Introduction

A symposium on the idea of “concepts” is a tricky matter. For one thing, the relevant issues have a way of persistently reflecting back on themselves. And when they do, the task becomes a knottier one of trying to conceptualize what it means to conceptualize, which hurls us headlong into debates about theory and practice and the endless loops associated with those. The usual editorial challenges of characterizing a plurality of perspectives are thus compounded in this case. The initial condition of recognizing the contestedness of conceptual meanings, for instance, must be that participants in a debate about it speak in their own diverse terms, traditions, aims, and demands, where possibly a plurality of conversations ensues. The job is made all the more thorny by the fact that what an adequate description of the terrain of debates about concepts should look like is itself an open question, depending on the various purposes one could invoke for thinking about them.