Abstract

In 1953, Richard McKeon (Chicago) contacted Hans-Georg Gadamer (Heidelberg) with the proposal to conduct a joint conference on the nature of philosophic controversies, their relation with ideological confl icts and the possible ways to handle and solve them. He suggested to treat this subject in the concreteby discussing problems connected with the opposed views and standpoints of philosophers concerning freedom. Gadamer was given a free hand to select theGerman participants, and the meeting fi nally took place in the following year in a small castle near Darmstadt. There were 18 German philosophers attending and McKeon himself as the sole non German discussant. The paper explores the background of McKeon’s initiative, the aims and results of the conference,and the way the discussions proceeded, using some yet unpublished material and documents. Whereas the conference seemed to have been a rather disappointing event for both parties, the German and the American, showing all the defi ciencies of philosophical communication that McKeon wanted to analyze, it might have played a minor role in the genesis and development of the »begriffsgeschichtliche Forschung« in years following the meeting from 1954. Herbert G. Wells, explicitely in his 1920 edition for the British reader in which he states: »Human history is in essence a history of ideas« (p. 596, col. 2). From here the article follows the further use and development of the concept by British (R. G. Collingwood, I. Berlin), American and European scholars.