Reinhart Koselleck, a practitioner of Begnffsgeschtchte, noted the emergence in late eighteenth-century Germany of the 'collective singular' use of the term 'Geschichte' and contended that, for writers within that frame, 'history in the collective singular establishe(d) the terms of all possible individual histories.' 8
8 See Reinhart Koselleck, 'Die Entstehung des Kollektivsingulars', in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, eds, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Histor-isches Lextkon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1971- ), 11, p. 651. For a brief account in English, see Koselleck, 'On the Disposabihty of History', in Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 2.00-2.02. (cf. n. 2.8 below). Koselleck develops a point made by his teacher Karl Lowith, who contrasted the 'substantive singular' character of the German die Geschichte with the lack of any equivalent term in Greek; see Lowith, 'Mensch und Geschichte' (1960), in Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte: Philosophische Bilanz des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Bernd Lutz (Stuttgart, 1990)
28 Koselleck has argued that the emergence of the term 'history* (die Geschichte) as an objectless 'collective singular* dates from the late eighteenth century: 'Only from around 1780 can one talk of "history in general", "history in and for itself and "history pure and simple"', as distinguished from talking about 'the history of X' and 'the history of Y'; see Koselleck, trans. Tribe, op. cit. (n. 8), p. 200. One might speculate that the growing dominance, in the nineteenth century, of the 'collective singular' notion of history compensated for the deferral to the future of the telling of the grand narrative. When the grand narrative is seen as (re)tellable now, there is no need to insist semantically on History's unity. The situation changed, however, when the telling of the grand narrative was deferred.
('Grand Narrative' and the Discipline of History, by ALLAN MEGILL.)
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Date: 2004-06-23 10:28 pm (UTC)8 See Reinhart Koselleck, 'Die Entstehung des Kollektivsingulars', in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, eds, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Histor-isches Lextkon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1971- ), 11, p. 651. For a brief account in English, see Koselleck, 'On the Disposabihty of History', in Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 2.00-2.02. (cf. n. 2.8 below). Koselleck develops a point made by his teacher Karl Lowith, who contrasted the 'substantive singular' character of the German die Geschichte with the lack of any equivalent term in Greek; see Lowith, 'Mensch und Geschichte' (1960), in Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte: Philosophische Bilanz des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Bernd Lutz (Stuttgart, 1990)
28 Koselleck has argued that the emergence of the term 'history* (die Geschichte) as an objectless 'collective singular* dates from the late eighteenth century: 'Only from around 1780 can one talk of "history in general", "history in and for itself and "history pure and simple"', as distinguished from talking about 'the history of X' and 'the history of Y'; see Koselleck, trans. Tribe, op. cit. (n. 8), p. 200. One might speculate that the growing dominance, in the nineteenth century, of the 'collective singular' notion of history compensated for the deferral to the future of the telling of the grand narrative. When the grand narrative is seen as (re)tellable now, there is no need to insist semantically on History's unity. The situation changed, however, when the telling of the grand narrative was deferred.
('Grand Narrative' and the Discipline of History, by ALLAN MEGILL.)