The Guardians of Concepts
eBook - ePub

The Guardians of Concepts

Political Languages of Conservatism in Britain and West Germany, 1945-1980

  1. 556 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Guardians of Concepts

Political Languages of Conservatism in Britain and West Germany, 1945-1980

About this book

Since 1945, what 'conservative' means has troubled intellectuals, politicians and parties in the United Kingdom and West Germany. In Britain conservatism was an accepted term of the political vocabulary, denoting a particular tradition of political thought and practice. In West Germany, by contrast, conservatism was a difficult concept for the young democracy to swallow. It carried a heavy antiliberal and antidemocratic burden and led people to question whether there was a place for conservatism within democratic culture after all.

The Guardians of Concepts scrutinizes the debates about conservatism in the UK and the Federal Republic of Germany from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. Informed by historical semantics, it conceives of conservatism as a flexible linguistic structure, and shows the importance of language for the self-understanding of many conservatives, who not by chance, have regarded themselves as the guardians of concepts. The intense national and transnational debates about the meaning of conservatism had far-reaching consequences and continue to influence politics today.

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Yes, you can access The Guardians of Concepts by Martina Steber in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & German History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgements
  6. Preface to the German Edition of 2017
  7. List of Abbreviations
  8. Introduction
  9. Chapter 1. Conservatism and Toryism: Concepts of Self-Description in the Political Languages of Conservatism in the United Kingdom
  10. Chapter 2. The Arduous Quest for Conservatism in the Federal Republic of Germany
  11. Chapter 3. Initial Conclusions: Political Languages of Conservatism in Comparison – Conceptual Divergences and Structural Similarities
  12. Chapter 4. Entering into European Conversation: CDU, CSU and the Conservative Party in Search for a Shared Political Language
  13. Conclusion
  14. Glossary
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index