Pim den Boer, born in Leiden, the Netherlands, in 1950. Ph.D. from Leiden University. Professor of the History of European Culture at the University of Amsterdam.
Fellow (1 September 1994 – 30 June 1995)
As a member of the nucleus “The History of Dutch Concepts” I focussed my work during the first few months of the year on sixteenth-century sources. I prepared a new edition with introduction of Simon Stevin’s Het Burgherlijke Leven (Leiden 1590). I was impressed by the conceptual richness of this political treatise. The various official and informal meetings of the members of the theme group led to the plan to write a volume of theoretical essays, “The History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives”. My contribution will be a critical assessment of the German Begriffsgeschichte and the phrasing of the starting points for the Dutch project. It will be entitled “Archaeology of knowledge, German Begriffsgeschichte and Dutch conceptual history”. I was a member of the working group on ‘civilization/culture’, which will present its results in 1996. Furthermore, I have done research into the origins and historiographic significance of Huizinga’s Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen.