance are they eligible for?
These terms comprehend humanity as a whole by introducing their natural structure.
They don't comprehend shit. Still, they may be useful. Most people are clearly distinguishable as either men or women. Only a few abide our question.
Notwithstanding the susceptibility to political accentuation and explosiveness,
or being as boring as fuck
which all these terms once had or will have, it is not possible to directly transfer such naturalistic expressions into political language.
Nonsense! Every politician does so all the time.
The historical world, by contrast, operates for the most part with asymmetrical concepts that are unequally antithetical. Three will be examined: the contrast of Hellene and Barbarian,
a movable feast. Athenians often referred to Epirotes, Eleans, Boeotians, and Aeolic-speakers as barbarians.
Christian and Heathen,
Never very clear cut. There were many precedents for the 'Chinese Rites' controversy.
and finally, the contrast that emerges within the conceptual field of humanity between human and nonhuman, superhuman and subhuman.
We used to think the Neanderthals were nonhuman. Now, we realize we carry some of their genes. Maybe homo erectus was a language user & tool maker.
Before we begin to more closely analyze these counterconcepts
Fuck analysis. Look around to find empirical evidence that the concept or counter-concept is defective.
and the various ways in which their negation is expressed, it is desirable to make three additional methodological points which will enable us to more exactly specify our problematic. The first concerns the relation between concept and history;
They may be useful to summarize material or to go looking for particular types of evidence
the second, the historical aspect;
how is this different from the first
and the third, the structural aspect of counterconcepts.
There is no structural aspect unless there is a Structural Causal Model. But, if such a thing exists, we leave aside concepts & look for empirical verification or 'falsifiability'.
1. Historical movement always takes place within zones mutually delimited by functioning agents,
No. Everything has a history even in the absence of 'agents' of any kind.
and it is in terms of these zones that the agents simultaneously effect their conceptual articulation.
No. People can talk about Heaven or Hell or what life might be like on a distant planet in a Galaxy far far away.
But neither social nor political history is ever identical with its conceptual self-expression.
One could equally say 'all social & political history is nothing but conceptual self-expression'.
History can be written only if the correspondence between material that was once comprehended conceptually and the actual material (methodologically derived from the first) is made the subject of investigation.
Nonsense! History can be written by the court poet and be based wholly on mythology on the one hand & the propaganda of the dynasty on the other.
This correspondence is infinitely variable and must not be mistaken as an identity; otherwise, every source that was conceptually unambiguous would already be the history that was sought within it.
Annals are annals. Historians may belong to the 'Annales' school.
In general, language and socoipolitical content coincide in a manner different from that available or comprehensible to the speaking agents themselves.
Later ideas may have had only a very rudimentary expression in earlier ages. This doesn't greatly matter. Look at what people actually do, not what theory they have, and you have a data set which you can use to verify a sophisticated SCM reliant upon a type of analysis which has only recently become possible.
It is a quality of political language that its concepts, while being related to agencies (institutions, groups, and so forth) and their movement, are not assimilated by them.
They may be. They may not. My own belief, regarding early India is that some sort of discrete math simulation technique was in widespread use. We don't know the details of that 'Sankhya' but can make some educated guesses. It may be that some actual Sutra of this sort may be found but it is quite likely that Sutra literature was produced independently by specialists and that 'the tricks of the trade' were a Guild or family secret.
In the same way, history is not the sum of all articulated namings and characterizations in political language, nor of political dialogue and discussion.
It has lower Kolmogorov complexity than what it studies- unless it is 'the history of concepts' in which case it is verbose confabulation of a foolish, paranoid or magical type.
Similarly, history is not assimilated by the concepts through which it is comprehended.
Yes it is. Concepts like 'Stone Age' or 'Iron Age' are useful.
What is at stake here is the avoidance of a short circuit between conceptual language and political history.
In other words, nothing at all is at stake here.
This difference between history and its “conceptualization” will be charted with the methods of historicopolitical semantics.
Pseudo-intellectual garbage.
2. Especial care is called for in investigating what are not simply individual concepts but pairs of concepts whose world-historical effectiveness cannot be doubted.
No. Exceptional care is called for in brain surgery. What is needful for historians is a great tolerance for mind-numbing boredom.
One can certainly assume that rigorous dualisms— above all, those which divide all of humanity into two groups with opposing modalities—were politically efficacious and will always be so.
This is why neither England nor Germany gave women the vote.
On the other hand, the historical record does show that all these global dualisms formerly in use were overtaken by historical experience and to this extent refuted. The suggestively autonomous force of political counterconcepts should not tempt one to regard relations of reciprocity implicit within such couples (and often created by them) as if they continued ever onward in the form of this once-established dualism.
Look a little closer & they never existed. Before the Great War, there were some Society women in England who had more power over the India Office- or, indeed, the War office- than Parliament would have in the inter-war years. That's why Kitchener spent a lot of time writing to titled ladies.
Past antitheses have tended to be too crude to serve as categories of historical knowledge.
Some have. Some haven't.
Above all, no historical movement can be adequately evaluated in terms of the self-same counterconcepts used by the participants of such a movement as a means of experiencing or comprehending it.
Because nothing can be adequately evaluated by any means whatsoever unless it really doesn't matter at all.
Ultimately, that would mean the perpetuation of a victor’s history by his seeking to make permanent a temporary dominance through the negation of the defeated.
There speaks the twice defeated German! Sadly, those sausage eaters had to suck it up & admit to themselves that guys whose uniforms sported a skull-and-crossbones badge (as had the Kaiser's life-guards & Hitler's SS) were likely to be the bad guys.
Concepts employable in a particularly antithetical manner have a marked tendency to reshape the various relations and distinctions among groups, to some degree violating those concerned, and in proportion to this violation rendering them capable of political action.
Unless you kill all of them.
The recognition of such a dynamic requires that former linguistic usage must itself be placed in question.
Fuck that! Just say you did evil shit & have learned the error of your ways.
A distinction will therefore be made here between past historical usage of antithetical concepts and the semantic structures they are invested with.
Sadly, there are no 'semantic structures'. There is syntax for particular purposes but there is no 'i-language'. Everything is extensional.
The following reflections will not be concerned with historical process or the emergence and articulation of dualistic counterconcepts,
in other words, the following reflections will be completely useless
their change, and the history of their likely effects. It is obvious that historical investigation cannot dispense with the posing and consideration of such questions.
Sure it can. Just focus on the economy- i.e. what people do- not shite people say
The methodological intention of the following is, however, on a different level: the structure of argument within once historically extant, dualistic, linguistic figures will be examined for the way in which the given counterpositions were negated.
By killing lots & lots of people. If this failed, there was no fucking negation.
It must be admitted that the structural aspect implies the historical, and vice versa.
No. A structure may have no dynamics or be wholly ergodic. There is no hysteresis or path dependence. Thus the history of the thing is empty.
In this way, the sources can be read in two ways at once: as the historical utterance of agencies, and as the linguistic articulation of specific semantic structures.
Only if 'language speaks us'. Did you know that there is a language used in the depths of the Amazon forest which has no word for gender? Everybody in that society has both a dick & a vagina. They live peacefully with each other though, sadly, they fuck themselves to death soon after attaining puberty.
It is characteristic of counterconcepts that are unequally antithetical that one’s own position is readily defined by criteria which make it possible for the resulting counterposition to be only negated.
Since anything at all can not only be negated but also told to fuck the fuck off, this is a wholly trivial 'characteristic'.
This is what makes up the counterconcepts’ political efficacy but at the same time renders them unsuitable for scientific knowledge
Telling stupid lies may have some political efficacy but only if people want to be ruled by stupid liars.
In Kant’s words, “. . . dividing things in half leads to the placing together of heterogeneous objects and not at all to a specific concept.”
Dividing doesn't 'place together'. The specific concept created by dividing is called 'division'.
The recognition of historical bisections in their linguistically asymmetric forms requires the examination of common and distinguishable structures.
No. The structure may not be distinguishable or held in common. What matters is whether there are specific predicates only applicable to one side.
Once they had emerged historically, the conceptual pairs Hellene-Barbarian,
melted away as Alexander created an Empire based on homonoia.
Christian-Heathen,
melted away when missionary activity reached a level of sophistication such that entire nations could be converted within the space of a single generation.
Human-Nonhuman
which began to erode before Charles Darwin was born
indicated particular modes of experience and expectational possibilities whose given arrangement could turn up under different labels and in different historical situations.
but which didn't matter greatly.
Each of the antitheses to be examined here has its own structures,
No. It has a different set of predicates. The structure remains an object of investigation through the building and testing of 'models'.
but it also has structures in common with the others.
Structures matter if you are a structural engineer or a mathematician of the school of Bourbaki. We get that people who teach soft subjects may want to sound smart. But they aren't smart at all.
... The vast quantity of material that is structured and stylized by counterconcepts cannot be exposed here.
Because there is no such material.
Instead, the semantic structure of a few politically employed and asymmetrically applicable counterconcepts will be outlined in the course of their emergence. This will make clear how the structure of the first pair, Hellene and Barbarian, continuously reappears;
It really doesn't. Anyway, Alexander killed the thing off long long ago. Lots of different races became Hellenized. Second Maccabees was written in Koine Greek.
that particular features of the second pair, Christian and Heathen, were contained in the first;
Nonsense! Christianity descends from Judaism- admittedly a Hellenized form of it.
and finally the counterconcepts that emerge in the semantic field of Humanity in general contain both Greek and Christian elements without, however, being reducible to them.
Fuck off! The Chinese & Indians & Mayans had it long before they came to know of Greeks or Jews or Christians.
The accumulation of temporalities finally makes it possible for the structure of all these counterconcepts to appear together.
in the work of a shithead teaching a soft subject to cretins.
... Very roughly, the three pairs can be distinguished in the following way: in the case of the Hellene and the Barbarian, we have, in the first place, mutually exclusive concepts,
No. Homer refers to the Carians as barbarians but not the Trojans who clearly had no difficulty communicating with their Luwian speaking allies. Lydia was 'barbarian' (e.g. Croesus) in one sense- that of considering it a shame to be seen naked- but in one sense but not so in terms of culture & sophistication.
the groups to which they refer (also in the realm of reality) being spatially separable.
Not for Herodotus who was born in close proximity to the Lydians with whom he was thoroughly familiar.
The alien other is negatively marked off
unless he is rich & technologically advanced in which case he is a descendant of Hercules or Poseidon or whatever. Once Greek paideia spread outward, you could have people like Lucian- a Syrian- who excelled in writing in Greek.
but (and this represented a historical achievement) also recognized as being so. The concepts impute naturalistic constants to the relevant groups, and these constants do not appear to be freely disposable.
They weren't particularly important. It was obvious that some people who originally spoke other languages had become Greek speakers. The opposite too was happening.
This quickly changes, however. The territorialization of the concepts is followed by their spiritualization,
Neither occurred. There was deterritorialization because of greater mobility- trade, colonization, and folk-wanderings (e.g. the Celtic Galatians who, by the first century BC, were Greek speaking & called 1st century BC, the Celts had become so Hellenized that some Greek writers called them Hellenogalatai). Spiritualization waxed and waned as different cults succeeded each other.
and this was to be continually and variously repeated in the succeeding history.
Not really. We are merely speaking of periodic attempts to correct linguistic drift & preserve mutual comprehensibility. Something similar happened in India with 'Sanskrit' serving to standardize 'Prakrits'.
Second, the counterconcepts are related. What the Greeks only suggest becomes central for the Christian-Heathen.
Christianity took over the Jewish notion of 'goyim'- other nations but mass conversion undermined this in both religions.
The relation of reciprocity is subject to a temporal loading, which determines a future displacement that can go as far as abolishing the Other.
Abolish Death if you are so smart. That's the Other we fear.
The temporalization of the counterconcepts
occurs because living people age & die. It doesn't lead to anything- unless there is an after-life.
leads to a shift in the relation of experiential space and the horizon of expectation.
I expect to go to Heaven where I will marry Beyonce & be re-united with Woofy the dog which was sent away to live on a farm when I was ten years old.
From this arises a dynamic which negates the existing Other, a dynamic hardly known to non-Christian Antiquity.
Hitler's dynamic didn't negate shit. German pedagogues were late in getting the memo.
Third, the invocation of humanity involves a claim to generality which is so total that no human being appears to be excluded.
Or included. What is done for the good of Humanity tends to be a nuisance from the perspective of any particular human being.
If counterconcepts that intend to annihilate the Other emerge nevertheless,
like my farts
they can be characterized by an ideological fungibility which, by definition, departs from earlier concepts.
My farts are the prolegemena to any future metaphysics. Harvard should give me tenure.
The capacity for differentiating the inner and the outer, which is a property of the first conceptual couple, appears to vanish within the horizon of a unitary mankind.
Anybody can learn Greek or appreciate my farts.
This capacity does, however, creep into the new formation and leads to consequences that we live with today.
Germans were living with the consequences of having done stupid shit. Yanks were living with the opposite.
Hellenes and Barbarians “Barbarian” has until the present generally been usable in a neutral scientific language,
maybe in Hitler's Germany. Not elsewhere.
as well as in a more charged political language. On the other hand, the expression “Hellene,” which had originally defined “Barbarian” negatively, survives only as a historical or specific name for a people.
One is welcome to be a Philhellenist- unless, like me, your philology is flatulence.
The classical conceptual couple thus belongs to history, though it displays model-like features which recur throughout the course of history.
We will soon see that this was never the case.
The words existed as independent terms before being arranged as polarities. All non-Greeks were treated as Barbarians
none were. Barbarian just meant a guy who didn't speak Greek or spoke it badly.
before the Greeks collectively dubbed themselves Hellenes.
It is believed this happened in the Seventh Century BC at the time of the formation of the Amphictyonic league. Homer spoke of Hellenes as belonging to a small tribe in Thessaly.
From the sixth to the fourth centuries b.c. the conceptual couple of Hellene and Barbarian became a universal figure of speech which included all of humanity through assignation to one of two spatially separated groups.
You might call someone you didn't like a barbarian. But that continues to be the case. This simply didn't matter very much. Lots of Greeks ended up taking service under a non-Greek King. After about 212 AD, Greeks referred to themselves as Romans. This is why 'Rumi' in Arabic/Persian means Greek speaker of Anatolia while 'Frank' meant Italian, French etc.
This figure was asymmetrical. Contempt for aliens, stammerers, and the incoherent was expressed by a series of negative epithets degrading the whole of humanity beyond Hellas.
The Greeks weren't Nazi shitheads. Germans were. Koselleck was in the Hitler Youth before volunteering to serve in the Army.
The Barbarians not only were formally non-Greek, or aliens, but also, as aliens, were defined negatively.
Unless they weren't because they were rich or fighting the common enemy- the Persians.
They were cowardly, unskillful, gluttonous, brutish, and so on.
Unless, they were handsome, brave, noble etc- e.g. Memnon in the Iliad. He was a darkie from Ethiopia.
For every definition there was empirical evidence: contact with overseas traders, the mass of foreign slaves, devastation of the homeland by invading Persians, and similar experiences could easily be generalized without seeming to need revision. The Greek intelligentsia was certainly clear-sighted enough to notice deviations from this pattern. For example, Herodotus came to realize the relativity of the concept “Barbarian,”
he was a great 'lover of barbarians'. He depicts the 'freedom loving Persians' as being the first peoples to rationally discuss the sort of government they should give themselves 'after the slaughter of the Magi'. Koselleck is wrong to paint the Greeks as proto-Nazis.
and Plato criticized the lack of equilibrium in the conceptual couple arising from the divergence of typification and the criterion of division.
He said the thing was absurd. Egypt was a land of many wonders. Much could be learned from it.
The name of one people—the Hellenes— became the counterconcept for all the rest, who were assembled under a collective name which was simply the negative of Hellene.
This simply isn't true. Before the establishment of the polis, there was a sort of super-tribal league which eroded older clannish antipathies and paved the way for collective action of a type beneficial to the oikumene. But stuff like this was happening in other Iron Age cultures.
Asymmetry was thus semantically based on this conscious contrast of a specific name with a generic classification. It was certainly possible for the Greeks to. point to features that they had in common and which the aliens lacked: the creation of the polis as a civil constitution opposed to oriental monarchy,
Nonsense! This cretin must have heard of Persepolis or Krokodopolis. If he had read Aristotle, he'd know Carthage was considered a polis. There were plenty of non-Greek city states- e.g. Larissa in Lydia.
their physical and intellectual education, their language and art, their oracles and cult festivals—these united the Hellenic peoples but also excluded the Barbarians.
unless, like Alexander, they pointed out that their ancestor was Hercules or some such hero and thus they were entitled to participate in the Olympics or other Panhellenic games.
Thus there was evidence that appeared to confirm the positive image of the Hellenes as mild, educated, free citizens.
Unless they had been enslaved by other Hellenes or barbarians.
The “barbaric” fashion in which Hellenes actually treated themselves and where their self-image was correct, where it was not, and where it was wishful thinking, was described soberly and sympathetically by Jacob Burckhardt.
Then why rehash the whole matter. The fact is the Greeks weren't Nazi cunts though, no doubt, they had some chauvinistic writers.
Aside from the relevance or irrelevance of this dualistic evaluation the conceptual couple assumed a semantic structure
translators look for such things. We don't need any such thing when hearing our own mother tongue.
which made political experience and expectation possible
you don't need to know the language to have this. An Indian who visited Germany in 1938 didn't need to be told that evil shit was going down.
while at the same time restricting it.
Creative use of language doesn't restrict 'semantic structure'. It expands it. Grammar Nazis can always be told to fuck the fuck off.
This is apparent in the arguments that were used to justify the differentiation of the two concepts. Plato, with typical seriousness, but certainly with an intention to provoke, reduced the contrast to one of nature. Physei, the Hellenes, are a distinct species that degenerates with increasing intermingling with Barbarians.
Lots of Greeks had gone over to the Persian side.
From this naturalistic definition he draws the political conclusion that any dispute among Greeks is an argument among brothers (stasis), a civil war, and therefore pathological.
Let's be friends with Sparta.
A war with Barbarians—polemòs—on the other hand, is justified by nature.
Sadly, some of your smartest generals- like Themistocles who is mentioned in the Gorgias- may end up serving the Persians because they appreciate merit & don't listen to Spartan intriguers.
Conflicts among Greeks should be conducted in a mild manner and with minimal force, while wars against Barbarians should aim at annihilation.
Both Plato & Aristotle were wrong as Alexander would show.
This asymmetrical dualism, then, contributes to the creation of a political interior which is shielded from the entirety of the outside world.
But it had no such effect!
This maxim was given greater edge when Aristotle designated the Barbarians as natural slaves and described the Greeks by contrast as optimally combining strength and intelligence and who, if they were to form a single politeia, would be able to rule over all Barbarians.
The fucker was wrong. Deal with it.
In support of his view that the Barbarians are natural servants, he cited Euripedes’ verse, according to which the Greeks are destined to rule over the Barbarians, and not vice versa.
The guy was a pedagogue. He was paid to get his students to quote Euripedes rather than just fart in a sullen manner.
This verse could be taken in many ways: as challenging Alexander to subjugate the Persians, but also as being of use internally.
To get paid a little money.
Aristotle used the separation of interior and exterior, which had initially characterized the spatial contrast of Hellenes and Barbarians, to give added support to the Interior structure of rule.
There was no such rule. The polis was a fucking shit show- unless it was a Rome.
The counterconcepts also serve to illuminate a differentiation of domination from top to bottom. Barbarians reduced to their animallike natural properties were suited within a polis to the work of Perioecians, or slaves.
Hitler's dynamite idea was to bring in slave labour to till the fields while German men were sent off to die on the Eastern Front. But slave labour is inefficient & likely to sabotage the submarines or tanks it works on.
The fact of the matter is that as a culture turns into a civilization, Economics, properly so called, displaces paranoid ranting. Germany, in the inter-war period, went in the reverse direction believing as Thomas Mann had said, during the Great War, that maybe German culture was better than 'Western Civilization'. But, Mann was wrong. Culture thinks Economics doesn't matter. Then it shits the bed. That's not economic at all. Keep doing so & you won't have a bed or a house for that matter. You will simply be a pig wallowing in your own shit. Such would have been the fate of the German pedagogue if the Allies hadn't occupied and partitioned Germany.
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