Abstract

The two books that Jean Starobinski dedicated especially to the eighteenth century— The Invention of Freedom (first published in French in 1964) concerning the ancien régime and The Emblems of Reason (1981) about the period of revolution — are lavishly illustrated, displaying a trust in the visual medium to convey insights that cannot be achieved through language. Contrary to what one might expect, Starobinski does not often act as an interpreter of the period images that his books display. Rather, he expects that the images themselves will provide an interpretation of the epoch’s themes, which goes beyond what people at the time could consciously express in words and what can be formulated retrospectively. Starobinski composed his »image stories« at the time when Reinhart Koselleck was developing conceptual history in Germany, but the two enterprises are not to be understood as methodologically parallel. As this article shows, the current discussion about an image-oriented extension.