Abstract
In his quest to fulfill the need for theory in the post-war period, the project that Koselleck envisioned sought to entirely renew what was, in the context of German historiography, traditionally labelled « historical theory » (Historik). The present article analyzes this project, proposed as a « critical theory of history » or, in other terms, as a « transcendental theory of history » (transzendentale Historik), as it came to continually expressed throughout Koselleck’s œuvre, from his work on historical concepts (Begriffsgeschichte), to his investigations of the semantics of historical time, until his later research in the domain of political iconology. In taking as a starting point the context of crisis and of the traumatic experience of the war, my purpose is to set this project in relief in light of the still tangible context of the « crisis of historism, » and of Koselleck’s proposition for finding a way out of this crisis through a radicalization of the theory of historicity and the renewal of Historik by way of an historical anthropology applied to a plurality of possible histories.