本书的前半部分以历史沿革和社会变迁为线索，对中西方语言文字的交流和融会贯通做了具体的阐释；后半部分着重剖析汉语、英语、日语之间的变化与互动，并从宏观上将三者之间的关联做出提炼的分析，并列举丰富的实例予以佐证。

“概念史”是指一种基于普遍观念来撰述历史的方式。从概念史的角度来看，概念由词语表出，但比词语有更广泛的意义；一定的社会、政治经验和意义积淀于特定的词语并被表征出来后，该词语便成为概念。概念史关注文本的语言和结构，通过对历史上主导概念的研究来揭示该时代的特征。作者们试图从东西比较的角度，考察西方概念如何被翻译为汉字概念，以及汉字圈内不同国家和地区之间概念的互动关系，由此揭示东亚圈内现代性的异同。

致谢 导言 第一章 梳理政治和社会概念的历史 第二章 《历史的基本概念》：将政治和社会概念与结构变化相联 第三章 《历史的基本概念》中“Herrschaft”概念的历史 第四章 心态史中概念的位置：法国政治和社会概念的《手册》 第五章 《手册》中的革新与批评 第六章 波考克、斯金纳与“概念史” 第七章 “用智者的宽容”：呼唤一部英语的政治和社会概念史 附录1 《历史的基本概念》中所探讨的概念 附录2 《手册》中所探讨的概念

《比较视野中的概念史》首次聚焦于“比较概念史”。通过对以昆廷•斯金纳为核心的“剑桥范式”和以瑞因哈特•考斯莱克为核心的“海德堡范式”进行系统比较，《比较视野中的概念史》不仅拓展了“概念史”的空间范围，而且确立了“比较概念史”的研究框架和研究范式。

Reinhart Koselleck is one of the most important theorists of history and historiography of the last half century. His work has implications for contemporary cultural studies that extend far beyond discussions of the practical problems of historical method. He is the foremost exponent and practitioner of Begriffsgeschichte, a methodology of historical studies that focuses on the invention and development of the fundamental concepts underlying and informing a distinctively historical manner of being in the world.The eighteen essays in this volume illustrate the four theses of Koselleck’s concept of history. First, historical process is marked by a distinctive kind of temporality different from that found in nature. This temporality is multileveled and subject to different rates of acceleration and deceleration, and functions not only as a matrix within which historical events happen but also as a causal force in the determination of social reality in its own right.Second, historical reality is social reality, an internally differentiated structure of functional relationships in which the rights and interests of one group collide with those of other groups, and lead to the kinds of conflict in which defeat is experienced as an ethical failure requiring reflection on “what went wrong” to determine the historical significance of the conflict itself.Third, the history of historiography is a history of the evolution of the language of historians. In this respect, Koselleck’s work converges with that of Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, all of whom stress the status of historiography as discourse rather than as discipline, and feature the constitutive nature of historical discourse as against its claim to literal truthfulness.Finally, the fourth aspect of Koselleck’s notion of the concept of history is that a properly historicist concept of history is informed by the realization that what we call modernity is nothing more than an aspect of the discovery of history’s concept in our age. The aporias of modernism—in arts and letters as well as in the human and natural sciences—are a function of the discovery of the historicity of both society and knowledge.

“概念史”一语最早见诸黑格尔《历史哲学》，是指一种基于普遍观念来撰述历史的方式。20世纪中叶以后，概念史逐渐发展为一门关涉语言、思想和历史的新学问。从概念史的角度来看，概念由词语表出，但比词语含有更广泛的意义；一定的社会、政治经验和意义积淀于特定的词语并被表征出来后，该词语便成为概念。概念史关注文本的语言和结构，通过对历史上主导概念的研究来揭示该时代的特征。《亚洲概念史研究（第2辑）》由孙江和陈力卫编著。