Abstract

Many decades after its birth, Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte represents still a privileged source of inspiration even for scholars coming from theoretical and disciplinary fields far from its original context of elaboration. The aim of this essay is to give an account of the most relevant contributions offered by this model to the renewal of studies on the history of thought, dwelling in particular on the notion of «basic historical concepts (Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe)» placed at the heart of Koselleck’s research on the language of political modernity.