The republic of letters, presentism and the dialogue between history and the social sciences

Abstract

This article offers a contribution to a public conversation about the future of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a ‘public conversation’ is modelled on the traditional idea of the ‘Republic of Letters’, updated for the 21^st century. The article suggests that what historians have to contribute to this international and interdisciplinary conversation is the critique of ‘presentism’, in other words the ‘retreat into the present’ (ignoring the influence of the past on the present) denounced by the sociologist Norbert Elias half a century ago and more recently by the historian François Hartog. To correct presentism the article advocates Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history, in order to make social scientists more aware that the concepts with which they think are inherited from the past and change over time. It recommends combining this history with the ‘phronetic’ approach of the economic geographer Bent Flybjerg, making use of knowledge for social action.