collective singulars

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Collective SingularsA Reinterpretation

NIKOLAY KOPOSOV

Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki

ABSTRACT

Te article proposes a semantic theory o collective singulars, or singular col-

lective names, designating basic historical concepts, which came into beingin the period o the Enlightenment. Teir logical structure seems to be in-ternally contradictory, or they reer at the same time to universal values andideas and to concrete historical occurrences. Tey also entail two diferentprinciples o category-ormationthe logic o general names and that oproper names. Te two logics are equally rooted in our cognitive makeup;however, diferent cultures avor either one or the other. Te article examinesthe transormation o the balance o the two logics in European thought rom

the Middle Ages to the present. Te ormation o the idea o universal historyhas brought about an equilibrium o the two logics, while the contemporarycrisis o the uture is accompanied by the rise o the logic o proper names.

KEYWORDS

categorization, cognitive, collective singulars, ideal types, proper names, pro-totype, Sattelzeitin reverse, William Whewell

Te notion ocollective singulars, or singular collective names, is one o thecentral concepts oBegrifsgeschichte (the history o concepts). Tough the ex-pression collective singulars is not equivalent to Reinhart Kosellecks basichistorical concepts (geschichtliche Grundbegrife),1 basic historical conceptsare oen characterized as collective singulars. Tus, according to Koselleck,our modern concept ohistoryemerged in the eighteenth century, when His-

torywith capital H (or more exactlyGeschichte with capital G) became a col-lective name or all the stories that had ever happened to humankind. Much inthe same way, the state came to be seen, around 1800, as a moral person andthe collective name or a broad spectrum o public institutions.2

1. Geschichtliche Grundbegrife: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache inDeutschland, Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds. (Stuttgart: E. Klett

and J. G. Cotta, 197293), hereaer cited as GG.2. Reinhart Koselleck, Historie/Geschichte, GG 2: 64953; Koselleck, Conze, et al.,Staat und Souvernitt, GG 6: 2.

Contributions to the History of Concepts Volume 6, Issue 1, Summer 2011: 3964

doi:10.3167/choc.2011.060103 ISSN 1807-9326 (Print), ISSN 1874-656X (Online)


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However, to the best o my knowledge, the theory o collective singularshas not been developed in any detail. Te term is most oen understood withinthe context o the theory o basic historical terms as ormulated by Koselleck.3According to him, the conceptual revolution o the Sattelzeit(the saddle time,the period o transition to Modernity) and the emergence o the contemporarysystem o social and political concepts were determined by the changing per-ception o historical time, which came to be dominated by the idea o progress.Instead o describing the domain o experience, the newly emerging conceptsbecame oriented towards a horizon o expectations. Tey became necessarilyless descriptive, and more general and abstract than the old notions. It seems

that collective singulars are usually thought o as an instrument o generalizingabout history, by bringing under the same label a variety o phenomena thatbeore the eighteenth century had not been viewed as parts o a single whole.

Some historians believe that nowadays we are living through a kind o Sat-telzeitin reverse, because the collapse o uture-oriented thinking has broughtabout a sort o present-mindedness, or prsentisme, as Franois Hartog callsit.4 Hartogs analysis o contemporary time-consciousness is undamental or

the hypothesis oSattelzeitin reverse. Te theory opresentism has emerged atthe conuence o two intellectual traditions: the history o memory o PierreNora and the history o concepts o Reinhart Koselleck. Hartogs main tool orthe analysis o contemporary historical consciousness is his notion orgimedhistoricit, by which he means a particular orm o understanding the rela-tionship between past, present, and uture that is typical or a given culture.According to him, the conceptual revolution o the Enlightenment was also

the birthplace o the modern rgime dhistoricitcharacterized by the domina-tion o the uture over the present and the past. Tisrgimehas now come toits end and is being replaced by a new perception o historical time, where akind o eternal present denes an extremely narrow horizon o expectations

3. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukun: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten [Fu-ture past: On the semantics o historical times] (Frankurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979).On Kosellecks theory o basic historical terms, see Melvin Richter, Te History o Political

and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (New York: Oxord University Press, 1995);Kari Palonen, An Application o Conceptual History to Itsel: From Method to Teory inReinhart Kosellecks Begrifsgeschichte, Redescriptions: Yearbook o Political Tought andConceptual History1 (1997): 3969; Hans Erich Bdeker, Concept Meaning Discourse:Begrifsgeschichte Reconsidered, in History o Concepts: Comparative Perspectives, IainHampsher-Monk, Karin ilmans, and Frank Van Vree, eds. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni-versity Press, 1998), 5164.

4. Franois Hartog, Rgimes dhistoricit: Prsentisme et expriences du temps (Paris: Seuil,2003). For a similar interpretation o the contemporary sense o the past, see Hans-UlrichGumbrecht, In 1926. Living on the Edge o ime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1997). On the growing importance o the domain o experience, see Pierre-Andraguief, Lefacement de lavenir(Paris: Galile, 2000), 474.


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Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation

and shapes the past, which by the same token is transormed into an incoher-ent body o memories.

I am largely sympathetic with this argument, though we need perhaps amore detailed picture o our current time-consciousness. In Russia, the theoryoSattelzeitin reverse has been developed by Dina Khapaeva, who has studiedthe impact o current changes in historical temporality on the conceptual ap-paratus o the social sciences.5 My ocus in this article is more technical: whatare the particular eatures o the semantic structures o collective singulars,and what transormations (i any) are these structures undergoing today?

Other scholars have also suggested that there may be a link between the

semantic structures o collective singulars and the current rgime dhistoricit.Tus, Javier Fernndez Sebastin and Juan Francisco Fuentes have proposedthis hypothesis in their interview with Reinhart Koselleck shortly beore hisdeath. According to them, the balance between experience and expectationhas been disturbed in recent years, because it has become progressivelyharder to see the uture as an extension o the present. As a result o the cur-rent ragmentation o history, they say, basic historical concepts are no longer

singular collective names and are returning to their pre-Sattelzeitorigin.6

Inother words, basic historical concepts are losing their generalizing potentialdue to the decomposition o the great narratives. Tus, even though we rec-ognize progressive changes in various segments o contemporary lie, we arenow less condent than beore in placing them under the collective name oprogress. Again, I tend to agree with this argument, though with some reser-

vations, to which I will return later. But in order to understand what is hap-

pening now with collective singulars, it is worth developing a little urther thetheory o their semantic structures.Let us start with some elementary acts about collective singulars, having

John Stuart Mill, a classic in the eld, as our guide (though I am not goingto ollow him on several important points). 7 As the term suggests, collectivesingulars are collective names that can be attributed to groups o individualoccurrences taken together, but not to each o these occurrences taken sepa-rately. aken separately, these occurrences can be also subsumed under a sin-gle name, but this will be a common or general name. Tus the word noblesis a general or common name, while nobilityis a collective name or the same

5. Dina Khapaeva, : - [Te dukes o the republic in the age o translation: Humanities and theconceptual revolution], (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2005), 21417.

6. Javier Fernndez Sebastin and Juan Francisco Fuentes, Conceptual History, Memory,and Identity: An Interview with Reinhart Koselleck, Contributions to the History o Concepts1, no. 2 (2006): 11920. Interestingly, Koselleck in the interview seems skeptical about thisidea.

7. John Stuart Mill,A System o Logic (London: J. W. Parker, 1843), 1: 3334.


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group o individuals, though this word can also reer to the state o being nobleand to the quality o nobles. In the latter case, it is an abstract name (accordingto Mill, abstract names are the names o attributes, while concrete names arethose o objects).

Now let us consider the adjective singular. Only some collective namesare singular. Tere also exist general (or common) collective names. ake theword regiment. It is certainly a collective name, or it reers to many individualstaken together. But there are many regiments, and insoar as it reers to manycollective individuals that can be subsumed under the same concept oregi-ment, the word regimentis a general collective name. However, i we make our

concept oregimentmore precise by adding, say, a number, we will transormthis concept into a collective singular. ake or example, the 76th regiment ooot. It is a singular collective name. But in our everyday speech we oen useabridged ormulas instead o long ones, so that we can imagine myriads osituations when speaking about the 76th regiment o oot, one could simply say,the regiment. In all such cases, the general collective name regimentwas usedas a singular collective name.

Now let us consider a more complex case. ake, or example, the conceptonobility, considered as a concrete name. How do we decide whether it is asingular or a common collective name? Is there a unique historical phenom-enon that we identiy by attributing this name to it, or are there many diferentnobilities that we can compare to each other? Tere are some languages thatprevent us rom putting this word into plural, but there are also some thatallow or that. But whether we can use the word in the plural or not, the prob-

lem persists, or in any case we can think o diferent kinds o nobility, groupso nobility, types o nobility, and so on.So is nobility a general or a singular name? I think that it can be both,

and what it is depends on the context. o use it as a singular name, we do noteven have to advance the risky hypothesis o a spiritual entity that emerged inimmemorial times and has embraced every single noble on the earth. We cansimply suppose that in a given place at a given time there existed only one so-cial group corresponding to the name nobility, and limit our investigation tothis ramework. However, it would be a totally articial situation, because ourdecision to use this word consistently as a singular name cannot prevent othersrom using it as a common name, so that the meaning o the term or most othe languages users (including ourselves) will always be quite ambivalent. Tissort o transitivity characterizes our actual use o language, when one and thesame word can mean logically diferent things.

We can take it one step urther. A concept can be used as a singular or as

a general name depending on the context. I we use it as a singular name, doesthis mean that all the elements o a common name are completely absent romthe message we convey? Or alternatively, when we use it as a general name,


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does it completely erase all traces o a singular name in our message? I thinkthat it does not, so that we can expect to nd some elements o a singular namein a general one, and some aspects o a general name in a singular one (thoughit can also happen that a word is used as a purely common or a purely propername). In other words, what matters is not only the grammatical type o name,but also the way a name is used in a given context.

However, the main ways o using a concept, taken together, orm its mean-ing. Tis meaning does not have to beand most oen is notevoked in allo its aspects every time we use the concept. Usually, to understand a sentence,only some aspects o the meaning o the terms used in it are relevant. But other

aspects o the meaning are neverthelessto some extentalso present in themind, though not actualized by a concrete context. I diferent ways o usingone and the same notion are logically incompatible with each other, the se-mantic structure o the concept can be considered as internally contradictory.

Being internally contradictory is not uncommon or many concepts weuse, in both our everyday and our scholarly communication. It seems, though,that it is less typical or the natural sciences, whose terminology tends to be

more abstract and ormalized, than or social and human sciences that aremore dependent on commonsense knowledge and ordinary language. Philos-ophers o history, especially o neo-Kantian vintage, have persistently empha-sized this particularity o the social sciences vocabulary. Tus, building uponHeinrich Rickerts distinction between generalizingconcepts used by naturalsciences and individualizing historical concepts, Max Weber proposed thetheory o ideal types. Most oen Webers commentators consider ideal types

as research utopias which do not exist in reality, but allow or understand-ing it. But this is true o any kind o concept. However, according to a recentinterpretation, Weber saw ideal types as logically diferent rom the naturalsciences concepts: having abstract general meanings, they also contain reer-ences to concrete historical phenomena. Te French sociologist Jean-ClaudePasseron has convincingly argued that some names which by their grammati-cal type are general oen unction as semi-proper names (semi-noms pro-

pres) in the discourse o social sciences.8 I do not think that this is an exclusiveproperty o terminology in the social and human sciences. Rather, it is typicalo our everyday use o language, and insoar as some natural sciences (likebotany or zoology) use terms rom ordinary language they cannot altogether

8. See Max Weber, Die Objektivitt sozialwissenschalicher und sozialpolitischer Er-kenntnis, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Austze zur Wissenschaslehre (bingen: J.C.B.Mohr, 1968), 190191; Jean-Claude Passeron, Le raisonnement sociologique: Lespace non-

popperien du raisonnement naturel (Paris: Nathan, 1991), 6061. For more details, seeNikolay Koposov, De limagination historique (Paris: ditions de lcole des Hautes tudesen Sciences Sociales, 2009), 183184.


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escape this ambiguity either. But it is likely that this ambiguity is more usualor the vocabulary o the social and human sciences.

ake, or example, the concept oabsolutism. We can dene absolutismas unlimited monarchy, so that any kind o state with the strong power oa monarch could be called absolutist. But this concept so obviously reersto early modern Europe that we normally avoid using it, say, or the Romanor Byzantine empires, not to speak o the state o the Great Mongols or theOttoman Empire, which were traditionally seen by early modern Europeanpolitical theorists as cases o oriental despotism, as opposed to the absolutemonarchies. Te applicability o the term absolutism even to Ivan the erribles

government has oen been called into question, the Byzantine word autocracybeing usually perceived as a more appropriate name or the unlimited mon-archy in Russia, at least or the period beore Peter the Great, whose reormsmade Western terms more usable in the Russian context. Te term absolutism,then, can potentially have a universal meaning. But it also reers to a concretehistorical phenomenon. Te same is true or many other historical concepts,or example Renaissance or Enlightenment. We can speak o a renaissance in

medieval Japan, but most o us would eel that this would be rather in a meta-phorical sense.o sum up: there is no absolute boundary between singular and general

collective names. Tis allows or a kind o transitivity in the use o conceptsthat can in some contexts appear as general and in some contexts as singularnames. Tis conceptual structure is particularly typical or the vocabulary osocial and human sciences. Historical concepts may have universal meaning

and reer to individual historical phenomena, limited in space and time. Evenwhen designated by general names, these concepts oen unction as semi-proper names.

So ar we have been discussing common and singular names. What aboutproper names? Do they have meaning? Tis would contradict Mills theory. obe sure, he distinguishes two kinds o singular names. Some o them consisto multiple general names combined in such a way as to describe a unique in-dividual (the rst emperor o Rome). Tese names do have meaning, whilenames like John, London, or England (proper names stricto sensu) do not.Meaning, according to Mill, is the sum o the connotations reerring to theattributes o the objects denoted by a word. But proper names are attached tothe objects themselves,9 and do not immediately a rm any o the proper-ties o the objects they denote. Facts known about an individual designatedby a proper name can turn out to be untrue o him, and consequently are notnecessary to his identity. In other words, general names have both meaning

9. Mill, System o Logic, 1: 40.


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and reerence (or connotation and denotation, in Mills terms), while propernames have only reerence.

However, other philosophers (beginning with Gottlob Frege10) believethat everything which is known about an individual can be considered themeaning o his name. I would tend to agree with them. It is extremely di-cult to distinguish between what is a rmed by a name and what is simplyassociated with it. Tis is true or general names as well. Is there anythingin the word noble that would make it a rm, say, the idea o landed prop-erty, which is an important aspect o our notion o nobility? What this word(derived rom the Latin adjective nobilis) literally means is that a person to

whom it is applied is widely known and nothing more. And or someonewhose Latin is not so good it does not mean even this. Everything else thatmight be considered the words meaning is associated with it thanks to ourknowledge o the world. Tus in eenth-century France, being noble meantliving rom ones own lands without doing anything (vivre de ses terres sansrien aire).11 Tere are numerous ways in which purely linguistic mechanisms(lexical connections, grammar, etc.) contribute to the ormation o the words

meaning. However, a partI would say the most essential parto the mean-ing comes rom our knowledge o the world, not rom within the language.It goes without saying that the acts known about, say, social groups can turnout to be alse, and hence not necessary to the meaning o their names. Doesit ollow that general names have no meaning either? I it does not, why shouldwe consider the acts known about individuals as having nothing to do withthe meaning o their names?

o conclude, we can say that proper names can have meaning. I am notsuggesting that they always have it.John may certainly mean nothing, as wellasAlexander(the avorite example o philosophers since Frege). But Alexan-ders ull name wasAlexandros tou Philippou tn Makedonn, and this meanta lot. Te diference between singular names and proper names which wasimportant or Mill does not look so undamental, or both kinds o words canhave meaning.

Proper names denote diferent kinds o individuals, including the collec-tive ones which interest us here. We can saely conclude that proper names ocollective individuals may have meaning as well. Such concepts orm a part othe category o collective singulars (proper names in Mills scheme are a kindo singular name). Tus, contrary to what Mill thought, Englanddoes not haveto be an empty sign serving only to x a reerence. It can be a concept, a collec-

10. Gottlob Frege, ber Sinn und Bedeutung, Zeitschri r Philosophie und philo-sophische Kritik 100 (1892): 2550. For more details about this debate, see Koposov, Delimagination historique.

11. Jacques Mourier, Nobilitas, quid est? Un procs ain-lHermitage en 1408, Biblio-thque de lcole des Chartes 142, no. 2 (1984): 25569.


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tive singular whose logical status is not altogether diferent rom that obour-geoisie, though the grammatical status o the two names is not equivalent.

o be clear, the grammatical type o a name is important or its meaning,and collective singulars designated by general names tend to be more generalthan those designated by proper names. But the degree to which the meaningo a concept is general also depends on the tradition o its use, and rst o allon the strength o its association with other general concepts.

ake, or example, Mills compatriot and riend Henry Tomas Buckle.12For him, Englandwas by no means an empty sign (or a rigid designator, touse Saul Kripkes term13), but one o the most important concepts on which his

understanding o history heavily depended. Tis was due to the intimate con-nection between the proper name o England and the idea o civilization. Teconcept ocivilization contained a reerence to England, which was consideredthe clearest case o humankinds development toward reedom and prosper-ity. But the concept o civilization, in its turn, was a part o Buckles idea oEngland. As a result, Englandcould stand or civilization, in the same way asor Franois Guizot France stood or it.14 Te countries proper names, then,

acquired general meaning and became historical concepts.In the previous section, my emphasis was on the act that general namescan become semi-proper names. Now, let me underline that, in their turn,proper names can unction as semi-general names, to revert to Passeronsormula.

Equating Englandor France with civilization was not an extravagant ideathat came only to Buckle or Guizot. It was widely shared by their readers and

numerous imitatorsand even opponents. Te idea o civilization becamestrongly associated with England and France in other countries as well. Tusmany German or Russian thinkers o the mid-nineteenth century used it toconceptualize the historical destinies o their respective countries in terms oa Sonderweg, that is, as alternatives to the model set up by the leaders o theworlds developmentEngland and France, a model that was oen reerred toas civilization.

Te capacity o proper names to express universal ideas (without ceasingto reer to concrete historical individuals) becomes even more obvious i weconsider the names o the larger cultural units like Europe, Eastern Europe,the West, or the East. Excellent studies have documented how the conceptsoEasternEurope or the Easthad been orged in the Enlightenment Mind(exactly in the same period as other geschichtliche Grundbegrife) to express

12. Henry Tomas Buckle, History o Civilization in England(London: J. W. Parker &Son, 185761), 12.

13. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity(Oxord: Blackwell, 1980), 48.14. Franois Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828

32), 16.


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the conception o universal history seen as the progression rom barbarism tocivilization.15 More recently, in the Cold War period, the concept othe West(which had existed long beore it) became central to the renewed version o theliberal master narrative. o be sure, both Europe and the Westare, grammati-cally speaking, proper names, just like Englandand France. But logically theyoen unction as semi-general names, though perhaps o somewhat diferentdegree o generality, the Westbeing more general than Europe, and Europemore general than France or England.

Geschichtliche Grundbegrife should perhaps be complemented by anothervolume dealing with notions like England,France,Europe,Eastern Europe,the

West, or theOrient. It would not be an easy task to identiy those conceptsdesignated by proper names which belong to the category o basic historicalconcepts, but it was not an easy task with respect to the concepts designatedby general names either. I the main criterion is whether a concept relates toour idea o history (or more exactly to the conception o world history as itwas ormed in the Sattelzeitand has been urther developed since then), thenclearly the proper names just quoted deserve to be included in the Geschichtli-

che Grundbegrife. We can hardly imagine a master narrative that would notuse the names o at least some nations, countries, or regions whichrom thenarratives vantage pointhave played a crucial role in history.

o sum up, every name has a meaning and a reerence (or intention andextension, or else connotation and denotation). Meaning is a concept that theword connotes. Reerence is a thing or a group o things in the world that itdenotes. Meaning is essentially general, or it consists o attributes o a po-

tentially unlimited number o occurrences that we can subsume under theconcept. o be sure, the meaning o singular names can be structured in such away as to capture the individuality o the corresponding phenomena by com-bining general names. Partly or this reason, the meaning o singular namescan include universal aspects. But even proper names can to some extent ac-quire universal meaning, i they become closely associated with this or thatgeneral concept.

While meaning is potentially universal, reerence, on the contrary, is moreconcrete, or it consists o concrete objects, and the uniqueness o some othese objects can matter or us. When we use a term, we most oen reer bothto the corresponding concept and the category o things in the world. But thiscan imply an internal logical contradiction, or we reer at the same time tosomething abstract and universal and something concrete and historical.

15. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1977); Larry Wolf, InventingEastern Europe: Te Map o Civilization on the Mind o the Enlightenment(Stanord: StanordUniversity Press, 1994).


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o be sure, most o the concepts we use (at least most o the ordinary-language notions as well as terms rom the social and human sciences) sharethis property o internal contradiction. But they share it to a diferent degree.Both the word nobles and the word nobilityreer to an abstract and potentiallyuniversal idea o nobility. But nobles can also be used in the same sense asnobility, understood as a collective name. In act, by saying Russian nobles othe eighteenth century and Russian nobility o the eighteenth century wereer to one and the same group o physical individuals. However, the word nobles by its grammatical orm does not suggest the idea o collective individu-ality which is so strongly present in the concept onobility(used as a collec-

tive name). Tat is why collective names are the preerred linguistic device othinking in terms o collective individuals (though we can designate collectiveconcepts by general and proper names as well).

So ar I have been discussing mostly social terms, or the names o socialcategories, because these terms are the most obvious example o the idea o thecollective individual. However, many other basic historical terms have also anaspect o collective name. Tus, according to Jean Starobinski, the word civi-

lization in the eighteenth century became a collective name or many singulardevelopments like the improvement o mores, the progress o science, or thedevelopment o the arts.16 Or, i one would ollow the analysis o RaymondWilliams, the words industryand art, which beore the mid-eighteenth cen-tury had meant qualities o industrious or artistic people, became collectivenames or the corresponding sets o practices, objects, and institutions.17

It is important to underline that collective names can reer to various as-

sortments o concrete phenomena, both static and dynamic, not only to mul-titudes o things but also to multitudes o processes. In the eighteenth century,the world seen in terms o multitudes and processes came to replace the Ar-istotelian cosmos o static, perennial essences (we shall return to this later).Te rise o collective names o multitudes and processes was one o the mostcharacteristic aspects o the intellectual revolution o the Sattelzeit.18 o besure, they were not invented in the Sattelzeitperiod. Te capacity to orm col-lective concepts and to consider collectivities as individuals is a property oour minds. However, the mind has a history, and some o its capacities seem tohave been more developed than others in some epochs. Te capacity to ormcollective singulars seems to have grown in importance in the decades aroundthe French Revolution.

16. Jean Starobinski, Le mot civilization, in idem, Le remde dans le mal(Paris: Galli-mard, 1989).

17. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 17801950 (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1983). xiii, xv.

18. See Koposov, Imagination historique, 13536; and idem, Te Logic o Democracy,Le Banquet27 (2010), 10121.


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Tere is one more thing that has to be said about the connection betweenmultitudes and processes. It is important to realize that processes were seen asmultitudes, and were designated by collective names reerring to assortmentso singular developments. But even more important is the act that the idea o

process was the only way to make multitudes intelligible. Tis is the connectionI shall explore in the rest o the article.

However, beore doing this we have to consider still another aspect o thesemantic structure o concepts. A concept can entail, simultaneously, mutu-ally exclusive hypotheses about the structure o the group o objects to whichit reers. Tis is particularly important or collective (or group) concepts that

are undamentally classicatory notions, allowing or ordering multitudes oindividual occurrences.

Recent research in linguistics and psychology suggests that humans ormcategories according to several kinds o logic at the same time: in particular thelogic o necessary and su cient conditions, as well as the logic o prototypes(when members o a given category possess no single common property butare grouped around the prototypes or good examples on the basis o a vague

amily resemblance).19

Te latter logic draws essentially on the experience oempirical ordering o synthetically perceived objects in a mental space, whileAristotelian logic relies rst and oremost on an analytical intuition rooted inthe experience o interpreting the meaning o words. Te logic o necessaryand su cient conditions is essentially deductive, while the logic o prototypeessentially inductive. Empirical classication operates with unnamed objectsthat precede the categories o language, and produces groups o objects that

need not coincide with those or which language has names. Tat is why weoen do not have general names or empirical categories. Empirical orderingo proper names produces categories that are to be designated by collectiveproper names.

Although both logics are equally rooted in our cognitive makeup, the pro-portion in which they mix to produce diferent world views changes rom oneculture to another. And the change in their respective roles in thinking paral-

19. Eleanor Rosch, Human Categorization, in Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology, NeilWarren, ed.(London: Academic Press, 1977), 149; eadem, Principles o Categorization,in Cognition and Caregorization, Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd, eds. (Hillsdale, N.J.: L.Erlbaum, 1978), 2848; George Lakof, Women, Fire, andDangerous Tings: What CategoriesReveal about the Mind (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1987); Eric Margolisand Stephen Laurence, eds., Concepts: Core Readings (Cambridge, Mass.: MI Press, 1999);Gregory L. Murphy, Te Big Book o Concepts (Cambridge, Mass.: MI Press, 2004). Seealso Rodney Needham, Polithetic Classication: Convergence and Consequences, Man,10, no. 3 (1975): 34969; Luc Boltanski, Laurent Tvenot, Finding Ones Way in SocialSpace: A Study Based on Games, Social Science Inormation, 22, no. 45 (1983): 63179


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leled the ormation o the contemporary vocabulary o social terms and therise o the collective singulars.

We can now consider in more detail some o the historical transorma-tions that occurred in the semantic structures o collective singulars and theirrole in Western thought.

Te medieval world view is sometimes described as an Aristotelian cos-mos o static essences.20 Within this world view, things were held in order be-cause they were seen to some extent as the maniestation o essences whichwere considered logically anterior to them. Essentialism was typical o the me-dieval style o thinking. Categories were seen as orming a coherent, logical

structure, so that each o them could be dened in terms ogenus proximus,diferentia specica.

However, in spite o its predilection or deductive reasoning (or ratherbecause o it), the medieval mind was not su ciently trained to orm com-plex, abstract concepts or entities. Te medieval system o grammatical cat-egories, substantially diferent rom our own, reveals this intellectual di culty.It was a verb-dominated system, adapted to describing the actions o concrete

subjects.21

Te vocabulary o abstract categories remained rudimentary, andthose terms that did exist were understood in such a way that their abstractmeaning and their reerence to concrete phenomena almost used. Tis cor-responds to the tendency o medieval logic not to distinguish clearly betweensense and reerence, or both meanings omeaning were equally covered bythe word signicare. And to the extent that the logicians distinguished betweenthem, sense (understood as essence) was perceived as the primary and direct

meaning (signicatum primarium) o common names, while reerence was thesecondary and indirect meaning (signicatum secundarium or suppositum).22

In particular, the medieval vocabulary o collective historical conceptsreects a style o thinking that was at once more deductive and more con-crete than our own. Medieval terms or human collectivitiesimperium (Ro-manum), communitas (christiana, ecclesiae, or regni), regnum (Francorum),etc.unctioned as quasi-proper names reerring to concrete historical in-dividuals, so that their meaning, which in principle covered the attributes oallempires, communities, and so on, was necessarily less general than that o anormal common name. In particular, the ontological status o these entitieswas very loosely specied, i at all, by their names. Rather, they were appre-

20. Alexandre Koyr, Du monde clos lunivers inni, trans. Raissa arr (Paris: Gallimard,1973). See also Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbegrif und Funktionsbegrif: Untersuchungen berdie Grundragen der Erkenntniskritik (1910), (Darmstadt, 1994).

21. Lucien Febvre, Le problme de lincroyance au XVIe sicle: La religion de Rabelais (Pa-ris: A. Michel, 1962), 331.

22. E. J. Ashworth, Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period(Dordrecht: D. Reidel,1974), 47, 72.


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hended in a syncretic way, in accordance with what can be called the model opoliteia that goes back to the ancient Greek concept opolis. Te latter concept,paradigmatic or premodern political thought, is untranslatable in the modernlanguages, or it reerred simultaneously to what we now distinguish as stateand society(not to mention its economic, legal, moral, and religious connota-tions).23 No wonder then that ecclesia, or example, was a normal term or whatwe now call society, and clearly reerred not to society in general, but to theconcrete community o Christians who inhabited medieval Europe.

Apparently, in contradistinction to our own mental habits, medievalthinkers did not see this syncretic and concrete understanding o entities as

incompatible with the idea o essence (and hence with deductive reasoning),partly because sense was not clearly distinguished rom reerence, and partlybecause essences themselves were oen represented syncretically. Tus, ac-cording to a widespread ormula going back to the end o the tenth century,medieval society consisted o three orders (ordines) o people: priests, war-riors, and laborers (oratores,bellatores orpugnatores, and laboratores), or even,as it was stated by Adalberon, Bishop o Laon, o those who preach, who make

war, and who labor (orant,pugnant, and laborant). Te centrality o verbs isevident in this terminology. aken together, the three orders orm the Houseo God (domus Dei) or the highest entity.24 According to Otto Brunner, thesecategories were invented by theologians exclusively or the needs o moral phi-losophy and had nothing to do with the way medieval people actually thoughtabout society (which they did in terms o concrete orders).25 However,O. G. Oexle has convincingly demonstrated that this model was meant, rst

and oremost, to describe a changing medieval society.26

In compliance with a tradition going back to St. Augustine, these orderswere thought o not so much as groups o people but as syncretic metaphysi-cal substances, within whose ramework the ideas o social unction and cor-responding moral value could hardly be separated. In the same way, the Latinword militia could be understood both as a group omilites and as their ser-vice (servitium) or nature.27 Te essentialist vision o society is thus maniestin medieval social vocabulary. In the same way, the word nobility(nobilitas,noblesse, Adel) was understood primarily as an abstract name designating the

23. Manred Riedel, Gesellscha, brgerliche, GG 2: 719800.24. Georges Duby, Les trois orders ou limaginaire du odalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978);

Otto Gerhard Oexle, Die unktionale Dreiteilung der Gesellscha bei Adalbero vonLaon. Deutungsschemata der sozialen Wirklichkeit im rheren Mittelalter, Frhmittelal-terliche Studien 12 (1978): 154.

25. Otto Brunner, Land und Herrscha: Grundragen der territorialen Verassungsge-schichte Sdostdeutschlands im Mittelalter, third ed. (Brunn: R. M. Rohrer, 1943), 456, 460.

26. Oexle, Funktionale Dreiteilung.27. Ibid.


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quality, or essence, o a social category, not as its collective name;28 and theword bourgeoisie reerred not so much to the class obourgeois, but rst andoremost to their rights and privileges. Correspondingly, the status o a per-son was perceived as nothing else but his essence, given that individuals werenot yet clearly emancipated rom the social groups they belonged to.29 Inother words, individuals were thought o as logically posterior in relation toorders.

Despite the nominalistic uprising o the late Middle Ages, which empha-sized that individual things alone had real existence, and despite the anti-Ar-istotelian mood o some sixteenth-century logicians (above all Peter Ramus),

early modern logic was dominated by the Aristotelian school at least up to themid-seventeenth century, i not later.30 It was not until the second hal o thecentury that empiricist, inductive logic (oreshadowed, though by no meanscreated, by Francis Bacon, whose thought had been too dependent on the Ar-istotelian ramework) started to emerge,31 reecting the ormation o a new,atomistic world view in which things came to be seen as logically anterior tocategories. By the same token, categories became much more problematic, or

they could no longer be viewed as an emanation o divine reason.As late as the beginning o the seventeenth century, the medieval, hier-archical vision o society still largely dominated social thought.32 On thecontrary, the eighteenth century saw the emergence o the theory o the so-ciety o classes. Te rst signs o this transition became maniest in the mid-seventeenth century. At rst glance, the theory o classes and that o orderslook similar. In both cases, society is divided into a limited number o social

groups, dened on the basis o their social unctions. However, the similarity ismisleading. Te transition rom the theory o orders to that o classes entaileda proound logical change.

Recent research on the genesis o the concept oclass has revealed impor-tant diferences in the logical status o orders and classes. It has been shown thatin the course o the seventeenth century the word class came to be understood

28. Werner Conze, Adel, Aristokratie, GG 1: 6.

29. Aaron Gurevich, [Categories o medieval cul-ture] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972).30. On the importance o the nominalistic turn in William o Occams philosophy, seen

as a premise o the modern style o thinking (including modern theories o society), seeOtto Gerhard Oexle, Deutungsschemata der sozialen Wirklichkeit im rhen und hohenMittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Wissens, inMentalitten im Mittelalter: Metho-dische und inhaltliche Probleme, Frantisek Graus, ed. (Sigmaringen, 1987), 65117.

31. William Kneale and Martha Kneale, Te Development o Logic (Oxord: OxordUniversity Press, 1962), 30910, 318; see also Robert Blanch and Jacques Dubucs, Lalogique et son histoire (Paris: A. Colin, 1996), 173; Wilbur S. Howell, Eighteenth-CenturyBritish Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 259437.

32. See Koposov, Imagination historique, 11821.


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as (a) a general term or a category, and (b) a term or the social groups seen asa result o inductive classication; while estates were considered as (a) essencesand (b) elements o a preestablished social order.33 Te theory o the societyo orders corresponded to the Aristotelian kosmos, or the image o the closedworld, seen as a hierarchy o ideal essences with an all-inclusive genus (ta

panta) at its summit. In such a universe, knowledge was thought o as existingbeore the knowing subject, and disclosing itsel through syllogistic, deductivereasoning. In contrast, the theory o the society o classes corresponded to themodel o the innite universe, or the atomistic and nominalistic world view.In such a world, knowledge has to result essentially rom inductive inerence.

In the closed world, estates were seen as logically anterior to individuals. In theinnite universe, individuals have appeared as anterior to classes. I the notiono essence was the key idea o medieval thought, the notion o the individualhas become that o the modern age.

Tis change, brought about by the ormation o the modern scientic out-look, was in turn prepared by the invention o perspective and the revolutionin spatial perception that had originated in Renaissance Italy and reached its

highest point in seventeenth-century Dutch painting.34

A multitude o objects,liberated rom the power o essences, had now to be arranged in the rational,three-dimensional mental space that had become the preerred system o logi-cal reerence. Qualitatively heterogeneous, symbolically meaningul, and hi-erarchically structured medieval space35 corresponded to the concept o thesociety o orders seen as a hierarchy o essences; the empty space o the inniteuniverse required a totally diferent logic o empirical ordering, which in the

long run has brought about a new understanding o category structures.It was not beore the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the con-temporary system o grammatical categories came into being, ensuring thetransition rom verb-dominated to noun-dominated thinking. Te birth obasic historical concepts was a part o this transormation. wo aspects o thenew system o grammatical categories should be emphasized here: the specialrole played by the adverbs, reerring in particular to what came to be distin-guished as diferent ontological levels (social, political, religious, etc.); and the

33. Dallas L. Clouatre, Te Concept o Class in French Culture Prior to the Revolution,Journal o the History o Ideas 45, no. 2 (1984): 21944; Marie-France Piguet, Classe: Histoiredu mot et gense du concept des Physiocrates aux Historiens de la Restauration (Lyon: Pressesde lUniversit de Lyon, 1996); Otto Gerhard Oexle, Werner Conze, and Rudol Walther,Stand, Klasse, GG 6: 155284.

34. Erwin Panosky, La perspective comme orme symbolique (Paris: Minuit, 1975); HubertDamisch, Lorigine de la perspective (Paris: Flammarion, 1987); Svetlana Alpers, Te Art oDescribing: Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century(London/New York: Penguin Books,1989).

35. On the medieval concept o space, see Gurevich, Categories o Medieval Culture.


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emergence o new types o nouns: alongside common names reerring to cat-egories o objects (or example, nobles) and abstract names reerring to theirqualities (nobilityused as an abstract name), names or processes (or example,civilization), multitudes (nobilityused as a collective name), and systems orelations (eudalism), which either had not existed at all or had played only amarginal role in the medieval languages, became central to the new concep-tual system, including the vocabulary o social and political categories. Tusnobility, whose primary meaning in the medieval period had been that o es-sence, came to be seen rst and oremost as a collective name or a group oindividuals. And the new concept oworking class, or proletariat, that in the

nineteenth century became one o the central notions o social thought, was apure collective singular and not an abstract name o essence at all.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there also emerged a newobject-oriented logic, laying emphasis on the empirical approaches to the prob-lem o categories. Te distinction between sense and reerence that had beenclearly established by the Logic o Port Royal (1662) contributed to the lib-eration o things rom the power o essences. Tings ormed multitudes to be

ordered empirically, be it nature (a multitude o atoms) or society (a multitudeo individuals). Te idea o multitude was a logically inevitable consequence othe idea o the individual. With the decay o the Aristotelian cosmos, essenceslost the power to put things in order. In innite empty space, individual bodiescould be empirically grouped together in clusters whose origins could be ac-counted or only by the history o their individual processes o ormation. Teidea o the individual also entailed that o process. Collective singulars reer-

ring to historically ormed entities, which consisted o individuals, became thepreerred linguistic expression o this new style o thinking.Te eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed a real boom in

the domain o the theory o classication. Te science o this period was es-sentially about classication, or empirical ordering o things liberated romthe realm o essences. Te new theory o classication was largely rooted inthe intellectual experience o what came to be known as classicatory sci-encesbotany, zoology, mineralogy, and so on.36 Elements o this theory canbe detected in the work o natural scientists like Bufon, who questioned the

validity o the principle o hard and ast dividing lines between classes. Teidea that classes are strictly separate rom each other is indeed undamentalor Aristotelian logic. According to the principle o necessary and su cientconditions, an object can either belong to a category or not belong to it, and allobjects that a category includes have equal rights to be its members. Challeng-ing this view, Bufon wrote:

36. William Whewell, History o the Inductive Sciences, third ed. (New York: D. Appleton,1859), 12.


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Nature passes rom one species to another, and oen even rom onegenus to another, by invisible shadings; so that there exists a great numbero intermediary species and divided objects that we do not know where to

place.37

In other words, a category is best represented by its better examples, but canalso include marginal ones. Tis clearly anticipates the prototypical theory oclassication.

At the same time, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century philosophers,largely under John Lockes inuence, came to be interested in language, and

in particular in the variety o linguistic mechanisms that come into play inhuman categorization. Te philosophical analysis o common language pro-posed by Tomas Reed was crucial or urther shaping this interest. Te ideathat words are not names o essences, that genera and species are merely ar-bitrary creations which the human mind orms,38 and that the meaning owords was ormed historically in the process o the development o languagewas undamental or this new approach. Tis led to the theory o the transi-

tive use o words, according to which the meaning o a concept oen cannotbe dened in terms o necessary and su cient conditions because historicallya name could come to signiy various groups o things, and there could be nosingle property common to all o them.39

In both cases, the idea o history was vital to the new approaches to clas-sication. Tey presupposed historical development o both natural kinds andcategories o language. As Dugald Stewart put it, discussing the meaning othe word beauty:

Instead o searching or the common idea or essence which the word Beautydenotes, when applied to colors, to orms, to sounds, to compositions in

verse and prose, to mathematical theorems, and to moral qualities, our atten-

37. La nature passe dune espce une autre espce, et souvent dun genre un autregenre, par des nuances imperceptibles; de sorte quil se trouve un grand nombre despces

moyennes et dobjets mi-partis quon ne sait o placer. (G. L. Bufon, De la maniredtudier et de traiter lhistoire naturelle, uvres compltes [Paris: Pourrat, 1835], 1: 44 [mytranslation]).

38. Dugald Stewart, Elements o the Philosophy o the Human Mind, sixth ed. (London: .Cadell and W. Davies, 1818), 1: 216.

39. Te theory o the transitive use o words was rst developed by dAlambert andRichard Payne Knight. See J.-B. dAlambert, Essai sur les lments de philosophie, ousur les principes des connaissances humaines, avec les claircissements, uvres (Paris:A. Belin, Bossange, 182122), 1: 238 ; Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry intothe Principles o aste, 2nd ed. (London: . Payne and J. White, 1805), 11, 233. DugaldStewart developed this idea with respect to the theory o classication; see Dugald Stewart,Philosophical Essays, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1818), 262.


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tion is directed to the natural history o the Human Mind, and to its naturalprogress in the employment o speech.40

Te world came to be seen not as a preestablished system o categories butas a universal process o becoming, an assortment o historically developedliving things that our minds reected in historically ormed concepts.

In 1840, already at the end o the Sattelzeitperiod, the new theory o clas-sication based on the achievements o the classicatory sciences and thephilosophy o language ound its systematic elaboration in the works o Wil-liam Whewell. He wrote:

Tough in a natural group o objects a denition can no longer be o any useas a regulative principle, classes are not, thereore, le quite loose, withoutany certain standard or guide. Te class is steadily xed, though not pre-cisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not bya boundary line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictlyexcludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept;in short, instead o Denition, we have a ype or our director.41

Tis is an eloquent statement o the theory o prototype. What Whewellhad in mind was a historical development that was bringing about loosely co-hesive classes springing out o common ancestors. Whewells approach to thephilosophy o science was, in many respects, a continuation o the historicistrevolution. It was strongly inuenced by German thought and largely similarto the discoveries o the German historical school.42 Historically ormed cat-

egories do not have to care about necessary and su cient conditions and otherarticial devices o schoolmen. Hal a century later, Nietzsche ormulated this

40. Stewart, Philosophical Essays, 34243.41. William Whewell, Te Philosophy o the Inductive Sciences (London, 1847), 1: 494.

Laura J. Snyder has recently claimed that according to Whewell, kinds have rigorousdenitions, even though we do not know what they are, because he believed that God

knows the essences o kinds. See Laura J. Snyder, Reorming Philosophy: A VictorianDebate on Science and Society(Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 2006), 16061.However, the act that kinds in themselves might have essences cannot prevent humancategorization rom being prototypical. C. Michael Ruse, Te Scientic Methodology oWilliam Whewell, Centaurus 20, no. 3 (1976): 15657.

42. On Whewells philosophy see Yehuda Elkana, Editors Introduction, in WilliamWhewell, Selected Writings on the History o Science, Yehuda Elkana, ed. (Chicago: TeUniversity o Chicago Press, 1984); William Whewell: A Composite Portrait, MenachemFisch and Simon Schefer, eds. (Oxord: Clarendon Press, 1991); Menachem Fisch, WilliamWhewell: Philosopher o Science (Oxord: Clarendon Press, 1991); Richard Yeo, DeningScience: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Snyder, Reorming Philosophy.


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in his usual aphoristic way: What has history, escapes denition.43 Whether itbe minerals, plants, languages, or nations, all classes o things are but historicaloccurrences. Te whole o lieboth natural and culturalcame to be seenas a process o historical development. It is not by chance that classicatorysciences were then called natural history. Te idea o history as an almightypowerul orce that carries within it the reason o its own development was in-

vented in the eighteenth century, largely to explain the empirical clustering othings into categories. History is the way the world is, be it nature or societysuch was the most proound claim o the historicist intellectual revolution.44

o complete the picture, one has to return to one o the main ideas o

Friedrich Meinecke, one o those historians who have ully appreciated theimportance o historicism as the birthplace o modernity. Meinecke wrote:

Te ways o thinking laying emphasis on the ideas o development and in-dividuality are closely tied together. o maniest itsel only in developmentbelongs to the essence o individuality, whether it be that o a separate manor o an ideal or real collectivity.45

I we now return to collective singulars, we shall better understand theproblem: the historicist intellectual revolution avored not only the idea ohistorically ormed entities, but also that o the unique character o these enti-ties. In a way, collective singulars can be seen as the key device o eighteenth-century thought.

It would be helpul to compare this analysis with Hannah Arendts under-standing o the genesis o the modern idea o history. According to her, the

modern concept o process pervading history and nature alike separates themodern age rom the past more prooundly than any other single idea. Andshe continues:

What the concept oprocess implies is that the concrete and the general, thesingle thing or event and the universal meaning have parted company. Te

43. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy o Morals (1887), transl. by Douglas Smith

(Oxord, Oxord University Press, 1996), 60 the exact quotation is only that which iswithout history can be dened).44. Robert J. Richards, Te Romantic Conception o Lie: Science and Philosophy in the Age

o Goethe (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 2002).45. Entwickelnde und individualisierende Denkweise gehren unmittelbar zusammen.

In Wesen der Individualitt, der des Einzelmenschen wie der ideellen und realen Kollec-tivgebilde, liegt es, da sie sich nur durch Entwicklung ofenbart (Friedrich Meinecke, DieEntstehung des Historismus [Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 1965], 5 [my translation]). On therole o historicism as the constitutive moment o modernity see Otto Gerhard Oexle,Krise des HistorismusKrise der Wirklichkeit: Eine Problemgeschichte der Moderne, inKrise des HistorismusKrise der Wirklichkeit: Wissenscha, Kunst und Literatur 18801932,Otto Gerhard Oexle, ed. (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007), 26.


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process, which alone makes meaningul whatever it happens to carry along,has thus acquired a monopoly o universality and signicance. 46

Arendt considers the ormation o the idea o history to have led directly toHegels philosophy, which sought to overcome dialectically the opposition be-tween the universal and the particular, seen as the aspects o the process odevelopment. However, it was by no means the only problem that historicismcould help to resolve. As I hope to have shown, the idea o history was born outo the spirit o empirical classication.

Meinecke was certainly right in pointing out not only the German, but

also the Italian, English, and French origins o the historicist revolution. Inact, too many conventional oppositions partly inherited rom nineteenth-century thought obscure or us the meaning o this proound intellectualchange. Te rst o these is that between Sattelzeitand the period o the emer-gence o modern science in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Itis a largely Germany-based chronology that separates the birth o the basichistorical concepts rom that o modern science. It prevents us rom under-

standing the role o the atomistic world view that emerged in the seventeenthcentury in the ormation o the idea o history, which I see as the logicallyunavoidable explanatory principle o the atomistic universe.

Te second opposition is that between German historicism and FrenchEnlightenment, or in other terms between Enlightenment and Romanticism.Within this opposition, historicism tends to be seen as a prooundly German,Romantic, and anti-Enlightenment phenomenon. Tis was not exactly thecase in the eighteenth century, when the idea o history was emerging withinthe ramework o Enlightenment thought. Te universal and the particularhad not yet been separated by the unbridgeable gap that became so typical olate nineteenth-century intellectual culture. It is not by chance that Koselleckspeaks o the universal meaning o collective singularspure nonsense romthe point o view o the aorementioned opposition. However, as we have seen,general meaning and reerence to particulars do not exclude each other in ouractual thinking, so that to some extent collective singulars can have universal

meaning. Tis was precisely the act that characterized the mental universeo the Enlightenment. When the modern idea o history came into being, thehistoricist emphasis on individuality was not yet opposed to the universalistictendencies o rationalism.

Finally, the third inherited opposition is that between nature and society,seen as the two domains o experience having opposite logical structures. Na-ture is about universal laws, while history is about individual occurrences. In

46. Hannah Arendt, Te Concept o History: Ancient and Modern in Between Past andFuture, in Hannah Arendt, Eight Exercises in Political Tought(New York: Penguin Books,1968), 63, 64.


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reality, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that nature started to beconsistently seen as the residue o uniormity, and could thus be opposed toculture, considered as the reuge o individuality, as it was amously ormu-lated by neo-Kantian philosophers o the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies.47

o return to collective singulars, which I have characterized as the pre-erred intellectual tool o the historicist revolution o the Enlightenment,I would like to suggest that they express a kind o balance between the twoequally undamental principles o our thinkingabstract universal meaningand reerence to particular occurrencesand hence between the logic o gen-

eral names and that o proper names. o be sure, our intellect is so equippedthat we always think both ways, and cannot separate the universal and theparticular save analytically. And we most oen think in terms o both logicsat the same time.

o sum up, collective singulars are one o the main devices o thought.Tere always have been collective singulars, and there always will be. How-ever, the role they play in this or that concrete system o thought may vary

considerably. Within the bipolar semantic structure o meaning and reerence,the prevailing emphasis may be laid either on meaning or on reerence, andhence on the logic o either general names or proper names. Tus, as we haveseen, medieval thought was characterized by a peculiar combination o uni-

versalism and particularism. Te gap between them was bridged by means ometaphorical thinking, which was acilitated by the act that both essencesand individual occurrences were seen syncretistically. Analytical and empiri-

cal classicatory procedures were not typical o this style o thinking. Medievalthought could make little use o collective singulars, though it was certainlynot completely ignorant o them. o the contrary, with the birth o the atom-istic universe collective singulars saw their day o glory, because they had anaspect o classicatory devices and were quite suitable both or expressing uni-

versal meaning and or emphasizing the uniqueness o historical phenomena.Te new balance between the universal and the particular, however, was

not so easy to sustain. Te situation was quite ambiguous. On the one hand,the ormation o the uture-oriented style o thought contributed to the em-phasis on the universal aspects o historical concepts. On the other hand, ur-ther development o the prototype theory o classication could produce animage o the world as an assortment o individual phenomena that escapeddenition in universal terms. And this could present a real danger or the proj-ect o liberal democracy that was in the process o ormation in the Sattelzeitand its aermath.

47. See Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschalichen Begrifsbildung(Frei-burg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1902).


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Te combination o individualism and empiricism with universalism anduture-oriented thinking created a world view in which liberal democracy wasthe most logical solution to the problem o social organization. Liberalismwas unthinkable without abstract individuals, and hence without an atomisticworld view. But it was also not possible without universal values and generaltruths, and hence without a theory o classication that would not reduce col-lective concepts to proper names. Further atomization o the world view andthe shi o the logical balance towards the logic o proper names could resultin the destruction o universalism and the rise o particularism.

Whewells thought is an interesting marginal case demonstrating this po-

tential danger. He was a conservative who dared to draw radical logical conclu-sions rom the experience o modern science in order to restore the religiousworld view. Te idea o classes that escape denition was or him an argumentin avor o the hypothesis that they had originated rom the archetypes in themind o God. Te ramework o Whewells reasoning was essentially atomistic.But the notion o types that he sought to make central or the natural scienceshad an undeniable a nity with the organicist metaphor o the world. And the

world o organic entities designated by proper names was certainly not theone in which liberal democracy would appear to be the most natural orm osociety. Te conservative criticism o the Enlightenment was largely inspiredby this vision o the world. Te danger o the prototype theory o categoriza-tion avant la lettre consisted in the act that it was exploring the organiciststructures underlying the atomistic universe. Whewell pushed the theory oempirical classication to its limits, where it risked undermining the ounda-

tions o the project o liberal democracy.Nineteenth-century thought had thus to reestablish the value o generalnames, without abandoning the idea o the individual character o reality. JohnStuart Mill was quite central to this new intellectual project. In his System oLogic, in 1843, he proposed a theory o classication that accounted or proto-typical efects, but marginalized their role. Mills theory was heavily dependenton that o Whewell. But he reinterpreted Whewells prototype theory in such away as to undermine its radical conservative implications. Te act that somecategories are actually structured in terms o prototypes does not mean, orMill, that eature analysis has nothing to do with empirical classication. Anobject can be apprehended as a whole, but also described as a list o properties.However, these properties are no longer seen as necessary, but only as likelyor the members o the category.48 Tis is the position that in recent debatesabout human categorization has become known as probabilism. Tanks toMills eforts, atomism had been saely complemented by a nominalism that

allowed or universal truths about the atomistic universe. Interestingly, a kind

48. Mill,A System o Logic, II: 314. See also Koposov, Logic o Democracy.


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o conspiracy o silence caused the name and the theories o William Whewellto be largely orgotten almost until the end o the twentieth century.49 odaysproponents o the prototype theory are oen unaware o their orerunner inthe early Victorian period.50

Mills thought had a powerul stabilizing efect on the development o log-ical theories in the nineteenth century, and more broadly on the modern styleo thinking. However, there was a price to be paid, namely the marginalizationo experimenting with the logic o proper names. As a result, instead o beingconsidered a moment o synthesis, and o a productive tension, particularisticthinking has become a stronghold o the anti-Enlightenment historicism o

the second hal o the nineteenth century, as well as o nationalist ideologies othe twentieth century. An emphasis on the singularity o collective singulars,oen accompanied by an organicist reduction o their classicatory unction,became typical or radical conservatives like Carl Schmitt and the ounder oBegrifsgeschichte, Otto Brunner, whose notion o relatively universal typeconcepts (relativ allgemeine ypenbegrife) was but a variation o the theory ocollective singulars.51

Let me now return to current intellectual transormations. I do not thinkthat social and political concepts can stop being collective singulars. Collectivesingulars are by no means an invention o the Sattelzeit, though they becamecentral or Western thought as a result o the historicist intellectual revolu-tion. What is likely to happen, however, is that their role can change, as well astheir semantic structure, or in other words the balance between universalisticand particularistic tendencies in our thinking. My hypothesis is that with the

collapse o the great narratives and the decline o uture-oriented thinking, ahistorical turn is happening in contemporary culture. It is maniest in thechanges in method and approache o the social and human sciences, as hasbeen documented in particular by errence McDonald and his colleagues.52It is even more visible in the rise o historical memory, the heritage indus-try, the politics o memory, and the memory wars that are so typical o thepresent-day political and intellectual climate.53 raditional political ideologies

49. John Wettersten, Whewells Critics: Have Tey Prevented Him rom Doing Good?(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005).50. Tey usually trace this theory back to Ludwig Wittgenstein. See Lakof, Women, Fire,

andDangerous Tings, 16.51. Otto Brunner, Land und Herrscha, 129. See also Gadi Algazi, Otto BrunnerKon-

krete Ordnung und die Sprache der Zeit, in Geschichtsschreibung als Legitimationswissen-scha, 19181945, Peter Schttler, ed. (Frankurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 166203.

52. errence J. McDonald, Introduction, Te Historic urn in the Human Sciences,errence J. McDonald, ed. (Ann Arbor: Te University o Michigan Press, 1996), 1.

53. On the rise o historical memory, see Pierre Nora, ed. Lieux de mmoire (Paris:Gallimard, 198492), vols. 17. See also David Lowenthal, Te Past is a Foreign Country(London: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Michael Kammen,Mystic Chords o Memory:


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were largely based on this or that version o global history. Due to the currentdecay o ideologies and the crisis o master narratives, contemporary politicshas become heavily dependent on the past, but on a new past, or the pastwhose structures are undergoing considerable change. What was at stake inthe ideological battles o the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were rst oall conceptions o history, be it world history or national history, because thelatter was dependent on the understanding o the ormer. Certainly there werealso conicts between countries over concrete episodes o the past. odayspolitics o history is mostly about such conicts. With the end o the Cold Warthe battles o the master narratives seem to have come to an end. Mutual ac-

cusations o misdeeds committed by the nations against each other have takenthe oreront o the scene.

o be sure, there are attempts (especially in Eastern Europe, which is nowliving through a belated process o orming national states) to recreate nationalnarratives. But writing a newroman national(Pierre Nora) at the turn o thetwenty-rst century is intellectually problematic, precisely because the clas-sical national narratives o the nineteenth century presupposed a conception

o universal history which they sought either to exempliy (as was the casein France or England) or to negate (as most oen happened in Germany orRussia) by telling a national story. odays past, which has been decomposedinto ragments as a result o the crisis o the uture, resists reshaping in termso national narratives as well. Or more exactly, the past can exist now eitheras a labyrinth o lieux de mmoire or as a catalogue o national insults. Tatis why some scholars speak about history-less elites now governing Eastern

European countries (including Russia).54

It would perhaps be more exact tosay that these are elites without a vision o history, but trying hard to exploitthe ragments o the past. Eastern Europe seems an extreme case o a broadertransormation. In other words, what is happening now in contemporarythought is a historical turn aer the end o global history.

In these conicts, entities designated by collective singulars are the mainactors. However, the way in which collective singulars are used today seemsto be undergoing changes. As we know, there are various types o collectivesingulars. Tose o them that are linked to the class vision o society have be-

Te ransormation o radition in American Culture (New York: Alred A. Knop, 1991);Raphael Samuel, Teatres o Memory (vol. 1):Past and Present in Contemporary Culture(London: Verso, 1994); Michael S. Roth, Te Ironists Cage: Memory, rauma, and theConstruction o History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Kerwin L. Klein,On the Emergence oMemoryin Historical Discourse, Representations 69, no. 1 (2000):12750 ; Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Memory and History: Liturgical ime and Historical ime,History and Teory41, no. 2 (2002): 14962.

54. Shari J. Cohen, Politics Without a Past: Te Absence o History in PostcommunistNationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 47.


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come less important now. Bourgeoisie andproletariatare no longer categorieso actual political thought. o the contrary, the concepts o nations or ethnicand religious groups have become more important, even central. And not-withstanding the heroic eforts that sociologists and anthropologists have un-dertaken to deconstruct them, they are most oen perceived as primordialentities, ollowing the organicist metaphor o the world. But names o socialgroups are more general and less singular than names o countries or nations.Indeed, social groups are designated by common nouns, while nation-stateshave proper names. We know that the type o name is not the only actor de-termining its meaning. But it is not irrelevant either.

Te typical proportion in which elements o proper name and elementso general name combine to orm the meaning o this or that collective singu-lar is also gradually changing today. ake or example the concept oEurope,which expresses what can perhaps be seen as todays most ambitious projector the uture. It is a proper name. Tirty years ago, main projects or the uture(like communism or democracy) were designated by more general names.But the concept oEurope has a strong general component as well, because

it can stand or civilization, in the same way as the concept o the West, thelatter being a more general concept than Europe. What seems to be happen-ing now is that the notion othe Westis gradually splitting into the two moreconcrete concepts oEurope and the U.S.A., and that these concepts tend to beunderstood less with reerence to the universal idea o civilization and morewith reerence to the individual processes o ormation that have brought theseentities into being.

I even those collective singulars that stood or the main road o civiliza-tion are now becoming more proper names, it is no wonder that this is alsotrue o other collective names. Putins Russia is an interesting case here.55 Teconcept osovereign democracy, which or several years served as its o cialsel-description, reects the search or a more proper name than that ode-mocracy, which alongside its universal meaning also contains a reerence to apart o the world, the West. It was precisely in order to distinguish Russia romthe West within the broadly understood category o democratic countriesthat the concept o sovereign democracywas coined. Compare this conceptto the one that was widely used to reer to the U.S.S.R.the rst countryo socialism. Formally, the two expressions look similarthey subsume thecountry under a generic name and indicate its diferentia specica. But thelogical status o the entities that they presuppose is quite diferent. Being therst country o socialism meant leading humankind on its common way to

55. For more details, see Nikolay Koposov, : - [Strict security memory: History and politics in Russia], (Moscow: NewLiterary Observer, 2011).


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the happy uture. Te universal component o this concept was rather strong.Being a sovereign democracy means just being diferent, without even speci-ying the way in which it is diferent. Tis is, thereore, much more a propername.

It is oen said that contemporary societies are ar more complex thanthose o the past, which inevitably leads to their ragmentation, and henceto the impossibility o relying on general concepts or their understanding.Tis may be true, so that the ragmentation o our vocabulary and the riseo proper names can to some extent be seen as a result o the ragmentationo society. But it is also possible to turn this argument another way around.

Nineteenth-century society, though perhaps less complex than our own, wasar more complex than its image as reected in basic historical terms. All his-torians know that their terminology simplies reality, and that basic historicalterms in particular are not very useul or the description o what actuallyhappened. Tis is not what they were coined or. Teir unction was, rstand oremost, to ormulate projects or the uture. oday they are losing theirattractiveness because o the evaporation o these projects. Te domain o ex-

perience starts to prevail over the horizon o expectations. In the light o thisnew experience, the complexity o the present is becoming more evident thanever. Te world is being seen as more particularistic because o the ragmenta-tion o our world view.

However, I do not think that this is a return to premodern habits othought. Rather, we are conronted with a new shi toward the atomizationo our world view and the decline o thinking in terms o universal values. In

the conditions o decline o universalistic uture-oriented ideologies, the crisiso the master narratives, and the rise o memory, there is a tendency to shithe balance toward the logic o proper names. Collective singulars are losingtheir connection to the wider history that bestowed on them their universalmeaning, and are becoming more singular than they have ever been sincethe Sattelzeit.

collective singulars

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