Sketching Conceptual History’s ‘Janus Face’: Reinhart Koselleck and Karl Löwith

While a student at Heidelberg University between 1947 and 1948, Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) sketched a curious self-portrait. Drawn as part of his archaeology course, Koselleck sketched himself lying vertically, head down and feet up, under the surface of the earth, shovelling through layers of sediment in pursuit of artefacts with which to document a human past. ((Some of Koselleck’s drawings have been published in Katharina Koselleck and Ruppe Koselleck (eds.), Vorbilder—Nachbilder: Gez...