Abstract

After observations on Studies of Culture (Kulturwissenschaften) in relation to their theoretical foundation and their subjects in the last decades, the functioning (style in the sense of Ludwik Fleck) of ‚Kulturwissenschaft‘ will be examined not systematically but exemplarily in four fields: (i) the functions of the so-called liberal and applied arts in the last 250 years, (ii) constellations of subjectivity in industrial society in the nineteenth century, (iii) the relation between security and risk in the present time and (iv) the relation of culture and religion in the polycentric, post-religious, but also post-Enlightenment world. Considerations on the prospects of a historic ‚Kulturwissenschaft‘ in relation to Anglo-American trends follow this course.