Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians'

Forty years ago, German historian Reinhart Koselleck coined the notion of "asymmetrical concepts," pointing at the asymmetry between standard self-ascriptions, such as ''Hellenes'' or ''Christians,'' and pejorative otherizing-ascriptions, ''Barbarians'' or ''Pagans,'' as a powerful weapon of cultural and political domination. Advancing and refining Koselleck''s approach, Beyond "Hellenes" and "Barbarians", explores the use of significant conceptual asymmetries such ''civilization'' vs. ''barbarity,'' ''liberalism'' vs. ''servility,'' ''order'' vs. ''chaos'', or even ''masters'' vs. ''slaves,'' in political, scientific and fictional discourses from Greek to Dutch, Finnish to German, British to Portuguese, and many other societies from the Middle Ages to the present day. Using an interdisciplinary set of approaches, scholars across political science, literary criticism, and the history of science bolster and extend our understanding of this ever-growing conceptual history.