Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.)

Modernity in the late eighteenth century transformed all domains of European life -intellectual, industrial, and social. Not least affected was the experience of time itself: ever-accelerating change left people with briefer intervals of time in which to gather new experiences and adapt. In this provocative and erudite book Reinhart Koselleck, a distinguished philosopher of history, explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: what kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity? Relying on an extraordinary array of witnesses and texts from politicians, philosophers, theologians, and poets to Renaissance paintings and the dreams of German citizens during the Third Reich, Koselleck shows that, with the advent of modernity, the past and the future became 'relocated' in relation to each other.The promises of modernity -freedom, progress, infinite human improvement -produced a world accelerating toward an unknown and unknowable future within which awaited the possibility of achieving utopian fulfillment. History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in this crucial moment as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating experience. In the present context of globalization and its resulting crises, the modern world once again faces a crisis in aligning the experience of past and present. To realize that each present was once an imagined future may help us once again place ourselves within a temporality organized by human thought and humane ends as much as by the contingencies of uncontrolled events. Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION......Page 8 Author’s Preface......Page 24 PART I ON THE RELATION OF PAST AND FUTURE IN MODERN HISTORY......Page 30 1. Modernity and the Planes of Historicity......Page 32 2. Historia Magistra Vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos into the Perspective of a Modernized Historical Process......Page 49 3. Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution......Page 66 4. Historical Prognosis in Lorenz von Stein’s Essay on the Prussian Constitution......Page 81 PART II THEORY AND METHOD OF THE HISTORICAL DETERMINATION OF TIME......Page 96 5. Begriffsgeschichte and Social History......Page 98 6. History, Histories, and Formal Time Structures......Page 116 7. Representation, Event, and Structure......Page 128 8. Chance as Motivational Trace in Historical Writing......Page 138 9. Perspective and Temporality: A Contribution to the Historiographical Exposure of the Historical World......Page 151 PART III SEMANTIC REMARKS ON THE MUTATION OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE......Page 176 10. The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts......Page 178 11. On the Disposability of History......Page 215 12. Terror and Dream: Methodological Remarks on the Experience of Time during the Third Reich......Page 228 13. Neuzeit: Remarks on the Semantics of Modern Concepts of Movement......Page 245 14. “Space of Experience” and “Horizon of Expectation”: Two Historical Categories......Page 278 NOTES......Page 300 INDEX......Page 336 In this provocative and erudite book, Reinhart Koselleck explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: What kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity? Relying on an extraordinary array of witnesses and texts from politicians, philosophers, theologians, and poets to Renaissance paintings and the dreams of German citizens during the Third Reich, Koselleck shows that, with the advent of modernity, the past and the future became "relocated" in relation to each other. History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in the crucial moment of modernity - within which awaited the possibility of utopian fulfillment - as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating experience. In the present context of globalization and its resulting crises, the modern world must once again align the experience of past and present. To realize that each present was once an imagined future may help us place ourselves within a temporality organized by human thought and humane ends as much as by the contingencies of uncontrolled events History, Koselleck asserts, emerged in the crucial moment of modernity as a new temporality providing distinctly new ways of assimilating experience. This exploration of the concept of historical time considers the perceived relationships between the present (once the future) & the past (once the present)

in These Fifteen Essays, One Of Germany's Most Distinguished Philosophers Of History Invokes An Extraordinary Array Of Witnesses And Texts To Explore The Concept Of Historical Time.