«Eine föderal strukturierte Geschichte»: Koselleck and European Constitutional History

Abstract

The essay deals with the concepts of «State» and «Federalism» within the analysis of Reinhart Koselleck, who translates the structures of Heideggerian fatticity into collective praxis, rooting, with Schmitt, legal conceptuality on the concrete of sociology. Analysing some of the fundamental headings of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Staat, Souveranität, Bund, Bündnis, Föderalismus, Bundesstaat), Koselleck reconstructs the way in which he formulates an immediately political prognosis regarding the process of European unification, highlighting that federalism, far from being merely an archaeological relic of the past, represents a resource for a post-national political order.

Keywords

• koselleck
• historik
• begriffsgeschichte
• state
• federalism