Crisis and Critique: Philosophical Analysis and Current Events

Proceedings of the 42nd International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium

Anne Siegetsleitner, Andreas Oberprantacher, Marie-Luisa Frick, Ulrich Metschl, Anne Siegetsleitner, Andreas Oberprantacher, Marie-Luisa Frick, Ulrich Metschl

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110702392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophers

Contemporary deep-reaching changes – whether in financial or real economy, in Europe's political conditions, in the context of scientific theories, in the field of global (environmental) security, or gender relations – are also a challenge to philosophy. The volume comprises cutting-edge scholarly articles from renowned philosophers with various geographical backgrounds and from different philosophical strands. Next to investigating general questions as to the relation of philosophy and critique (What is philosophical critique and which philosophical concepts of critique are of importance today? Where do we need it most? Where are its limits?), the articles focus on issues like theories of democracy and modes of election; the roles of emotions in the political realm; challenges from a widespread discontent in society to politics and science; changes to social identities and different theoretical approaches to social identity formation. The book is indispensable for all who are interested in what contemporary philosophy has to say on crucial issues of our time.

Part 1: Philosophical Concepts of Critique

The Conceptual Semantic Field of “Crisis” and “Critique”

María Pía Lara

Note: I would like to thank Maeve Cooke, Marie-Luisa Frick, Matthias Kettner, and Andreas Oberprantacher for providing me with critical commentaries and revisions for which I am grateful and for their generosity and care.

Abstract

The main goal of this essay is to show the dangers and the goals of political wars as they are very much related to how we use concepts. First, I present a brief explanation of terms that relate to Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history. I will then discuss the analytical elements and key concepts I will be using to develop my own perspective about his contribution to the thematization of the genealogies of the concepts of crisis and critique. My goal is not to defend Koselleck’s views but to help us clarify why these concepts can help trigger change for the better or destroy political enterprises.

Keywords: Crisis, critique, conceptual history, semantic battles, political struggles, political agency

1 Introduction

I would like to begin by presenting a brief explanation of terms that relate to Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history. I will then discuss the analytical elements and key concepts I will be using to develop my own perspective about his contribution to the thematization of the genealogies of the concepts of crisis and critique. I will also argue that the semantic differences between crisis and critique, which were introduced by both theorists and agents in different historical eras, are the proof of their internal connectedness to action. In the second part of my discussion, I will focus on how, after struggling to gain clarity about the historical and critical connections between these two concepts, Koselleck developed three different genealogical accounts of crisis. Koselleck preferred to save the concept of crisis as the one that became the hallmark of modernity. My claim is that without the concept of critique, there would be no diagnosis and no modernity at all. In the third part of my contribution, I will argue that the concept of crisis is relevant today in our ongoing political struggles. This concept however can be used as a weapon of a political war. I will also make the claim that the concept of critique has played a key role in politics and its history (we owe this insight to the neo-Hegelians who re-established the initial reconnection of the concept of critique to crisis). These three parts will help us focus on the conceptual frames of concepts, their semantic fields, and their internal co-relation between time and space. It is my hope that they will also enlighten us about the relationship of politics to history. The main goal of this essay is to show the dangers and the goals of political wars as they are very much related to how we use concepts. As I understand the lesson by Koselleck’s attempt, my goal is not to defend his views, but to help us clarify why these two concepts can help trigger change for the better or destroy political enterprises.

2 The conceptual frame, or the semantic field of concepts

Reinhart Koselleck created an alternative way of thinking about concepts and their history because he understood their effects on social and political history.¹ The importance of his theory has some advantages over other formulations, for example, hermeneutics or the history of ideas, and I will discuss my reasons for this later on. But first let us consider some of Koselleck’s key ideas.²

First, concepts, especially political concepts, are central for political agency and for thinking about action.

Second, without concepts there are no organizational unities in societies. This does not mean that everything can be reduced to concepts. Rather, concepts provide more than just a linguistic frame. They also help us explore the semantic spaces that are not captured by language alone, such as the nonlinguistic aspects of meaning-making. Just think how Wittgenstein himself was aware of these limitations. Indeed, the most interesting dimensions of his philosophy have to do with the domains of the ineffable.

Third, Koselleck believed that societies are constituted as the result of semantic battles or political struggles between agents and theorists – specifically, about the definition, defense, and occupation of conceptually composed positions.

Fourth, concepts are related to time because, although they are formulated at a particular historical point and define a certain state of affairs, they can also reach the spaces of the future as hopes or expectations, as they are related to the way agents interiorize experiences, which are then sedimented through the history and transformation of their semantics. Because these positions can be seen as disclosing possible changes, they have to be won linguistically. Why? Because concepts are vehicles of action – an issue that I will return to.

Fifth, semantics change at slower pace than factual events. They are articulated through experience, but they can also anticipate possible events, constitute the basis of histories in the plural. New experiences can become part and parcel of language inventories precisely because concepts possess a different timespan from their semantics.

Sixth, concepts possess an inner structure that is different from actual events, and yet they can function as vehicles of action in conceiving or in inciting action. This is the main reason Koselleck was so interested in the semantics of concepts.

Seventh, concepts always relate to their “counter-concepts,” that is, their opposite. The interrelation between the concept and the counter-concept helps shape the definition of both. An example is how the concept of democracy was considered the counter-concept of tyranny. The positions of the concept and the counter-concept change, as concepts can be related to the agents’ experiences, which allow us to see new relationships with other concepts and to social conflicts as well (cf. Junge/Postoutenko 2011).

3 Thematizing the subject of conceptual history

In developing his idea of conceptual history, Koselleck focused on how the shaping of concepts and the transformation of the semantic fields move throughout history and end up designing a future or possible futures. He saw the narrative contents of historical events as structures of repetition or innovation. Actual events are not the same as a concept’s narrative contents. In his work, Koselleck also distinguished between diachronic and synchronous analysis.

The diachronic is developed through genealogical traces of the origins of a concept and its transformation throughout history.³ The synchronous is the field that allows one concept to be connected to another, providing precision for specific meanings and their frames. These frames are called “semantic fields.” Conceptual history moves back and forth from the diachronic to the synchronous and vice-versa.⁴

So let me now consider the question: what is a concept? A concept relates to the way agents situate themselves within their efforts to provide the spaces of signification where both experiences and expectations are their mediations. Agents situate themselves contextually in relation to the past, the present, and the future. Concepts are not words, and words are not necessarily concepts. A concept unfolds into a process, whereas a word relates to a designation, then acquires meaning and simultaneously refers to an object that is also related to the facts. A similar idea of what a concept is can be considered when we think of Wittgenstein’s language games and how his notion of family resemblance grasps similar features that can be ascribed to an umbrella of different meanings attached to a concept.

In order to be a concept, it must have the possibility of becoming generalizable, that is, expandable. Words have specific meanings, found in any dictionary; but concepts cannot be defined once and for all. Their meanings are acquired as they evolve, and they can only be interpreted according to the way they are used over time. Thus, concepts possess what Koselleck called their ambiguity.⁵ Concepts must remain ambiguous so their semantics can be developed – though, in spite of their historical changes, they must retain some of their original concentration or condensation of meaning. This is the reason we can go back to a concept’s genealogies through its specific uses and transformational semantics.

Koselleck thought that words could become concepts if agents or theorists attached a range of social and political meanings to them in their struggles over definitions. Due to this specific capacity of ambiguity, concepts can move to or occupy a semantic territory and create a new relation between time and space. They can also position themselves against another concept so they become opposites and they gain precision when the comparison between them allows us to see that they are placed as concepts and counter-concepts. Also because of this condition of ambiguity, we struggle over the meaning of certain concepts we would like to place in the battlefield of influencing politics so that actions could take place and transformations would be possible. Without the disagreements about meanings, there would be no battles over concepts.

Finally, concepts in conceptual history are seen as analytical strategies about the semantic or linguistic struggles that take place as agents move forward in occupying territories where actions disclose their possibilities of change.

We can define “semantics,” another word that occurs frequently in Koselleck’s texts, as repositories of articulated experience and, therefore, the conditions of possibility for historical and political events. If semantics can anticipate what might occur, they cannot be regarded as if they are necessary. Much of it depends on how the battle over concepts unfolds and how they can be successful due to specific features that resonate among agents over the uses and the meaning of certain concepts in relation to the past and future of actions.

4 The first attempt to define the semantic field of the concepts of “crisis” and “critique”

As we have seen, for Koselleck, concepts reveal their original meaning only if we focus on when they were initially formulated and by whom. But he erased this genealogical perspective, which I have first to clarify in order to make comprehensible the whole of my journey in reviewing his three attempts at conceptualizing crisis. To understand how the two concepts of crisis and critique configured the same semantic field, it is necessary to realize that both words derive from the Greek verb “κρίνω,” which means ‘to decide’ and ‘to judge.’ “Crisis” came from “κρίνειν” (‘to decide’) and turned into “κρίσις” (‘decision’).⁶ “Critique” was synonymous with “judgment,” or “κριτική.” Thus both “crisis” and “critique” were connected to judgment and decision. Koselleck did not focus on this origin on his first attempt to define the co-relation between these two concepts and we will see why.⁷

The relationship between the concept of crisis and that of critique was the subject of Koselleck’s first book (as an earlier draft this was the subject of his habilitation), Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (1988). Since both “crisis” and “critique” belong to the same semantic field, it was possible to trace their diachronic perspective, that is, their genealogy, but Koselleck only focused on the Enlightenment. By focusing on their synchronous field – in how they relate to each oth...