~

~J?a~

HISTORY

~~

dteot'i.a> ~:?#ffil,;f.:
of history and historiography of the last half century. Hs work has .

RE 1 N HA R T KO S ELLE C K is one of che most imporrant

implications

r..,, contcmporary culturalstudies that extend far

dscussions of the prac!cU problems ofhistorical method. fk

foreman exponent and practitioner ofBegriffsgeschichte, a

...

..

of historira! studies th.u focuses on the invention

developme[]_t;c.
the fundamental wncepts undedying and informing a ds~:_q_\:;f ---

The Practice -of

Conceptual History

hismrical manner of being in the world.

The eig\u<:<:n cssays in this vol u me illustrate the four tneses-O:M

TIMING HISTORY,

l;

an4

\~-.~-~
....
. '.

Kosdleck's concept of history. First, historical proceso;

disdnctive kind of temporality different from that fo1-1ruf:W:1~\'
temporalicy is multileveled and subject to diffetent rates'Of.aj

SPACING CONCEPTS

and decderation, and functiuns not only as a matrix .

historical events happen bur also as a causal force in

of social reality in its own rigln.

Second, historical reality is social reality, an inremally

REINHART

KOSELLECK

differentiated~

functional rdationships in which the rights and interests of onr gro...tlill.~

of other groups, and lead to the kinds of conllcr in whic:h defea~
ethical failure requiring rellecrion on "what wenr wrong" ro
significance of the conflict itself.
Third, the history of historiography is a lstory of

me

historians. In this respect, Koselleck's work converges;w~

and Derrida, al! of whom stress the status of historio~~

discipline, and feature the constitutive nature of h.istQr.i~
to literal truthfulness.
Finally, the fourth a.~pc:ct of Kosellc:ck's notion
properly historici~ concept ofhistory is informedJ
modernity is oothlng more than an aspect of
age. The apori.as of modernism-in arts and
sciences----'are a function of the discovery

&inhart KoHIJ.J. ir Profm~r ., Hi.mry 11t the r.Jnivmq

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

www.sup.org

c.-r iilwtmtirm: lGi.the K<Jl\wirz. Mourning P:u:oon4,;

1914--18 military cemetory, V\.dslo.

Back iilrutmtirm: B. Monnef. Concc:ntratit>n

monumem, Stmthof, Als~. Phoro- bv-"Bornniet~

111\IIIU
111-1
FH 44612

Tran~lated by

Todd !:iamuel Presner and Othm

Foreword by_ Hayden White

~~ ~i c.e.~\c e ~ CeM t Vf,\ ~ ~\

\' """'"") \-\~~~1 S fe.. t \'V\

On rhe Need for Theory in rhe Discipline of Hiscory

\,)S-/1,~ S'"\fMo\.\o<~ \Jf\\'-~~ ~\~"\

"Z- G 0 '2.

"!C \ \J

3 (. ') ~

\, ~'J.e.l- \~ \~~~ seMI"'-~ f\MW\ell

\'-U' af~ \.0 \-\ CUj k w"' ~ \\,_ IL
i!'

Ever since thc era of neo-Kantianism, our academic field has been
caught in'a sdf-definition: history has todo with what is individual and
specific, whereas the natural sciences concern rhemselves with what is general. The history of science has passed this a.ntithesis by. The hypothelical
char<1cter of its statements and the intertwining of subject and object in its
experiment5 ha ve introduced an element of relativity into the natural sciences thac can justly be called "historical." At the same time, many of the
social sciehces and the humanities have placed themselves under systemic
conscrainls, which have long since cut through the unifying tie of rhe historical w~ldview. As the dispute over Popperianism shows, a banle line no
longer divides the paired opposites of the natural sciences and the humanities. Th.isl has hardly affected our research practice, however, and in consequc:-nce th~ hi:5torical profession finds itselfisolated. History has been rhrown
back upof irself and no longer occupies a dear place within an academic
world rha~ has in rhe meantime become dehistoricized.
We ~an escape from our isolation only via a new relarionship to other
disciplin~. This means that we must recognize our need for theory or,
rather, fac"e the ne(essity of doing theory if history still wams to conceive
ofitsdf, an ~cademic di~cipline. This is notan auempt to borrow theorems fro~ nelghbonng disciplines to establish hyphenated alliances. It
would be :rash ro cou pie sociology and history in a way thar would ser che
conditionf for deriving our own disciplinary concepr from a social science

Chapur 1

(Ge>rlhchaftswiJsrmchllji) somehow o..:onccived in sociological urms. lnstead, l would propose rhat we can push our w:~y out of our own characteri>ric boulr:nech only by concemrating on those poinrs rhar are rhemselves in need of rheory or rh:n promise theoretic.a.l imight~.
l. h is an irony of rhe semamic hiscory of ~history" that ~history irself" !Geschichu srlber) or "hisrory pure and simple" (Geschichu >chlechthin)
original! y meant rhe nec:d for theory wichin our diwipline. As ~oon a.~ peoplt gave up rhinking "history" in conjunuion widt (Crtain ~ubjecc.s and <!bjens thar wcre asdgned ro ir, rhc displine of hiswry was obliged ro conform ro a sysrem_ 'Xlhen thc terms "hiscory s.elf" and "rhe philosophy of
hrstory' !CrJChichuphilosoph) nr~r :~ppeared around 1770, rhev were identical in rnt<~ning. In rhe course of time, rhe rnerahisroric<~l co.mponent of
rhese expressions wa.s absorbed by rhe newly ..:oined rerm "hisroricirv" (GeJchirhtlicUuir).
.
Re.:em discussons of hisroricity face the theorerical challenges th:<.t
ha ve resulted from the crisis of historicism. The concept of hisroricity is
used to halt the permanent process of relativization for which historicism
was reproached. Hisroricity absolutizes relativity, as it were, if l may use
this nonconcept. The influence of Heidegger cannot be overlooked he re,
even though he did nor exactly promote this discussion within our field.
As early as Being and Time, rhere is an almosr complete abstracting from
hiswry. Historicicy is treated as a category ofhuman existence, yet no intersubjecrive or transindividual structures are themarized. Although Hei~
degger poims the way from the finitude of Dasein to rhe temporality of
history, he does nor pursue it any fun:her. That is why, on the one hand,
the danger of a rranshistorical ontology ofhistory (as, for example, devised
by August Brunner) lurks behind the fruitful category of hisroricity. On
the other hand, when Heidegger applies his philosophy to history-where
t receives an eschatological coloring <~S the history ofBeing-,ir is no accidenr that traditional historical-philosophical schemata of decay andascem become visible.
Hisroricity and the categories assigned to ir open onro a histories (Historik) and omo a merahistory that investigare mobilry instead of movement
and changeabiliry instead of change in a concrete sense. There are many
similar formal critera concerning hisrorical (htomch) acring and suffering,
which <~re basically "timeless'' across history and serve ro unlock history
(Geschichte). I am thinking ofsuch critea as: "master and serv<~nt"; "friend

The Need for Theory in History

and foc:"; he heterogony of purposes; rhe shifting rdations of time and space
with rega~d ro units of action and poremial power; a.nd the anthropological
substratum for gener<~tional change in politics. The list of such categories
oould be ~tended; they refer to the finitude that sets hisrory in motion, so
to speak, without capturing in any way the content or direction of such
movements. (Often enough, Christia.n axioms-like those of negative rheology-a~e hidden behind such categories; they appear again a.nd again in
Wittram'sbook on imerest in history, for example).
Histpricity is supposed to oudine both the conditions of possibility for
histories (Gesrhichten) as such and the place that hisrorical research occupies
within th~m. It clears the historian of the charge of a putative subjectivity;
one ca.nn6t escape rhis subjectivity ro the exrent that "history" (die Geschichte) c~nstantly passes both the historian and the writing ofhistory (die
Historie) by. Here, the "transcendence" of history signifies the process of
overtaking that continuously forces the researcher ro rewrite history. Thus,
rhe rewriting of history be<:omes not only the correcrion of mistakes or a
compens:~tory act, but part of the presupposirions of our profession-provided rhar Geschichte is transcendent with regard to Htorie. We can therefore 5ay thar iust as in the past history (Hist()rie) <IS the an of narmion developed it.~ own hisrorics lHist()rilun), the discipline of history wday has
conceptua.lized historiciry a.~ outlining the conditions of possibility both for
hisrory in general (G_whichlr iiberhaupt) and for the discipline of hisrory
(Guchi<'htn.<Jm.<ehaji) more narrowly defioed.
The. problematic of historie al amhropology demonstrares how difficulr iris ro introduce metahhtorical categories inco concrete research. Nipperdey has recemly poimed this out- and no daubc our western neighbors,
wirh their srrucruralist. erhnological. and psychosociological approaches,
are ahead 'of us in rhis respect. Again and again, one is faced with the apo~
ria thar enduring formal criteria are themselves hi:torkally conditioned
and remain applicable only w phenomena that can be delimited historically. ln orher word.s, in the course of research, :~11 metahisrorical ca.tegories
will change into historica.l scaremenrs. Rdlecting on chu change is one of
the research rasks of hisrorical an thropology in particular and of any kind
of hswrylin generaL
2. Discussion of the sysrem:uic premises of hiscory in itself" (Geschichu .) std,) lead.s ro a reversa! of che question, to a turn tow<~rd the
need for rheory m che pr.!.Ctice o( research. A spccificilly hi~torical question

The Nud fr

Chapter I

can legitimare itself academically only by going back to the histories thar
inhabits or precedes it; for the purpose of research, i t has to unfold its own
theoretical premises.
Tht: individual disciplines that have distanced themselves from the
assumprion of a historical experience of the world have al! developed particular systematics relative w their own objects of research. Economics, political science, sociology, philology, linguistlcs: all can be defi.ned in terms
of their objects of srudy. By conuasr, ir is much more difficulr for history to
develop a historical systematics or a theory referring 10 an object of study
based on its actual objects of research. In pr..uice, the object of his10ry is
everything or nothing, for his10ry can declare jusr abour anyrhing to be a
historical object by the way in which it formulares its questions. Nothing
escapes the historical perspective.
Significantly, history "as such" (Geschichte "als soiche") does not have
an object-except for itself, which does not sol ve the quesrion of irs object
of re.<;earch but on ly doubles it linguistically: the "his10ry of his10ry." Hnc,
Lhe exLent to whid1 "hi~tory pure and ~imple" (GeKhichte ghfechthm) original! y was a metahistorical caregory becomes clear. The question. rhen, is
whether defining an object of study will help the discipline of history regain the historical character chat disringuished ir up w the etghreemh century. Certainly not. Our concept of history remains .mbivalent: m reference to an objecr, history beco mes a hisrorical caregory; wirhout an obje<::t,
ir remains a mec:ahistorical quanriry-and a rescrvmr of theological, philosophica.l, ideological, or political classifications thac are accepted more or
less uncritically.
1 would therefore like 10 narrow down my thesis: hinory conceived
as ubiqui10us can only exist as a discipline if t develops a rheory of prriodiz:ation: withour such a theory, hiscory loses iuelf in boundlessly quesrioning everything. 1 i!Ssume chat merahistorical and historical categories
will be forced ro converge in the queHion of periodizatiotl. Such a question
has both a systematic and a histoncal characrer. This can be demonstrated
by me~ns of a frw examplrs.
a) Let me first refer toa ro pie of our study group tor modern social history, namtly, ronaprual hrory. Conceptual hisrorr, as we <~ttempt ir, cannot
manage without a rheory of periodizatior.. \'(/e do nm mean temporaliry of
a general kind, which can be procedurally srylizeJ inw hiswriciry and which
has ro do wirh history in a fundamental way. lt !S, rarher. a quesrion of the-

The01:~

in Hiuory

orecically formulating in advance rhe temporal specifiC!l of our policical and

social concepts so~ to ordn the 5ourc.: m.acerials. On..ly thus can we advance
From philplogical rrcording to conceptual h.istory. One hypoch.esis regarding
our dictionary of fumhmenul hscorical concepts is thac, despite .:ontinual
u~.: of th~ samr words, rhe political-sociallanguage has changed since the
eig.htet>nth cemury, inasmuch as since then a '"new time" has been articulated. Coefficients of change and accderarion transform old fidds of meaning and, rhereforr, politic.al and social experience as wdl. Earlier meanings
of a raxonomy that is still in use must be grasped bv che hinorical method
and rrans.lated nto our language. Such a procedure.pre~upposes a frame ~f
referrnce har has been clarified theorerically; only v.;rhin such a frame can
rhese tra!1flarions become visible. I am speak.ing here of che ~saddle period"
(Samlzt), as ir was called by the srudy group. This period chematiz.es the
uansformation o( rhe premodern usage of Jan guage to our usage, and I cannot emphasize srrongly enough its heurisric character.
We cannm master our task if we try to write a hisrorical-phi!ological
history of words at a comparatively positivisric leve!. We wou!d then get
bogged clown in the mass of source material and could at most provide an
incomplete glossary of sociopolitical expressions. In doing so, we would
have to record the history of a lexical tem with different meanings orbe
forced to trace word by word what are supposedly constant meanings. Su eh
an additiVJe description, by which we proceed hand over hand through history, requ~res a temporal indicator, which, drawing on the sum of the linguistic findings, points out to us thar tht":re 5 a history at all. The theoretical antici>ation of the saddle period" between about 1750 and about IS)O
amounts :o a statement that during this period the o id experience of time
was denaturalized. The slow decline of Aristotelian semantic content which
referred t~ a natural, repeatablc, and therefore static historical tim~, is the
negarive i~dic:n:or of a movemcnr rhar can be describcd as the beginning of
modernir;}. Since about 1770, old words such as democracy, frudom, and thf'
Jtatr have lndlcated a new horizon of the future, which delimits the concept
in a different way; traditional topoi gained an anticipatory content clm rhey
did not have before. A common denominator of the sociopolirical vocabulary can found in the increased emergence of crireria pertaining to movement. The productivity of this heuristic anricipation is demonstrated by a
series of ideas chat thematize concepts of movement themselves, such as
progress, ~ismry, or developmem. Although these words are old, rhey art" al-

bf

Chaptrr

mon neologisms, :rnd since about 1770, they have had a remporal coeffi~
cient of change. This offers a snong incentive toread and interrogare other
old conc:epts of tl1e politirallanguage in tnms of ft>atures indiracing movement. The hyp01hesis of a denaturalization of the historica! experience of
time. whjclJ also affects the semantics of sociopolitical expression.~. is surponed by the emergence of the modern philosophy of histDry. whic:h ppropri:ues these terms.
In orher wotd.s, on[y a theomical amicipation rhat uncoven a specific
time period can open rhe pmsibilicy of working through certain readings
and uansposing our dictiomry from the leve! of posirvtstic recording co
thar of a conceptual history. Only theory ttansforms our work into historical research. This presupposition ha.~ w far proved m worrh. The entire linguistic space of ~ociopolitical rerms ha5-while rt'raining rhe idenriry of
many wonL-moved from a qu;~.Si-Haric tradition rhat changed only over
rhe long term toa concepruality who.~e meaning can be inferred from a futute to be newly c:xperienced. Thi~ presupposition does not have ro hold for
a.ll words, however.
Once the natural comtants determining the old historica1 experience
of.ti me ha ve been destroyed-in other words, once progress has been set
free-a wealth of new questions emerges.
bj One of the most important concerns the theoretical premises of
struaurai htory. The answer can be found only by asking about the historical determination of time in statements rhar are supposed ro indicare
durarion. If one assumes that historical time remains embedded within
na rural time withom being entirely contained in it; or, put differendy, rhat
whereas the time of day may be relevant for political decisions, hisrorical
cmmecrions cannot be measured with a dock; or, put differently yet again,
that the revolution of rhe stars is no longer (or not yet again) relevam for
historical time, we must find temporal categories that are adequate ro historical evenrs and processes. Categories of rhe type developed by Braudel
can rherefore be introduced inro empirical research only if we are clear
about the rheorerical significance of what can last. This considerationleads
us into a fundamental dilemma.
We are a!ways using concepts that were origina!Iy conceived in spatial
terms, but that nevenheless have a temporal meaning. Thus we may speak
of refranions, frictions, and the breaking up of cerrain enduring e!emenrs
that have an effect on the chain of evems, or we may refer ro the retrospec-

Thr Nerd for Theory in Hisrory

tive effect~ of events upon rheir end.uring presupposirions. Here, our expressions are taken &om rhe spatial realm, even from geology. They ar~ undoubtedly very vivid and graphic, but they also illumate our dilemma. h
concerns the fact that history, insofar as ir deals with Um.e, musr borrow ts
concepts f~om rhe spatial realm as a maner of principie. We live by narurally
metaphorical expressions, :rnd we are unable ro escape from rhem, for the
simple reason. that rime is nor manifio:st (arochaulich) and cannot be in tui red
(anscho.uli"h grmarht wmirn). All htorical ca1egories, including progre~s.
which is the flm specifically modern u.tegC>ry of hiswrical rime, are spatial
expressions by origin, a.nd our discipline rhrives because rhey can be traMlated. Hi~tory" originally also comained a spatial meaning, which has become tempor-.J.lized ro such a degree rhar we refer to rhe doubling of'suuctural hisrory~ if we wish ro (re-)inuoduce sratistics, durarion, or long-rerm
extension imo our concepr of hisrory.
In comrast ro othcr modes of srudy, hiswry as a discipline lives by
metaphorical expression. This is our amhropological premise, as ir were, for
everyrhing rhat must be articulated in temporal terms is forced to rely on
che sensory ba5es of natural intuirion. The impossibiliry of ntuiting pure
time Jcads direcdy into methodological difficu[cies concerning wherher
meaningful statements about a theory of period.aon on be made ar all.
A specific danger lurks behind these difficulties: namely, rhar our emprica!
research na.ively accepts metaphors as they come w us. We muse rely on
borrowings from everyday linguistic usage or other disciplines. The terminology bo~rowed and rhe necessity of using mecaphorical expressions- because time,does nor clearly manifesr itself-requires constant methodological safeguards rhat refer to a theory ofhistorical time. This leads us back ro
the questiqn of"duration."
Evidfnrly, cerrain long-term processes preva.il, whether they are supponed or bpposed. One can, for example, ask whether the rapid industrial
developmenr afi:er rhe Revolution of r848 happened despite rhe failed revolution or qecause of ir. Tllere are arguments for and against; neirher side is
necessarily convincing, but both sides indicare a movement that esrablishes
irself acroSf the polirical camps of revolution and reaction. In chis case, che
reaction n$-y have had a more revolurionary effect than the revolution.
If reyolurion and reacton are both indicarors of one and the same
movement., susrained by both camps and driven forward by both, then this
pair ofideological concepts evidemly indicares a concinuous historical move-

Chapttri

mem, a structurc of irreversible, longtcrm progn:ss, which transcends the

polirical pros and cons of reacrion and revolution. Progress itselfis thus more
than an ideological category. Even the category of the reasonable middle
way, which was habirually invoked ar the time, is only meaningful if a scable
coefficient of change is introduced. The scope of action for a movement that
is already pregiven makes ir impossible ro statically grasp any reasonablc
middle way, for this middle way is force_d ro oscillare berween "righr" and
"left:." lts meaning changes by itself over time. When we ask abour their
temporal meaning, spatial meraphors rhus necessitate prior theoretical con
sidemtions. Only then can we define what, for instan ce, is meanr by dura~
tion, delay, or acceleration in our example of the process ofindustrialization.
e) The destruction of natural chronolagy leads toa third issue. Chronological sequence, by which our hisrory is scill guided ar times, can quite
easily be exposed as a fiction.
In the past, the natural course of time served as the immediate subsrratum for possible histories. The calendar of saints and sovereigns was organi:zed by means of asrronomy; biological time provided clte framework
for the natural succession of rulers, on which selfreproducing legal ti des in
the wars of succession depended-uncil rSyo, symbolically enough. All histories remained rooted in "nature," direcdy embedded in biological pre
givens. The mytbological superelevation of astrological and cosmic time,
which contained nothing ahistorical in the prehistoric age, penains ro the
same experiencia! realm. But since the triad of antiquity, the Middle Ages,
and modernity has structured chronological succession, we have succumbed
toa myrhical schema rhat tacitly structures al! of our scholarly work. This
schema is obviously not of any immediate use for the relacion between duration and event. We must, rather, leam ro discover the simulranei ty of the
nonsimultaneous in our history: it is, after al!, part of our own experience
to have contemporaries who li've in rhe Srone Age. And since the large
scale problems of the developing countries are coming back to haunt w today, it becomes impemtive to gain theoretical darity about rhe nonsimultaneity of rhe simultaneous and to pursue related questions. The seemingly
merahistorical question about historical structures of time has again and
again proved relevant to concrete research questions. Among these, there
also belon~
d) the interpretation of historical conjlicts. Historical processes are driven forward only so long as the conflicts inherent in rhem cannot be sol ved.

The Need for Theory in History

As soon ~ conflicr dissolves, ir belongs ro the pan. A historical theory of

conflicrs can be suffidencly developed only by bringing out the temporal
qualities inherent in the conflict. In historiography: confliru are us~ly
dealt with by introducing opponents as stable subjects. as fixed ennnes
whose ficrve character can be recognized: "Hicler~ and "Hitler within us."
The historical subject is an almost inexplicable quantity. Think of any
famous p~rsonaliry or of the "people," which is no less vague than "d:S~";
think of the eronomy, the srate, the church, and other such abstraer entmes
or powers . Perhaps only in psychological rerms can we undersrand how "ef~
fective forces" come about and how they are reduced to subjects. If one applies the temporal question ro such subjects, they dissolve very ~uickl~, an~
it rurns out that imersubjective connecrions are the proper toptc of hJSton
cal researcb. Such connecrions, however, can be described only in a tempo~
ral way. Tb.e desubstantialization of our categories leads toa temporalization
of their meaning. Thus rhe scale of pastor future possibilities can never ~e
outlined on the basis of a single modaliry or unit of acrion or from one urur
of action. Such a scale refers, rather, to that of one's opponents. Therefore
only temporal differences, refractions, or tensions can express the tren~ toward a new strucruring of reality. In this way different temporal relatwns
and factors of accderation and delay unexpectedly come into play.
'When one rhemaciz.es long, average, and short periods of time, it is
difficult to esrablish causal relationships between the temporal layers thus
singled o~t- We recommend working with hypotheses that introduce con
srant facto.rs, against which variables can be measured. This does not prevent
us from ~ing the constant factors as themselves dependent on variables or
other constant facrors. Such historical relacivism, if well thought through,
seems ro lead ro che functional merhod. This method excludes infinire regress. On<je temporal differences among the inrersubjective co~ecci.ons have
been thematized, ii is difiicult ro hold on to the supposedly soennfic character of ca:usal chains, on whose basis we are accustomed to interrogare the
past so as finally ro arrive at the absurdiry of~inear ~uestions of ~rigin. ~er
haps lines 'of direct derivation from past pregtvens hide a secul.artzed denvative of rhe. Chrisrian doctrine of creation, living on undetected.
In r*e course of ninereenrh-cenmry. rese.arch, the cate~ries of sp~~
taneity, ofhistorical uniqueness, and ofhtstoncal forces, whtch were on~J
nally designed with an eye to genuine historical time, became bound up m
substances such as personaliry, the people. class, certain states, and so on.

10

Chapter 1

This made possible hisrorically naive statements at which we smile today.

Nevertheless, there is a hidden difficu!ty here as well. Though I am not in
a position ro evaluare ir, I wuuld like to diren attenrion ro it. I mean
e) temporal series. Schumpeter once said that one can only make historically meaningful sratemenrs if rhere is a possibility of comparison in
sufficienr temporal depth. Comparisons based on temporal series, however,
presuppose a subjecr conceived as being concinuous. Only when measured
against such a subject can changes be discernible <'lt al!.
I feel thar these subjects, thought to be continuous, should be inuoduccd only hypothetically. He re I would invoke rhe New Economic Hisrory.
Whar is exciting about these researchers' view of hiswry, in my opinion-if
1 judge the work ofFogel correcdy-is rhar rhey gain genuinely hisrorical insighrs va rheoretical premises that are nor characteristic of our discipline.
Fogel once presemed calculations based on his theories that refute the argument thar slave labor in the United States was economically unprofitable befare the outbreak of the Civil War. The number sequences were verified empirically, and they indicare that the efficiency ofblack labor rose in relation
ro wesrward migration. Through such an insight, rhe moral significance of
liberal propaganda gains a tremendous weight per negatonem, for the purely
moral argumenr that no human being must be a slave increases in conclusiveness to rhe degree that the supposed economic proof loses power (a proof
rhat the liberals, of course, also used in a subsidiary fashion).
This is an example of how determinable phenomena emerge more
dearly thanks to a rheory that excludes certain daca &om consideraran.
Moreover, excluding certain questions under certain theoretical premises
makes it possible ro li.nd answers that would otherwise not have come up:
a dear proof of the need for rheory in our discipline. If one supposes rhe
necessiry of forming theories-and such theories must not be resrricted ro
temporal suuctures-it follows from previous examples that we must become aware of rhe hypotherical character of our mechad. This wi!l be
demonstrated by way of further examples, which can instruct us about the
naive use ofhistorical categories and about che similar(y naive criticism of
these categories.

O Our discipline works under a tacit presupposirion of teieology. We

all know a book that is disreputable today, Treitschke's hisrory ofGermany
in the nineteenrh cemury. 1 In this book, Treicschke presented rhe glorious
path of Prussian history, which led to thc unity of rhe German Reich, ex-

Tht Netd for The()ry in History

Il

cluding kmia. In so doing;Treitschke deployed a teleology thar organized and. oriented the wealth of his recorded references, like a magnet.
The unity of che German Reich, exduding Austria, was rhe premise ex post
facto undorr which he read his sources. In thls, he openly admitted that his
statements were conditioned by his position. And in the preface, he made
clear rhar he imended ro show rhar everyrhing had ro happen the way it
did and rhat those who had not comprehended this yet could learn it from
his book. Three theorems are contained in this bundle of statemems:
The teleological principie as the regulating idea of his statements
andas the org~izing principie for the selection of sources;
2. Consciously admitted positionality; and
3- The hisrorical-philosophical certainty wirh which Treirschke
daimed to have history pure and simple on his side.

1.

He thus wrote a history of victors who, on the basis of their own success, reproduce world hisrory as the Last Judgment. These three theorems
-knowing history ro be on one's side, rhe teleological principie as a regulative idea of analyzing sources, and rhe historian's positionaliry-cannot
be tackled as easily as someone who accuses Treitschke of bias or nationalism might believe.
If every historian remains rooted in his situation, he will be able ro
make onlr, observations that are framed by his perspective. These, however,
evoke final causes. A historian can hardly escape them, and if he disregards
them he r;}inquishes the refl.ection that teaches him about what he is doing.
The diffirulty does not so much le in the final causality deployed but in
naively aq:epting it. It is possible to come up with as many causes as one
wishes for:any evem thar eVer took place in the course ofhistory. There is no
single evenr that oould not be explained causally. Whoever gets involved in.
causal explaoations will always li.nd reasoris for what he wishes to demonstrate. lo other words, causal derivations of events do not themselves conrain any criteria for the correcrness of the statemems about rhem. Thus
Treitschke, roo, was able ro come up with proofs for his theses. If one reads
the same sources fcom different angles today, Treitschke's political position
will be fo~rid ro be outdated, but its theoretical premise, which triggered the
causaliry J\e was searching for, will not. We must keep this reservation in
mind when we seek m reject explanatioos of final causality in an ideologicalcritical way.

12

Chapter

The Need for Theary in Histary

. . Any history, b:ause it is ex post F,.,cco, subject to final corutraints.

1t 15 I~possible ro do without rhem. Yet one can escape the schema of causal
addn10n and n~rarive arbirrariness only by inuoducing hypothe~es that,
~or t-xample, bn~g _in~o play pase pos.sibilitie~. Put differcndy. pccsptivism
1s rolerab]e only 1f 1r lS not mipped of ics hypothetical and, rherefore, revisable chaJacter. Stared more concisely: everyching can be juscified, but not
everything_can be jusrified by anyrhing. The queStion of which justifications
are admJS.!.JDle and wl;ich are nm s tlOt only a mattcr ofthe sources u hand,
bu e ~bove _all a mauer of che hyporneses rhac rnake these ~ource> speak. The
rtlauonshlp becween the circunl5tances,
sdecrion, <\nd the mterpreta(JOn of che sources can only be darillcd br a theory of possible history and
'
rherefore, a possible discipline of h.istocy.

me

Chladenius was probably the fir~t ro rdkcr upon p(J.-ition4 fity as a

prt:mJse of our research. He wrare a rheory of rhe disciplne of hist
h h al m gh

ory,
ou Jt was conce1ved bdorc hisroricism, concains manv ideas
w Jc
rhar surpass Oroysen's hisrorics. Because ofirs dry and didacric lang~age, it
~as unforcunarely not yet been republished, but it remains a treasury ofinsJghts untouched by hisroricism. Chladenius defined ali historical statements as reduccive sratemcnts about a past reality. "A narra ti ve completely
absrracted from one's own poinr of view is irnpossible." But Chladenius
did nor histo~ically rela~i~ize poinr of view or regard the formation of judgmems as subect to revJston. Consequencly, he believed that he could discern a reality congealed within past objects. Starements about su eh a reality were, in his opinion, however, necessarily subject to rejuvenation, given
~har no r:s~ totalicy could completely be reproduced. The expression "reuvenated ts already conceived in temporal terms and is no longer spatial.
For Chladeni~, "':hat is "young" is what is presenr, and the past is imerrogared from th1s ep!stemological-formal perspecrive of pmgress. History becomes vi~ible o~! y ~hrough _the :ens of the present. Such a releology dispenses wuh a cntenon of direcuon that poinrs toward the finure as it 5
sought wirhin rhe horizon of the phiiosophy of history.
'
.
The t~in:f. the~rem _rhat Treitschke broughr into play, namely, having
hJStory on h1s stde, ts an 1deological fiction. This fiction thrives on the care~ry of necessity, which Treitschke tacidy introduces in order to represenr
as tnevJtable the course of German hisrory to me point ar which rhe German Reich ex~lu~ed Austria. The determination of necessiry hides a fiar
rautology, wh1ch ts not only deployed by Treitschke but by any historian

l3

who refers; to it. ldentifying an event as necessary amounts to a double

sraremenr abour rhat evem. Wherher I say that somcthing happened or
whether I say thar it happened by necessity is identical from an ex post
facto perspective. Something did not happ.en more so only because ir had
ro happeo 1 By making a sratement about an event and by adding that it
had to have happened, l vindicare for rhs evem a necessary causal chaina necessicy that in the end derives from the omniporence of God, in whose
place the historian is acting.
Put c\ifferently, the caregory of necessity continuously obscures the ne~.
cessi ty of f?rming hyporheses, which alone can allow for causal chains. We
can risk making srarements of necessity insofar as we formulare rhem with
reservado~. Cogem reasons can be devised only wthin the framework of
hypothetiCally introduced premises. This does not exclude the possibility
that different ways of asking questions will bring into view completely different causes. Correcrness in interpreting sources is not only assured by the
source data but, first of all. by malcing the question concerning possble hiswry theorerically evidem.
Thus teleological quesrions and the questioner's positionality c~nnm
be diminared; rather, any staternent about reality involving a chim of necessirv is subiect to our critique. Th.is critique refers ro temporal determinatio~s: ir is directed against rhe uniqueness and the unidirectionality of
hisrorical processes, which in sorne respectare a secularized derivative of
providenn:, of ~ providence that for us remains hidden in the dedaration
of urge m rlecessiry. A theory of periodiz:arion mar is adequate to the complex historicaJ reality requ.ires muhilayered statements.
g} This leads ro 'he well-known discussion about (vulgar) Marxist
monor:awa/iry, a discussion in which Western historians often congratulate
rhemselves on their own superiority. The charge that history cannot be inrerprered in a monocausal way, however, can easily be rn"Crsed. Whether l
introduce ~ne cau&e, two, five, oran infinire amount of Q.Wes says nothrng
ar a.ll abour the qualiry of my hisrorica1 rellections. A monocaus.al schema
permirs ~rarements that are very r~onable from a h.ypothetical point of
view. Ler rre ~11 to mind the works of Schoffier: their in.sights oftcn resr
upon mour~mal ~planacions-which i..s the very source of their fruitfulness and rheir surprising accut<1cy. When Manc:ists offer monoall!lal consrructions-for example, when rney indicare dependencies of the "superS<ructure" upon rhe "base srruccure"-rhis is a [egirimate procedure of

Chapter 1

hyp01:hesis formarion. The real objection rh.ar ~;an be r.Wed a.gainsr Marxists is. not to be found in monocausality as a pa>sible h 5torical categary but,
first, m the hCI~ that they u~e rhis ~-.~regory naivdy (though precise! y on rhis
poinr rhey agree with many of our hiscoriansL and, second ;u1d more imporrandy, that they are afeen fora:d ca formulare rheir sratemerm upon
command and are not allowed ro question chem criric.tlly. Properly seen,
the objecrion against monocausa!ity is an obeGion ag;~inst blindness m
hyporheses; on a different merhodical lcvd, it 1~ also dir~cted against any
mbjection ro polirical directives. The rcflecrion on positionaliry and rhe
determinaran of goals is rhus poliricized and eludes scholarly vtrification.
This rouches an a rricky problem; everyone is familiar with rhe ambigu
ous ground on which, far example, Communist historiography operares
as a discipline. Yet we must keep in mind, with regard to Marxisr problematics, party-polirical ties and the campulsion both ro change ane's goals
(when rhe situation changes) and w self-criticism. I come thus m my conduding section.
l The Communist camp has the specific poli rica! advamage of a continuous refl.ecrion an the relationship berween theory and pn1ctice in scholarly work. However valid objectians against rhe control of historiographical
guidelines by party politics in Marxisr countries may be, every hisroriography does in facr perform a funcrion within rhc public sphere.
Yet we musr disringuish berween rhe pol.itical fonction that a discipline serves and rhe panicular political implication that it mayor may not
have. Thus the pure natural sciences do not have any political implicarions
if judged by their subject matter: their results are universally communicable, and, taken by themselves, they are apolicical. That does not preclude
the fact that the polirical function of these sciences-ler me call ro mind
rhe urilizarion of nudear physics or of biochemistrv-can be far more inAue~rial than that af the humanities or the social ;ciences. The discipline
~f hlstory, by conrrast, always performs a poli rica] funcrion, albeir ot changmg one. Depending on whether it is conducted as church, legal, or court
histo_ry, wh.ether it is polirical biography, universal hisrory, or somerhing
ebe. lts soCJal place changes, as does the political function exercised by rhe
results ir a.:hieves asan academic discipline. The political implications of
hiswriul re~e~rch are nat adequately determined in this way, however. They
depend on the kinds of quesrions posed by a given line of research. Howevu trivial ir may sound, one must bear in mind thar tapies in music his-

The Need for Theory in Htory

wry, for instance, do not involve political questions in the same way as do
topics in diploma tic history. Nat even the idealogical reductian of hi~tori
cal activiry w poltica! inrerests can substitute for the disciplinary evidence
of a given method and the results thereby acleved. Polircal function and
poli rica! i~licarions are not enough. Thase who blur the distincrion mmforro history imo lessons in ideology and deprive ir of its critica! task, a
function ir may (bur need not) have as a discipline.
Turning away from our initial question about the theorerical premises
rhar guide us on our path ta the sources, rhe question ofhow dependem we
are on forming hypotheses, let us take a path rhar leads from our ~nurces
back into the public sphere. Mantist reflecrion always takes rhis path into
consideratibn, whereas in aur profession ir is followed for the mos1: part
naively or merely verbally invoked. Here, we rake an rhe wom-ou1: issue of
didactics, which can cerrainly be discussed sciemi6cally, in a w.ty analogous
to our spccialized research. 1 assume thar we can ralk meaningfully abour
rhe didacrics of history only ifhistary as a discipline uncovers its own rheoretical premises. The discontem with history as a school subject might then
turn out to h~ve rhe same roots as rhe lack of a capacity for theoretical refiectian rhar characreres our discipline. Stated pasitively, if we accept the
compulsion w do theory. didactic consequences that "didactics" itself is unable ro locate will impo~e thern:;elves.
Alth~ugh we have refined and mastered our philological-historical
rools over a cenrury anda half, historians all roo easily let their path from
the sources to rhe public sphere be mapped out for chem by particular .:on
ste!Luions crf power. Precise\ y the grear successes achieved on the positivistic levd served to encourage an arrogance that has been especially susceptible to nacional idealogies.
The path fmm re~~;;h into the sources back toward the public sphere
has d.ifferent ranges: in che universiry, ir remains comparatively clase ro rcseardl; at school, ir lead~ further away; at a greater distance, ir reaches the
public ~phere of our poltica! spaces of action; it finally extends to the public in the glpbal sphcre of addressees of hisrarical statements.
Here re musr remcmber that historical statements can reproduce pasr
stares of affl_irs on\y in a red.ucrive or rejuvenated way, for iris impossible to
restare rhe t;arnliry af the past, which is irrevocably gone. Snktly speaking,
the queston of ~how ir really wa.~" can only be answered if one assumes
rhat one does not formulare res facrae but res fictae. lf it is no longer possi-

16

The Nud for Theory in Htory

Chaprr 1

17

bk ro reswre thc: pasr

law, and ecpnomics, or any other subjects that promote specialization wirhin
the subject area of hisrory and, above all, widen the angle of vision.
For schools, this would mean tha.t such subs.idWy subjem c.ould nonetheless be s..bjecrs for teaehing. Why, for instance, should French be tauglu
only by philologists bur not~for a cerrain strerch-also by h.isrorians of
French constirutional history or by experu on polici.cal or philosophical texrs

such, then I ;un forced to acknowledge thc: ficrive

characrer of past acrualities so as to be able to theoretically safeguard my
hiswrical sratemenrs. Any historical 5tateme;r is a reduction if measured
againsr rhe infinity of a past totality that is no longer accessible to us as
such. In the vicinity of a naive-realistic naively realisr theory of knowledge,
any compulsion tow;ud reduction 1s a compulsion to le. However, l can
dispense with Jying once 1 know thar rhe compulsion ww.ud reduction inherently belongs to our di-.cipline. In addition, rhis both involves a political implication and allows didactics to ga:in a legicimate place wirhin rhe
rc:alm of rhc: historical discipline. Wc: mu~r ~k oum:lves continually what
hiscory means, what ir can be and whar it is supposed ro be for w; today: at
che university, ar school, and in the public sphere. This is nor ro say rhar research accivity ouglu to have its ms prescribed from the outside in political and functional rerms, but we should always be aware of rhe specific policical implicacions rnat our fidd of research do es or does not ha ve, and of
che proposicional form that we must develop accordingly. Then we can betrer define the polirical function that history has or ought to have on the basis of the discipline of history itself It is importan! ro dissolve rhe apora of
hi5toricism-its adherents were convinced thar one could nor learn anything from IJ.i~tories any more, ev~n though the discipline ofhistory coumed
as reaching. For chis reason, I would like ro bring out four practica[ consequencfs of the previous coruiderations:
(a) The types of sysremacic quescions concerning "hisroriciry" mentioned ar rhe beginning and the demand for a histories direcrly lead to roday's methodological dispute within the discipline of sociology. Methodologically, the compulsion ro
hYPorheses, once it has been articula red,
rnoves the discipline of history doser to the social sciences in generalcloscr, thar is, rhan has perhaps been recognized so f.u-. In any case, it appears
w me that the commonalities go so f:u as to suggest combining social studirs (Gemeimchafokum:k) and history lemms (Geschichtsuntrrricht) in school.
(b) The supposed wealrh of historical material and rhe difficulties of
theotecical premises concerning ir discussed above both suggest studying the
discipline of history as a singk nMjor. This is not ro say that minors are to be
dispensed wich. Rather, minors ought to be srudied for the very reason thar
rhey offer different theoretical approaches, but as subsdiary and compltmmtary subjew, which are of panicular benefir to hsrorical quesrions. Foreign
languages are cerrainly subsidiary subjecrs of rhis kind, and so are linguisrics,

rorm

in the French languager

At the university level, al! minors would accordingly be udli:z.ed in
different war-;, which would be subsidiary or complementary to the respcc-.
ti_ve m:.J.jor~. Foreign languages fnr history majors would bave to be taught
differencly co sorne dc:gree; insread of remaining uuncated majors (which
they are), {oreign Janguage inmuccion would need ro specifically themarize
historical or sociologica.l types of qucsrions.
Conversely, hiswry as a subsidiary subject for a stu.dem of linguistics
ought not to be raught as merdy a rhinned-down extraer &om Plocr. [astandard reference work for hisrorians]. Bridges ought ro be builr i.n nterdisciplinary tutorials and discussion secrions. Only experimenc can succced here.
(e) A further practical consequence results from me theory of periodizacion alluded to above. Neither a coursc of srudy decermined by chro
nological sequences, which lives by :filling in their gaps, nor che triad of introductory seminars in ancient, medieval, and modern history, which is
derived from a mythical sehema, is methodologically cogenc. Furthermore,
rhus f.u professorships have been organized in a way that mms from che
humanistc myth of Cellarius, which is no guarantee of its correcmess.
In addition, the purpose of a university degree required for che teaching profession must not be prescribed in political and functional termsby referenCf to didactics-from the outside; rather, this purpose can only
be defined ;anew by adhering to rhe necessity of theory formation in our
discipline. So long as the still customary thrc:e introductory seminars differ
only in ter~s of the areas of linear chronology studied and their respective
means of analysis, their organization will remain impla.usible. The sequence of anciem, medieval, and modern history plus "contemporary history" is le~rimated neither by the general historical-philological method
that dley s~are nor by a rheory of different remporallevds. The necessity
of forming hypotheses is also common to all three areas. In accordance
wirh ongoing planning at Bielefeld University, let me therefore suggest a
new canon ofundergraduate education.

r8

Chapter 1
The Nud for Theory in Hlsror;'

A firsr courst oughr to serve as an mroduction into the historicalphilological mcrhadology rhar incerprers sourccs fr<.~m all cime periods
compararively. Concinu;~l use of rhe same rnerhod would be conducive ta
identifYing diftercnces in source and temporal condicons in a particularly
dear way.

~A second course could be defined as a seminar on ~a 11 alyng problems (Blumenberg). Here it would be importanr w de\dop a wealrh f
0
hi.st~rical questions that cannot be derived from the sources direcrly; answenng them would require that informaran and hypotheses fmm al! arcas of rhe social scicnces be consulted.
It goes wichour saying thar both introductory courses will nced to
planned in conjunction; they could be merged in pracrice.

be

. In a third-elective-inrroductory course, it would be imporram w

~cq Ulr~ ~e knowledge base and the fundamental principies of a subjec th;u
subs1d1ary or complementary to the discipline of history. This would be
the place to prepare for future specializarion in ancient and medieval hi&
tory, for example, by studyng Greek or Latin literature and linguisciu. lr
woul~ also be the place to bcgin studying other, auxiliary discipline~. dependmg on the mai.n emphasis of one's imerests. Sraristics, economics, oran
introduction ro jurisprudence mighr be recommendr;:d as subjecrs to com.
plemenr modero history. Obviously rhere would be an infinite number of
possible combinations. Ir remains crucial rhat the subsidiary or complementary subject contain its own theory and also its own synem:aics, and
that ir nor. be excl_usively shaped by historcal-philological merhodologr.
The refractwn of dlfferent quescions constitutes the stimuhnion in rhis rhird
introductory course. To me, it seems inevitable that such a program can
only_ he fulfill~d if rhe discipline of hiscory is studied as rhe only major, if
subs1d1ary subJC<:ts are also tested in oral examinations, and if they beco me
>ubjecr~ char can be raught in sthouls. Our theoretical considemtion$ have
rhus ltd us quite informally to ~ new canon of undergraduate educarion
thar d_oes n_or. a~olish rhe rraditona/ ro pies of teaching but reconfigures
chem m ~ d1sophnary and didactic wa.y.
JS

(d) A final condusion resulc.s from didacric considerations themselves.

h aims ar what is often evuked as txtmp/4ry tem:hing;md concerns rhe wavs
in whi;h sud'. tl'aching can be accomplished academically and in rerms ~f
perso:lnel po!Jcies. Exemplary reaching concerns nor only the issue of devdopmg n:ample5 for pa.~t siwaciom, condirions, or epochs but also rhe rask

of making ~eaching exemplary for us as wel!. In arder ro g,rasp the doublesidedness of exempla-namdy, being exemplary borh for somerhing and
for us, we reed to go back befare German Idealism, which has disrorted exemplarity in a philosophical-historical way.
The question of meaningful selection continue.> to impose itsdf. ~x
amples of social-historical and srructural-historica.l phenomena for reachmg
cannm be sought on a short-term basis. Here, schools and univcrsities muse
complement each other. It is important ro stimulate me imeraction b~rw~n
schools and universiries, and i.t appears tome mar no one is more suJted tor
this than the secondary-school reacher who is 1eaching in a universicy. These
schoolteachers ought not to form a nonprofessorial ceaching scaff. which s
che worst oif all possible solurions. Rarher, su eh reachers really oughc w be
able to come from schools and also rerurn there or, upon proof of their academic qualificuions. be able ro change over alrogether to university .teac~i~g
or 10 adult education in general. Secondary-school teachers at umverslt!es
ought todo both at the ~ame time: teach school at halfload and teach ar the
universirv by conducng two- ro four-hour seminars. Disciplinary and didanic <~e5tiom could rhe11 be blended together. Thus, an osmosis between
schoob ancl univeniti<:s would be established, which would prevent a new.
negative type of professorship from forming among the nonprofessorial
ce:~.ching :otaff when old full professors retire. The real threat is not the democracy of secondaryschool teachers, but the democracy of secondaryschool reache~ already looming behind plans for an integrated university
(~n.mthochrdmie). Secondary-school teachers who al remate between teaching at a un~ve~iry and teaching school certai.nly produce confl.iccs in social
status and pre5tige, but it seems more important to me that we face difficulries where cher actual.ly emerge instead of insisting on toral solutions whose
verv
wordig
1 is 5uspicious.
~

Translated by Kerstin Behnke

Social Hrory and CorJCeptuai Htory

21

Historical Rerrospective

Social History and Conceptual History

1
Anyone who is concerned wirh hisrory-wnarever this may be-and
it
social history is obviously ddmicing his topic. Anyone who
speCifies hmory as conceptual history is obviously doing the same. Never~ele.ss, rhe two definicions are not rhe usual del.imiration of special histories
wJrh? a gen~ral ~istory. The economic hiscory o( England, for ex:ample, or
the dtploman~ h1sto?' of the early modero age or the church history o( rhe
W~ az-c: speo_a.l to~1cs of such a kind, predetermined as worrhy of investigauon v1a the.~r subJect matter, time period, and region. In such cases, we
arr deiling with ~pecial aspects of general hisrory.

defi~es

:-s

Social history and conceptual history are different. On rhe basis of

thcir theoretical self-jusrificacion, "rhey make a general claim, one thar can
be extended and applied ro al! special histories. All history dea.ls with 11
te~ubjective relarionships, with forms of soci.ability or with social srrarifi
cauon_s; rh~efore, the characterzation of history as social hisrory makes an
endunng, lrtefutable, and, soto speak, anthropological da.im rhar les con
cealed behind any form of historiography. And which history would nor
ha~ to be comprehcndcd as such befare it congeaJs into history? [nvesrigatmg co~~pts and rheir lingustic history is as much a parr of rhe mini~ai condm?n for recognizing history as is rhc ddinirion uf history as havmg todo Wtth human socictv.

Bod~ social history and conceptual history !uve ex.isred as ex:plicit

modcs of quesoning since the Enligluenment and me d.iscovery of th.e
hi~torical ~orld it induded; that is, since che rime when previous social for
mations bf.'carne porous and linguistic reflection also came under pressure
co change, from a history that was being experienced and aniculated ~
someching new. Anyone who follows the history of historical refl.oction and
historical tepresentation since then encounters borh approaches again and
again, whether they explcate one another, as in Vico, Rousseau, and H~tder,
or whether they exiS[ in isolation &o m one an01her.
Theclaim to reduce all historical utterances concerning life and all
changes id them to social conditions and ro derive them fi:om such condirions was ksened &om the t me of the Enghtenment philosophies of history up to Comte and the yuung Marx. Such claims were followed by histories that, methodologically speaking, employed a more posicivistic approach:
from histories of society and civilization, to the cultural and. fo1k histories of
the nineteenth cenrury, up co regional histories rhat encompassed all aspects
of life, from Moser w Gregorovius to l.amprecht, their symhetic achievemem can aptly be called social-historical.
By conuas[, since the ~ightecnth century there have also been deliberately rhem:.uiud. conceptual histOrie~ (Begrijfigeschichtm) 1-the rerm apparently derives from Hegel-which have rerained a permanent place in
hinories df language and in historicai lex.icography. Of course, thq were
chematizctl by disciplines that proceeded in a historical-philological manner and n~eded to secure their sources via hi!tm~nrutic questionng. Any
translation inro one's own present implies a conceptual hisrory; Rudolf
Eucken has demonsnared its methodological inevitability in an exempl.ary
fashion fo~ the humanities and aii the social sciences in his c~schicht~ dnphikopht~chen Terminvlogie. 2
In practical research, reciproca! refcrences that bring together socialhistorical analyses or analyses of constirurional hisrory roU'thcr with ques
rions of conceptual hisrory are ubiquitous. Their mutual oonnection, more
or less reflj:cted upon, has aiways been presenr in the disciplines concerned
with anti~uity and in research on the Middle ~es: e~pccially ';her~ minimal sourc1s are avaibble, no &cr can be recog01zed wnhout taking m ro ac-

22

Chapur.<

Soai Htory and Conaptual History

coum rhe manner of its former and ptC'SC'nl conceptual assimi.lation. Obvious!y, the reciproca! imerlacing of social and concepwal hi.~tory w:LS sysremarically explored on!y in the 1930s; we are reminded of Waiter Schle~inger
1nd, above all, of Oteo Brunner. In neighboring fidds, Erich Rorhackcr was
a similar force in philosophy, as was Carl Schmin in jurisprudcncc and jost
Tri er in !i nguis ti es.
In rhe polidcal aspects of research, social and concepmal history werc
rhc
conjoined against two very differem tendencies. both domin~nr
1920s. On rhe one hand, there was a parting with conceprs conceming rhehistory of ideas and of spirit (idun- und gmmgrJchicht!iche), which were
pursued outside a concrete sociopoliticaJ comext-for their own sakes, as
ir were. On the other hand, history cea~ed ro be regarded as primarily a polical hisrory of events, and instead its longer-lasting presuppositions were
investigated.

;n

As Ouo Brunnei: emphasized in the second edition of Land und Hen'schaft,~ he wanred "ro a.:;k abour the concrete presuppositions of medieval
politics, without, however, represencing it itself." He sought to focus on
long-term munurt's of social condironality (Verfoftheit) and changes in
these-which Wtl"l' ne-vcr merely of thc moment-doing so by rhemarizing panicular lingui>tic self-anicularions of social groups, associarions, or
strata and the history of their interpreraon. lt is no accident that the Anna/cs, which emerged from an analogous re.scarch interese, established in
1930 the mbrk "Things and Words." For Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch,
linguistic analysis was an integral part of social-historical re~earch. In Germany, Gunther Ipsen did pathbreaking work in modern history by com
plementing his social-historical, specifically demographic invesrigations
with linguistic research. All rhese ideas were taken up by Werner Come
when he founded rhe Workshop for Modern Social History in 1956-57.
Thanks to Conze's initiative, conjoining social-histoncal and conceptuJ.!hiswrical questions became one of its enduring challenges, as did rhe differemial dcterminarion between rhem, which will be rhe wpic of rhe following pages.

The lmpossibility of an UHisroire Totale"

There is no hiscory wirhom societal formarions and rhe concepts by
which they define and ~eek w me-et their challcnges, whcther rellexively or

23

sdf-reflexi~ely; without th~m, it is impossible l:O eltpe~i~nc~ and to interput

history, ro represent orto recoum ir. ln rhis scnsc, sociery and language belong to the metahstorical premisc:~ without wh\ch CTt!st.hichte and Historie
are unthiqkable. Social-historical and conceprua.l-hisrorical theories, questions, and methods thus refer to all pos.sible ateas wirhin rhe discipline of
hisrory. Thus, too, the wish to conceive a "toral hismr( occasionally sneaks
in. Though for pragmatic reasons rhe emprica.! investigatiom of social or
conceptual historians concern limited tapies, this self-limitation doe~ not
lesscn rhe,claim to gencrality; ir follows from a lheory of possible history,
which must presupposc society and language.
SociU-historical and conceptual-historical approaches necessarily proceed in J.rj interdiscplinary fashion, because they work within speci~liz~
ons that are merhodologically mandated. lt does not follow from this.
however, that chcr thcoretical claim ro generaliry could be posited as absolure or rotal. Iris truc rhat they operare under rhe constraint ofhaving ro
presuppose rhe roraliry of socieral relations, as well as their linguistic aniculadons and sysrems of imerpretations. But rhe formal! y irrefutable premisc that all history has todo with society and language does not allow the
farther-reaching condusion that it would be possible, so far as content is
concerned, ro write a "rotal history" or even ro concrive it.
As numerous and plausible~ the empirical objections against a total
history ar~, an objection againsr irs possibility follow~ from che very attempt ro make t conceivable. The tufflm of a social hisrory and the tofflm
of a linguisric hisrory can never be completely projccted onto one another.
Even if w~ make che empirically unrealizable assumpcion rhar both areas
could be rhematized as a 6nitely delimited totaliry, dtcrc would remain an
unbridgeable difference between any social hisrory and !he hiscory of comprehendi~ ir.
Lin~uistic comprehension does nm carch up with what rakcs place or
what actual! y was the case, nor does anything occur without aiready being
changed by its linguisric assirnibtion. Social hisrory (Sozilllgcschichtc orkr
Gescllschaftsgrschichu) and conceptual history stand in a reciprocal, historically necersitated tension rhar can never be canceled out. What you do will
only be rqld ro you by rh~ following day; and whar you say becomes an
event by duding you. WhH occurs interpersonally or socially and whar is
said during that event or about it gives rise ro a consrantly changing difference tnat rende(s any hroire totale impossible. History rakes place in

_,

Chapter 2
thc: ancicipation of incompleteness; any intc:rprc:tation thar is adequare ro
ir therefore must dispense with rotaliry.
Characteristically, historical time again and again reproduces rhe ten.sion berween society and its transformation, on the one hand, and its !in*
gui.stic processing and assimilation, on rhe other. Any history lives by this
tension. Social relations, conflicts, their solutions, and their changing presuppositions are m:ver congruent with rhe linguistic articulario os by which
societies act, comprehend, imerpret, change, and refOrm themselves. This
thesis can be tesred on two counts: history occurring in actu, and history
thar has happened and is pasr.

History, Speech, and Wriring As They Occur

When social history and conceptual history are referrOO. to each other,
the d.ifferential determination between them relativizes the claim of each co
generality. History neither becomes resolved in the mode of comprehending it, nor is ir conceivable without such comprehension.
The connection between everyday events is pregiven in an undifferentiated way, for humans, being endowed wirh language, are co-orginary
wirh rheir societal existence. How can this rdation be determined? As. they
occur, individual events depend on linguistic facilitation; rhis is comparatively clear. No social activicy, no political deal, and no economic rrade is
possible without accounting, wirhout planning discussions, withour puble debates or secret talks, without commands-and obedience-without
rhe consensus of those involved and the articula red dissem of conflicting
parties. Any everyday history in its daily course is dependent on language
in action, on ralking and speaki.ng, jusr as no !ove story is oonceivable without ar least three words-you, 1, we. Any .socieral event in irs manifold
connections is based on advance communicacive work and on rhe work of
linguistic mediation. lnscirutions and organizations, from rhe smallest as.sociuion to the Unired Nations, muse depend on rhem, whether in oral or
in written form.
As self-evident as this observation may be, iris equally sdf-evidenr
rhat ir must be qualified. What actually takes place is, obviously, more than
the linguistic aniculation that has led to the event or that imerprers it. The
command, rhe oooperative resolurion, or rhe elemental cry to kili is not
idemical with the act of killing irself. Lovers' figures of speech are not re-

Social History and Conceptual History

solved in tP~t !ove that rwo people experience. The written rules of organization or rpeir spoken modes of performance are not identical with an organizarion's acts.
.
There is always a d.ifference berween a history as it takes place and lt.s
linguistic f:aciliration. No speech act is irself rhe accion that ir hdps prepare,
rrigger, a~ enact. Admittedly, a word often triggets irrevocable consequences; fhink of the Fhrer's command to invade Poland, to memion a
striking e;:.~ample. Bur precisely in chis case the relation becomes clear. A
history does nor happen withour speaki.ng, bur ir is never idemical with [,
it cannot ~e reduced to ir.
For that reason, there must be further advance work and performarive models beyond spoken language in arder for events to be possible.
There is an area of semiotics that uanscends language. Think of bodily gestures in wlch language communicates only in an encoded form; of magcal riruals, including rhe rheology of sacrifice, which has irs hisrorical place
not in the word but on rhe cross; of modes of group behavior habituated
by symbols or by modern traffic signs. AH are maners of a sign language
that is oomprehensible without words. Al! of the signals mencioned can be
verbali2.ed. They can be reduced to language, but it is panicular to them
that one has todo wirhout spoken language in arder ro trigger or control
appropriare acrions, attitudes, or modes ofbehavior through them. Let me
cal! to mind further extralinguiscic preconditions: spacial nearness or dlsrance; distances that either harbor or dday conflict; temporal differences
berween age groups within a generation or due to the bipolarity of the
sexe.s. Al! these differences contain in themselves events, confl.icrs, and reconciliations that are made possible prdinguiscically, even if they can, but
do not have ro, take place by virtue of linguiscic articulation.
Thete are thu.s exrralinguistic, prdinguistic, and posrlingui.stic elements in ln actions that lead to a history. They are closdy ati:ached to the
elememary gc:ographical, biological, and :z.oological conditions that, va che
human consdtution, all have an effect on societal events. Birth, love, and
death; eatlng, hunger, misery, and diseases; perhaps happiness, bur in any
evem robbery, victory, killing, and defeat-all are al.so elements and per~
forma ti ve! modes of human history, reaching ~rom th~ ev~ry~ay to. the
idemification of political power structures. Thea exualmgusuc pregven
data are dficult to deny.
Certainly, rhe analyric distinctions made here can hardly be compre-

Chapter

hended in the concrete contcxt of the actions that constitute events. All
prdinguistic pregiven data are linguistically recovered by human beings and
are mediated in concrete conversation through their doings and sufferings.
The spoken language or the writing that is readtthe panicular conversacion
that is effcctive~or ovcrheard-interrwinc in the topical performance of
what happens to form an event that is always composed of extralinguistic
and linguistic elements of action. Even if conversation ceases, linguistic preknowledge remains present-ir is inherent in human beings and enables
rhem_ to communicate with those confronting them, be rhey human beings
or thmgs, producrs, plants, or animals.
The more highly aggregated the human units of acrion-for insrance,
in modern processes of labor and rheir economic interconnections, or in the
increasingly complex political spaces of action-the more imponant conditions of linguistic communication beco me for maimaining rhe ability to
act. Linguistic mediation extends from tbe audible range of a voice through
communication dcvices-writing, the printing press, rhe tdephone, and
broadcasting w the screen of a television set ora data processor-including
the i~rimcions of tbeir modes of transmission, &om the postman and print
med1a to the news satellite, including rhe consequences thar intervene in
any linguistic codification. People have always rried either ro fix rhe range of
spoken languagc permanemly or to expand and accelerate ir so as to anticipare, trigger, or control evenrs. This comment may suffice ro demonstrate
the intenwining of any social history and any cDnceprual hisrory in their respective enactment of speaking and acting.
Spoken words, wriring thar is read, or cvents that take place cannot be
separated in actu but can only be divided analyrically. Someone who is overwhelmed by a speech will experience this not only linguistically but all over
his body. and someone who is being silenced through an action will experience his dependence on language all the more, so as ro be able w move
again. This personal interrelarion of speech and accion can he transferred ro
alllevels o.f the soci_al units of acrion, which are becoming increasingly complex. ~e.~terreJ~[]OQ Oetween uspeech aets~ and "aetual" happenings tanges
&om I~dJVIdual mstances of speaking and acting ro the mulriple social interrelauons through which evenrs, in all their inrerconnecrions, occur. De~
~pire. all historical variacion, this finding constitutes any hisrory rhat occurs,
a~d n has considerable effecrs on the representation of pase histories, espeCJally on the difference between social hisrory and concepmal history.

---------

Social History and Conaptual History

Represented History and lts Linguisric Sources

The empirical connection be{Ween action and speech, acting and
speaking, lS demonstrated so far, breaks up as soon as we shift our vicw
back from che history occurring in romtu to past hisrory, with which thc
professonal historian deals ex eventu. The analytc separacion between an
extralinguisric anda linguistic leve! of action gains the status of an amhropological pregiven darum, without which no historical experience can be
transferred nro everyday or academic statemeots at aH. What has happened,
and has h;ppened beyond my own experience, is something that I can experience merely by way of speech or wriring. Even f language may-in
part-hav!= been only a secondary factor in che enactment of doings and
sufferings, as soon asan everit ha.s become past, language becomes the primary factor without which n recollection and no scientific transposition of
this recollt;ction is possible. The amhropological primacy of language for
the representation of past history thus gains an epistemological status, for it
must be decided in language what in past h.istory was necessitated by language and whar was not.
In anchropological terms, any "history" constitutes itself rhrough oral
and written communication between generations that Ji ve rogether and convey their own respective experiences to one another. Only when, with the
passing of older generadons, the orally conveyed space of recollection mdts
away, does,writing become the primary carrier ofhistorical impaning. Iris
true rhat numerous extralinguisric remainders indicare past events and conditions: ruins left over from catasrrophes; coins that are evidence of economic organiz.ation; buildings that bespeak communities, poli rica! rule, and
services; streets that bespeak trade or war; agrirulrurallandscapes that testifY
w age-Long labor; monumenrs rhat tescify to victory or d.eath; weapons that
indicare struggle; wols that indicate invention and use. Thcse are all ~relics~
or "fi.ndings"-or images-rhat can testify to c:verything at rhc same time.
Everything is processed by special historical disciplines. Certainly, what "actually" may have taken place can, beyond all hypotheses, only be guaranreed
by oral and written records, that is, by linguisric evidence. Only at rhe linguistic sources does the path divide between whar is to count as "linguistic"
and what i$ to count as "actual" in rhe events of the pasr. Under this aspecr,
genres and their differentiations can be related anew to one another.
'What belonged together, and how ir did so, in eventu can only be de-

Chapter 2

terrnined by linguistic evidence post romtum; depending on how these linguistic records, this oral or writcen tradirion, are handled, che most different genres move more dosel y together and others move apan.
Myths, falry tales, dramas, epics, and novels all presuppose and thematize the original connection between speech and accion, between suffering, speaking, and being silem. Only chis mak.ing present ofhistory as it occurs establishes a meaning that remains wonhy of memory. All histories do
just chis, using true and fictitious utterances w do justice to events wonh remembering or retrieving words congealed into writing that restif)r to the
cornbinarion of speaking and acting.
Unmistakable situations bring about their own changes; behind th.em,
something like "destiny" can appear. It remans a challenge for any selfinrerpretation and interpretation of che world to find them out and hand
them clown. In a more or less accompli.shed fashion, al! memoirs and biographies belong to this gente; in me English language, chey emphasize the
interrelation between language and life-ULife and Leners. '' In addition, all
histories that follow events in their immanem dynamics belong here. "He
said this and did that; she said thac and did sornething else; something surprising, something new followed frorn it that changed everyching"-many
works are strucmred according to chis formalized schema, especially rhose,
like histories of political events or of diplomacy, that rnake ir possible to
consrruct in actu the course of events by virtue of che state of che sources.
Viewed as linguisric achievements, these histories emer inca a series that
ranges from myths to novel.s. 5 Only when they daim academic status do
they depend on the authenticity-which needs ro be checked-of the linguistic sources; these sources need to vouch. for the interrelarion of speech
acts and actions, an incerreladon that previously had to be presupposed.
What can be distinguished analyrically, rhe prelinguistic from the linguistic, is brought together again "in analogy to experience~ thanks to the
work of language: ir is the ficrion of che ([)actual. Viewed in retrospect,
what has actuaHy raken place is only real in che medium of linguistic fiction. In contraSt ro the speech that acrs in history as it takes place, language
rhus gains an episremological prirnacy that urges it continuously to make
decisions about the relationship between language and action.
When submitted to this alternative, sorne genres articula te rhemselves
in a very one-sided way. There are annals, which only regiscer resulrsnamely, what happened., but not how ir carne to happen. There are hand-

Social Htory and Conceptual Htory

29

hooks aml "narrativ~~ wor!G of history, which concern actions, successes,

and failures, but not che words or utterances that led to them, only that
great men act, or rh.ar highly stylized subjecrs of action become active in a
speechless fashion, as it were: states or dynasties, churches or sects, classes or
parties, or, whatever else is hypostasized as a unir of action. Rately, however,
are linguistic patterns of identification investigated; without them, such
units of aation would not be able to act ae a!l. Even where spoken speech or
its wricten equvalents are induded in the representacion, linguiscic evidence
comes under ideological suspicion or is read only instrumentally with pregiven imerests and evil imemions in nnd.
Even invescigations made frorn che perspective of the history of bnguage, wh,ich primarily chematize che linguistic evidence itself. cend to refer
it ro a "real" history that must first itself be linguistically constituted. But
the methodological difficulties of teferring speaking and language to social
conditions and changes, to which sociolinguistics in particular is exposed,
ding to the aporia of having to conslitute nguistically the fidd of objects
of which rhey are abour to speak, an apora rhat is shared by al! h.istorians.
For that reason, rhe other extreme will also be found in the future:
editing the linguistic sources as such, the written remains of formerly spoken or written utterances. The accident of tradition will then h.ave thematized che dilference berween excralinguisric and linguistic action. And everywhere, it is rhe task of the good commentator to track clown the sense of the
document that could noc be found at al! wirhout che differemial determination of speech and facts.
Thus we have esrablished three gentes, which, given the alternative
of speech ~ct and actual act (T,handlung) either refer to each other or, in
the extreme case, are thematized separately. Epistemologically, a double
task always falls upon languagc: it refers to the extralinguistic connections
of events s well as-by doing so-to itself Conceived historically, it is always self-reflexive.

Event and Structure-Speaking and Language

Alt~ugh

we have so far spoken only about history as ir occurs and

history as it has occurred, asking how speech and action relate to each oth.er
in actu, in a synchronic section, as it were, the question expands as soon as
diachrony is thematized as wel!. Hcre, as in the relation of speaking and

30

Chamr 2

acting in the enactmem of events, synchrony and diachrony cannot be separa red emplrKal.ly. The conditions and dererminants rhat, in a temporal
gradar1on of vanous depths, reach from rhe "past" into the presem in 1er
vene in particular evenrs justas agents simultaneously" act on tht basis of
rheir respective out!ines of rhe future. Any synchrony is eo ipso ar the same
time diachronic. In actu, al! temporal dimensions are always intcrn~:ined,
and it wouJd comradkt experience to define rhe ~presem" as, for inscancc,
one of those momems thar accumulate from rhe past in m the fllture-or,
conversely, that slip as intangible poim~ of transirion from rhe future into
rhe past. In a purely rhetorical manner, all history could be delined as a permanent present in which past and future are conramed-or as rhe continuous intertwining of past and fU!ure rhar rnakts any present constantly dis
appear. If we focus on synchrony, hisroy deteriorares imo a pure space
of consciousness in which a/J temporal dimcnsions are conrained at once,
wher~as if w~ focus on .diachrony, che active prcsence of human beings
would, lmtonCllly ~peaking, have no space ofacrion. This thought experimem is designed only ro refer to the fact that the differenrial determination
berween synchrony and diachrony, introduced by Saussure. can cverywhere
be .analytica.l !y of help wirhout being able to do jusrice ro the wm plei ry of
ch.:: rcrnporal intertwinings in the hisrory rhat is caking place.
Wirh rhesc reservarions, we shall use the anal)'lic Gltcgories of synchr~ny, _which aims at the topical presentness of evencs, and dachrony,
wh1ch alms at the temporal dimension of depth rhar is also cont<lined in
any topical event. Many presuppositions have a long-term ora mcdiumrange effect-as well as a shorr-term one-on a history rhar is raking place.
They delimit rhe alrematives of action by making possible or setring free
only ccrrain alternarives.

Soai History and Conceptual History

[
'

Cha.racteristically, social hswry and conceptual history both, in ways

however different, theoretically presuppose rhis connecrion. It is the link
berwecn synchronic events and diachronic structures that can be investigated his:orically. An analogons connection exim berween spoken speech,
synch~omcally, and rhe diachronically pregiven language rhat always takes
effect m a conceprual.hismrica[ way. What happens is always unique and
new, but never w new rhar social conditions, which :Jie pregiven over the
long term,_ will not h~ve made po~sible each unique event. A new concept
may be comed to artJculate expenences or expecrations rhat never exsted
beforc. But ir can never be too new not ro have exisred virrually as a seed

'

'

31

in the pregiven language and not to have received meaning from its inherired linguistic context. The two lines of research chus broaden the indispensable diachronic dmensions, variously defined, of imerplay ber:ween
~peaking 11-nd acting within which evenu occur, and without which history
is neirher:possible nor conceivable.
A series of examples can elucidare rhis. Marriage i~ an institution
that, regardless of its prelinguistic biological implicatons, is a cultural phenomenon with nuroerous variants across rhe hisrory of humanity. Snce it
is a form pf sociality between two or more human beings of different genders. marriage belongs among genuindy social-hiswrical research topics.
At the same time, obviously one can ralk Abour ir in a social-historical manner only ,;...hom written sources inform us about varous k.inds of marriages
and rh~ ~ays in which they have been conceptualzed.
Two merhodological approaches can be consuucred, in the simplified
form of a rnodel. One is primarily direcred at events, at acrs of speech,
wriring. :ind action; rhe orher is priroa.rily directed at diachronic presuppo
sirions and rheir long-term changes. The latter approach seeks to find social srrucrures and rheir linguistic equivalenrs.
1. This way, an individual event can be rhematized: for insrance, rhe
marriage ceremony af a ruler, about which dynastic sources offer us. ample
information. induding rhe political motives that were in play, the narure of
the contractual conditions, the kind of dowry that was negoriated., the way
in which 'the ceremonies were organized, and suchlike. The course of rhis
marriage'can also be reconsuucted and narrated anew, inclurung tho: scquence of events, up to such u:rrible consequen<;;es as when, for insrance,
following rhe death of a spomc, the contractually determined inheritance
led ro a war of succession. Today an analogous, concrete history of a mar
riage can also be reconuructed from che cirde of people making up its subhistories-an exciting topic in rhe hiscory of the eveyday, which uses numerous sources that ha ve nm be en deployed befo re. Borh concern u ni que,
individual histories, which may contJ.n sorne unparalleled suspense berween h~ppiness and misery, and which borh remain embedded in rheir re
ligious, soal, and political contexrs.
1.. ~cial history and conceptual history cannot manage without such
individual cases, but it is not their prima.ry mereu ro investigare them. To
characteriz.e rhe second merhodological approach-again, in a model-like
simplific~tion-both focus on che long-term condirions that are effecrive

p.

Chapter 2

diachronically and that make possiblc: each individual case. Both inquirc:
into the long-term occurrences that can be derived from rhe sum of individual cases. Put differently; they inq uire into the pregiven linguistic conditions under which such sttuctures have entered imo social consciousness
and under which they have been comprehended and also changed.
Let us first fo!low specifically social-hisrorical and then specifically
conceptual-historical modes of procedure.
The synchrony of individual marriage ceremonies and of the speeches
and leners exchanged in connection with them is not omitted by social hisrory. Rather, it is embraced diachronically. Thus. for example, numbers of
weddings can be statistically ascertained from the perspective of socialhistorical quesrions so as to prove population increases for each social srrarum. Questions to be asked include: When did the number ofweddings expand beyond the number of the houses and farms pregiven by esta tes rhat
hada speci6ed amount of food? How can the number of weddings be related to wage and price graphs, to good and bad harvests, so as to make ir
possible w weigh the economic and natural factors relating ro che reproduction of the population? How can numbers of marital and extramarital
binhs be related to each other so asto measure social situations of conflict?
How do numbers of births and deaths of children, mothers, and fathers relate ro each other, so as ro explain long-term changes in "typical~ married
life? How does the graph of divorces run, allowing us ro draw condusions
about the typical rnarriage? All these quesrions, which have been singled out
almosr at random, have in common that they help construct "actual" longterm occurrences rhat are not directly contained as such in rhe sources.
Laborious prepararory work must be done ro render source statements comparable in order to aggregare series of numbers fmm them, and
systematic reflection is needed, both bcforehand and afterwards, ro interpret the aggregated series of data. Longer-term strucrural starements cannot be derived direcdy from the linguisdc sources. The sum of rhe concrete
individual cases that occur synchronically and rhat are verified is itself mure
and unable to "verify~ long-tenn, medium-range, or in any way diachronic
strucrures. In order to derive permanent statements from pasr history, preparatory theoretical work and the employmenr of a subject-specific disc:iplinary terminology are necessary. These alone enable one to crack connections and interrelations that could not yet have been perceptible ro che
people affected by them.

Socal History and Crmceptual History

33

Wh~t has "actually"-and not linguistically-occurred in hisrory in

rhe long term remains an academic construction, viewed in social-hstorical
rerms; evi;lence for it depends on the plausbiliry of the underlying theory.

Any rheo.rrcally based starement must submit w m~odological control

by the sources in order to claim past actuality, but the reality of long-term
factors cannot be sufficiently ustified on the basis of individual sources. For
that re aso~, ideal types can be formed, following Max Weber, for instan ce;
they comiJine various criteria of describing realiry in such a way that the
connectio~ rhar are to be presupposed can be interpreted with conssrency.
To take a case from our series of examples, it is possible to devdop typical
marriage apd family trajecrories for peasants and those below them, together
with the average number ofbirth.s and deaths, in correlation with wage and
price serie~ or with the sequence of crop failures, working hours, and the tax
burden, to determine how marriage and family trajectories at the peasant
level can distinguished from those at lower levels, and how both changed
in the transition fi-om rhe preindustrial age ro the industrial age.
The facwrs in individual cases, not me cases rhemselves, can men be
structured in such a way that the economic, polirical, and natural presuppositions-depending on rhe importance of the wage and price structure, the
rax burden, or harvest results-become understandahle for a marriage rypi~
cal of a certain social stratum. Questions to be asked are: Whicb factors are
homogen~ous and for what period of time? When are they dominant and
when rece~ive? The answers make it possible to determine time limits, periods, or thresholds of epochs, according to which the history of peasant marrages and;of rhose below the peasant levd can be organized cliachronically.
So far our series of examples has been consciously selected for clus~
ters of faqcors that allow primarily extralinguistic series of evems to be
struaured diachronically and to be related co each other. Establishing them
presuppos~s a social-historical theory. Aided by a subject-specific terminology (here that of demography, eoonomics, and finance), ir permits a determinarion of permanence and change that cannot be found in the sources
as such. The theoretical daim thus grows in proportion with the distance
it musr ketp fi-om any "self-prodamation" of the sources so as to consuucr
long-duration !imirs or rypical societal forms.
- Certainly, quite d.ifferem dusters of factors than those mentioned so
far also enter inm rhe history of marriages posired as "typical." Such facrors
cannot be invesrigated without an interpretation of rheir linguistic self-

be

34

Chapter 2

articulation. Wc thw arri'Vl: at thc conceptua!-historical proccdures rc:quim:l.

to distinguish bmveen topical speech and its linguistic pregiven data, a distinction analogous to that between event and structure.
Theology and n:ligion, law, cuswm, and rradition each posit thc
&amework conditions for any concrete rnarriage rhat amedate rhe individual case diachroncally and that generally ourlast ir. Altogether, institutionalized rules and parrerns of interprc:tation establish and delmir the lebensraum of a marriage. In this way, "exrra[inguisticn patrerns of behavior are
also deterrnined, but language remains rhe primary instan ce of mediaran.
A marriage can neither be enrered into nor conducted withour cenain
linguistically arriculared pregiven conditions (although their number and
stringency are decreasing). These range from tradirions ro legal acrs to sermons, from magic to the sacrarnents to metaphysics. "Whar therefore needs
to be investiga red are the kinds of rexts, of various social dassifications, in
which panicular marriages have been conceptualized. These texts may have
come into existence spontaneously, like diaries, letters, or newspaper reports, or, at the other extreme, they may have been formulated with a normative intent, as were theological treatises or juridical codifications and
their interpretations. In all cases, language-bound traditions diachronically
establish the life sphere of a possible marriage. And when changes beco me
apparem, they do so only when the norion of marriage has been conceptualized anew.
The theologica! interpretation of marriage asan indissoluble instimtion ordained by God is dominam right into the eighteenrh cenrury; its
rnain purpose is to preserve and propagare the human race. Depending on
rhe rules that determined the prerogatives of particular social groups, a
marriage was authorized only when rhe economic basis of the home was
sufficient to feed and bring up children and ro guaranree mutual spous:J
suppon. Thus numerous people were legal!y excluded from the prospect of
marrying. As the nucleus of the home, marriage remained embedded
within esta te prerogarives. This changed in rhe wake of the Enlightenment, which in a new departure, dealt with marriage in rhe AUgemeines
Landrecht in terms of con tracruallaw. The economic ti e was loosened, and
the freedom of the spouses as individuals was so much expanded rhat divorce-which had been theologically prohibited-became permissible. The
common law did not give up the theological determinations and those perraining to estate prerogatives, bur rhe concepr of marriage-and this can

Social History and ConceptUd.! History

35

only be re$istered by way of a conceprual history-shifted decis.ively in favor of greater freedom and self-determination for both spowes.
Ar rhe beginning of the nineteenth century. we finally find an entirely new: concept of marriage. Theological justificaon is replaced by an
anthropological self-justification; the inscitution of marriage is divested of
its legal framework so as to give space to the moral self-realization of two
lovng pe9ple. The Brockhaus of 1820 emphatically celebrares chis postulated autanorny and innovatively conceptualizes it as a marriage of !ove.
With this, marriage loses its previous primary purpose of begerting children; rhe economic rie is cut; and Bluntschli later goes so far as to declare
a marriag;:; without !ove to be immoral. As such, it comes under the obligation ofbeing dissolved. 6
We have thus sketched out three conceptual-historica! srages; each has
strucru~ the inherited normative economy of argumenration in differenr
ways and jnnovarively altered its decisive points. Scen in terms oflinguiscic
history, common law and romantic-liberal conceptual formations both had
rhe character of an c:vent. They affected the enrire linguisric structure on
whose basis marriages could be conceived. It was not that diachronically
pregiven language as a whole had changed, but its semamics anda new linguistic pragmatics had been ser free.
One cannot derive from the conceptual-hisrorical procedure any history of the actual wedding ceremonies and marriages that may have occurred alopgside this linguistic self-imerpretation. The economic conmaints
stressed by the social-historical viewpoint continue to remain in force to restrict cert~n marriages, to m.ake them more difficult, and to weigh. them
clown. Even if the legal barriers were lowered, social pressures continued to
rern.a.in in ~ffect so as not to turn marriage for !ove into empirically the only,
normal e~. Certainly, much could be said in favor of the hypothesis that,
in a case f temporal anricipation, as it were, the concept of the !ove marriage, once it was devdoped, found prospects for its re-Jlization that improved in ~he long ter m. Conversely, it cannot be denied that aiready before
the romantic conceptual formation of the lave matriage, !ove asan ant:hropologically pregiven datum had enrered even imo marriages that, being defined by eftate prerogatives, do not memion it.
Wht follows, for derermining rhe rehtionship berween social history
and concepmal hisrory, is that they need each other and relate to each other,
yet cannot ever be made to coincide. What, in the long term, was "acm-

Chapur2

Social History and Cartrtpruai History

aJiy" effertive and did change cannor be complcrely derived from soum::s
handed down in wriuen form. Thar rrquires preparacory rheoretical and
termnological work. Yer whar can be demonsuared, from rhe written records, as conceptual hisrory involves the linguistically delimite<!. spa.ce of experience and restifies ro innovative ventures thar mighr have registered or
initiated new experiences. This, however, does not permit conclusions about
an actual hisrory. The difference between ac:ting and speaking, which we
have documenred wirh reference ro hisrory as ir rakes place, also in retro5pect prevems social "reality" from ever converging with history in irs linguistic articularion. Even if speech acts and anual acts (Tathandlungrn) n:main inrertwned in a synchronic secrion (which is irself an ab~tracrion).
diachronic change, which remains a theoretical construct, does nor rake
place in the same temporal rhythms or temporal series with regard 10 "real
history" and conceptual hisrory. Reality mighr have changed long br:fore
the change was conceptualized, and concepts might likewhe have been
formed t0 ser free new realities.
Yet there is an analogy between social history and conceptual hismry,
to which 1 will refer in closing. What, in each case, rakes place as unique in
history as it occurs is possible only because presupposed condirions repe:.~.r
rhemsd\'es wirh a longer-rerm reguJarity. A wedding ceremony may be subjecrivdy unique, bur n.-pe-.uable structures express themselv~s in ir. The economic conditions of a wedding ceremony depend on harvesr resulrs, which
vary every yrar, or on longer-term ewnomic changes, or on rhe tax. burden
rhar disrupts planned budge1~ every monrh or every year (apan from rhe
regular services required of thc peasant popularion). All these presupposiTiom are effective only by vinue of regular, more or less sready reperition.
The 1ame is uue for me social implications of a marriage ceremony, which
can only be grasped in a spcx:ifical!y linguistic way. The pregiven data of tradrions, of rhe leg...l ~etting :md perhaps of rheological inrerpretarion-all
rhese insrirurional bonds are only effeccive in actu by repearing rhemselves
periodiG.IIy. Thcy changc only slowly, but their strucrures of repetition do
nor break as a re.sulr. What is called "long duration'' is only hisrorically effeccive if che time of the evenrs, unique in each case, contains repearable
strucrures whose speeds of cransformation are different from rhose of the
events themselves. The copie of al! social history is conrained in this imerrelalion, which is only insufficicntly ddined by "synchrony" and "diachrony."
The inrerrelation berween topical speech and pregiven language is m

37

be detem\ined in an analogous, but not homogeneous fashion. When a

concep1, for instance that of "marriage,~ is used, experiences of marriage,
which have a long-term effect and which have entered into the connpt al
andas its foundation, are linguistically srored in it. And the linguistic context, which is also pregiven, regulares the range of its semantic content.
With any topical use of the word marriagr, the linguisrically determincd
pregiven data that structure its sense and it.s un.derstanding repeat them~
selves. He re, too, linguistic structures of reperion are set free, yer abo de~
limit rhe scope of speech. And any conceptual chnge chat bccomes a linc
guistic event occurs in the act of semanrk and pr:1grnaric innovation, which
makes ir possible to comprehend what is old in a different war and to undersrand i)l any way what is new.
Social history and conceptual hisrory have differenr speeds of transformation and are based in distinguishable srructures of reperition. Therefore, rhe acadcmic terminology of social history remains dependenr on the
history of concepts, so as ro access linguistically stored experience. And
c<ually, conceptual history remains dependent on the -results of social history, so as to keep in view the difference between vanished reahry and its
lingui.stic evidence, which can never be bridged.
Translated by Kerstin Behnke

.
t

Timt and History

Time and History

' ' ~-

::
y~r:~ ~

lE'-

Today is January 24. For us, it would be an arbitrary date if ir were

not a Wednesday, on which this series of lectures by differenr speakers is
regulady taking place. This date is only accidenrally connecred ro hisrory,
because it is today and not on another- Wednesday that l am supposed 10
speak about the topic "Time and Hiscory." In my yourh, things were different. Back then, knowing thar the binhday of Frederick the Grear was on
January 24 was an escablished pan of the general education of a Prwsian
bourgeois family, and among the nobility ir would have been the same.
One was able to remember this date-January 24, qr2-rhanks ro a foppish school educacion, even if the date was not cdebrared any longer. At
the most, che day was publicly commemor-accd every fifty or hundred years.
Today, huge exhibitions are organ ized for rhese occasions, as is well known.
But cwo hundred. years ag<~. when "der Alte Fritz" [Frederick the Great)
was still alive, rhe da y was actually celebr.~.red. At least he was rememhered
in rh;;mkligiving 'and rogation ~ervices in all Prussian churches. The Ji fe of
the king and supreme sovereign not only had a symbolic or historical meaning in che <:vnyda.y li ves of h is subjeas, ir was parr of the wodd of political
e:xperience, of che school, the rax burden, mi!irary service, the couns, all of
whicn were derived from and legalized by the monarch. For this reason, the
date had a political-rirual and culric 1neaning that became lost with the
dt>ath of rh_- king. Since rhen ir has been a hiswrical date, long forgotten
toda y.

101

That is nor surprising. So many things have happened during the rwo
hundred years rhat separare us from the death of"der Alte Fritz": the French
Revolutiop, the d.issolution of the old Reich, the founding of a German
Confederation, of a new, so-called Second Reich, followed by the Republic,
che so-ca.lfed Third Reich, the division of Germany-we must remember
chat the Federal Republic existed for longer than the eventful years of Weirnar and Hitler's Germany taken together. If one considers the economic and
social changes conditioned by the technical-industrial devdopment that
have reshaped our life-world, rhen the world of rwo hundred years a.go appcars to tje .a different world, to which we are not connected by any recollecrion but only by the hisrorical research that tells of it.
Our reflections on roday's date and today's occasion have already
deeply en~ged us in rhe question of time and hisrory. We have spoken of
rwo da res in our Christian chronology, two dates that, depending on how
wc ask a question, mea!J something completely differem; and we have
sketched out rwo cenruries during which there were ar least six diffeent
consrituriom-if we add in the Confederarion of the Rhine, the constitution of rhe 1848 Revolution, and the consrirution of che GDR, then there
were nine. We were rhus speaking of rdatively long-lasting, more or lcss
sta.ble constirutional modes, which pr<Jvided the political org<~nzation of
what can roughly be called "Germany." The beginning and rhe ending
dates of tliese consti tutions ran also be named, but what lie5 becween these
dates can obviously not be conceived as the ~uro of cettain sdective dates
that can be strung together. One general! y speaks of a c<lnsrirution as e.xisting within a certain time period, for instance, from 187r w 19!8. I am
thus indicating milesrone dates, which are supplied by h.istorical chronology. Wheh faced with che question of rhe n:latlonship becwttn time and
history, hwever, one thinks spontaneously of more rhan a rne:rc series of
dates, about which Plotz, for instance, amply instrucu us. ls there any:hing
like a specifically hisrorical time rhat differs from natural rime, on which
chronol~y is based? Orare there severaJ historical times, just as there are
numero distinguishable units of action in hi!>tory? Do thcs~ un~rs o~ action have heir own temporal courses and rhyrhms? Or does htstoncal ume:
in rhe singular and in the plural consrirure itself only rhrough the mutual
nteraction af such unirs of action? Aoisuming that there are such genuinely
hisrorical cime:s, how do rhey rrla te to chronology? These issues raise questions that will occupy us in wh'" follows.
1

102

Chapter 6

Time u.nd History

103

1(> talk about hisrory and time is difficult fur a n:ason rhat Itas ro do
"':ith more ~han "hisrory. ~Time cannot be intuired (ist arw:hauungslo;). [fa
h1stonan brmgs pa.sr evcms back to mind through his language, then che lisrener or reader will pcrhaps associate an intu[on with them as well. But
does he thereby have an intuirion of past tim~? Hardly so. or only in a metaphor.ical use oflanguagc, for instance. in rhe sensc in whch one ~peab of
rhe time of the French Revolution withom thereby making visible ar1ything
specifically remporal.

When une seeks t0 forman imuirion ot' rime as :uch, one s referred
to spatial indicadoos. to rhe hand of thc dock ur rhe lea ve,; of a caletldar
that one pul!s off every day. And when one tries ro guide one$ nrurion 111
a historcal.:lirecrion, one perhaps pays attention ro rhe wrinkles of an
huma11 being or the scars n which a life's pasr fate is present. Or one c.alls
to mind the juxraposition of ruins and new buldings or, today, looks at obvous changes in style that lend temporal depth ro a spatial row of houses.
Or one looks ar the various levds-side by side, below, and above one anorher~of different!y modernized means of transportarion, ranging from
rhe sled to the supersonic aircraft. Entire ages meet within them-namely,
the fast Ice Age or, rather, the Paleolithic Age as part of it and our century.
Fnally, above al! one rhinks of the succession of generations within one's
own family or professonal world; withn them, differenr space5 of experience overlap and diffe~:ent perspectives on the furure intersect, nduding all
the conRicts that they contain as seeds. AH the examples that are intended
ro tender historical time visible to us refer us to the space in which humans
live and to the nature within which they are embedded, be ir the system of
planets by which clocks and calendars are regulated, or che succession of biological generatons as it is expres.sed in the social and political realm.
With this, 1 arrive at m y first aspect, the prerequisites of natural time
for human history and its historiography.
In order to be able to live and work, humans depend on time limits
that are pregiven by nature. They remain dependent on such limits even
when
increasingly learn to manipulate these times more and more
through rechno1ogy or medicine. Let me recall a well-known joke from the
Soviet Union-"Sleep fascer, comrade!"-ro indicare a naturallmit rhar
cannot be transcended by any planning.
Thc rmes of che day and rhe seasons were guiding forces for the 6rst
:;elf-organization of human societies. The ha bits of deer for hunring cul-

tures; loouion, climaa:, and weather conditions for farming cultures; all
this embedded within the seasons, sbaped everyday life and induced magical and religious attitudes, plus the modes ofbehavior orienred by rhem.
This is srill valid today, ithough decreasingly so, corresponding to tbe decline in the food-prod.udng se<:tor, which now amounts to fewer chan IO
percem of che employees within our society. In other words, the natural
time prerequisites of our lives can never be diminatc:d; rather, they have
their own hstory. This. ~ill be outlined brieAy following several instances
of time mc:asuremem.
Ethnologists repo~ how deeply earlier measurements of time remaned
embedded within the coptext ofhuman action. In Madagascar, for instance,
there srill exists the te
unir of "the time it rakes to cook rice" or of the
momenr that is necessa "ro roast a locust." Temporai measure and course
of acdon are still comp,ere!y convergem. Such expressions are even more
concrete rhan, for instal!ce, the "blink of an eye" (Augenbiick) in our language. which is lkewise a natural unir of time.
Even the element:~rv chronometers of advanced civilizatioru, which indicare the course of time ~a a decrease in maccer-sand or water-were stll
adapred to rbe enanmem of concrete acriom: they mea5ured the length of a
sermon or determined the houJ of mass, or, lke Cicero's water dock. of an
address to the jury in coun. Tbese elemc:ntary chn:mometers were supplememed by sundials, which, depending on the season or geographio;;al locaton, announced differem times. since th~:se: indirntiom were based in nature
itself Even mechanical ~locks were able to adjust to d5 condition. As late
as the nineteenth cenrury, the Japanese used dockli of a patticularly arcful
design: the way che hand and face inde~ted the hours was kept variable so
rh:u, depending on the season, tht- houc of the day was in rc:verse relation to
the hour of rhe night, rlU\t is, longer during d~e ~ummer and shorter during
che winteT. By way of thcse docks, rhc sea.!~mal difference b~n the hours
of thc day and those of rhe nghc encered dire<:dy into the [hyth.m of work
from which rhey receive~ thcir purpose.
Yet the incroduccion of the mechanical dock in the thirteench c:cntury
illready effecred a nl:W organtttion of the human division of time over che
long term. Following se precursors in anciquity, it led to quantifying the
day by me;J.ns of rwen -fOur equal hours. Le Golf speaks of commerdal
time, rhe cime ofbusne speop!e. which encered into competition with the
lJturgical cime of the church and pushed it more and more into the back-

104

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Chapter 6

ground. The mechanial dock, once it had been invenred, descended from
rne church tower to wwn and city halls, rhen moved into rhe living rooms
of the wealthy and rhe bourgeoisie, and finally found its way into warch
pockets. Since the 5ixteenth century, thi5 dock has been able to indicau:
minute5 and, since rhe sevemeenth century, seconds; ir indicated, bur also
stimu.lared, a disciplining and r;tionaliz.ing of the world ofhuman work and
irs larimde for acrion. In the first half of rhe ninereenrh cemury, numerous
industrial worken m England already carried their own warches-as srarus
symbob, but aho ~o as to check on their supervisors' watches. Wh rhe
emergence of thc railroad traffic sysrem and its srandardized schedule, standard rimes were finally introduced-in Prussia, befare the Revolurion of
1848-which complerdy differed from rhe respective local time and rhe positian of the sun. Henry Ford began his career as an indusnialist by producing clocks that were able ro indicatt" standard time and local rime simulraneously on two faces: a final indkation of the developmem of units of
time rnade necessary by technology, which b~:c~me separated from naturebound, traditional rhythms of rime. Day and nigJ,r seemed to become more
alike, justas tracks made it possible for railrnads to run at nighr. This corresponded to the introducrion of night work m the large companies of che
lasr century so as ro increase produaion.
What does this rerrospenive look ar the history nf chronometry in
everyday life m~an? w~ are dealing with a long-te.rrn ptocess ofincreasirw;
acts of absrracnon desJgned w remove humans trom what was naturally
pregiven to them. First, chronomeny was insened rlto rhe human contexr
of action. Second, the sundial made it possible ro, as ir were, objectify natural time. Third, the mechanical dock and, later, the pendulum clock initiated a reshaping of everyday life chrough quamified, vniform unirs of rime,
which penaded and causal!y affected social organization and economic production. One can also cal] rhis a denaruralization of the division of rime and
of the experience of time induded in ir. In rhe course of mechanizarion
(fl.:chnifiziuung), physical insrruments of measuremem have increa.~ingly
conttibuted ro divescing the course of everyday life of its natural preconditions, a process that has been inrerpreted as both a relief and a burden.
Our retwspective look also tdls us about orher rhings. We have traced
the h istory uf eh ronomerry in social changes in everyday life. H ere the interpretarion of a denaturalizacion takes on meaning, though wirh rhe reser
vation thar, ro rh is da y. all forms of chronometry memioned ha ve rcmained

Time and History

105

dependem ~pon our planetary system, on the ~lucion of the earth around
the sun, on 'that of the moon around che earch (though less so), and on rhe
rurning of the globe around irs axis. In other words, regardless of the soo.:ial
function of rhe respective form of chronometry, any form of chronomeay
remairn enj.bedded in scientifically verifiable and, in this seme, ohjl"ctive
data. The~e data of the solar system were already calculated with great precision by ~tronomers of advanced civilizatiorn in the second millennium
R.l:. ot by the Maya; rhcy are val id regardless of history, regardless of the historio.:al situation in which they were 6rst ascertained. Nor wirhout reason tS
chronology called an auxiliary science of hisrory. It answers questions of dating by rderring the numerous calendars and chronologies that have bee.n
used in rhe cuurse of our hisrory back to a common time of our planetary
system, which is cakulated in a physica!-astronomical manner.
Wirh rhe inception of overseas land acquisition, the number of calendars competing in Europt" around t6oo (Julian, Gregorian, Byzanrine,
and also Muslim) was increased by sever.J chronologies. Employing differenr sequences of numbers, they all referred to objecdvely equal dates of the
same natural time. Scaliger, for insrance, defined January 1, 4713 B.C., as day
"one, from which every da y and ewry year was to receive its natural identity, to which al! calendars could be referred.
This brings me ro rhe second pan of our question, the narural prerequisites of our history, nan1ely, hisroriography.
I can~ot here address rhe difficulries thar result &om the conversion of
culric caleridar dates imo a natural chronology. Lec me just cal! to mind that
rhe year ze}o is !acking; accordi.ngly, Christ was bom on December 25 of the
year one a.c. Or ler me call to mind the difficulty that our months no longer
correspond to the revolurions of the moon around the eanh, or that rhe days
compnse neicher che year nor che month without remainder~ the oonversiom
of rhe diff~rem calendars presuppose a science of their own. Or let me call
ro mind the replacemem of Julian years by Gregorian years, who!'e intrc>duction w!ts delayed over a period of centuries from counrry ro counrry in
Euro pe; ac'cording to our calendar, which was introduced in Russia in 192j,
rhe Octobfr Revolution of 1917 rook place thirteen days larer, that is, anually in NoT_ember.
By addressing al! the difficulries of chronology, J want ro emphasi2e
the follow.ing: our enrire chronomeuy, in minutes and hours, iri unirs of
years and centuries, which we create anificially, is based on the regularity
n

106

~e~
~-~~;

--~.'

.:~

~e;

-i:.-

,.-,-

Chapter ti

Time and Hisrory

107

and cyclical retum of narurally pregiven dates. For historical chronology, at

least, time is measurable only beca use of its na rural recurren ce.
To be sure, all chronologies are products of certain cultures and are,
in tbis respect, tdative. Thi5 is also true for the Christian chronology, which
has been largely universalized. Since the sixth century, it has staned counting from the birth of Chrisr. Only since the sevemeenth century has it
counred rhe years before Christ backward; ante Chrirtum natum. This becarne indispensable, first, because rhe discovered world also induded Chinese calendars extending even before the cbte of the world's creation, which
required coordination; second, hecause geology was slowly openiog up periods of time in the face of which biblical chronology dwindled. The roughly
five thousand years of biblical world rime became a phase in rhe hisrory of
our cultural deveiopmem. Finally, once the infiniry of space in rhe universe
was hypostasized, time became expandable ro infiniry, imo rhe pasr and
into the future. But apart from rhe comext of the history of this change in
scholarship during the Enlighrenment, there remains the prerequisite rhar,
for purposes of chronology, our time measuremems are ried ro the recurrence of natural time. Every historically relative chronology is based in a
time rhar is pregiven by nature.
This finding is a tacit yer fundamental prerequisite for our research.
Because history itself remains embedded in time periods rhat are pregiven
by narure, hisroriography is likewise unable ro dispense with dtem. To make
meaningful statements, we need to tie each of our relative chronologies
hack to a chronology that is as "absolute as possble and independem of
history. For prehisrory befare writi_ng or for early history, obviously paleonrologicalfindings become meaningful only when they can be geologically dassified, which today is made easier by the carbon r4 test. But exacr,
objectifiable dating is also required for rhe kind ofhistory that is based. on
written sources and human monumenrs. Only in chis way can a before and
after be ascerrained, widtout which no event can be ihought and inrerpreted.
Any succession thar provides a history with me~ing islinear, but ir can
only be da red on rhe basis of the cydical rerurn of namral time. Let me give
you an example.
Iris cerrainly of world-hisrorical importance that at the Dier of Speyer
in t529 the Protestant Esrates carne together in a protestation that gave
them rheir name and that ser the course, within imperiallaw, for modero
Protestanrism. The protesration was directed againsr a Diet proposal that
M

Charles V had issued. The emperor himself was in Madrid at the time. It
would be wrong to suppose that Charles, rhrough his proposal to post pone
che Reforma~ion until a general council, drove rhe Protestant Estates to
their protesti that is, drove them ro refer ro rhdr free moral decision. The
emperor wanted ro be accommodating, because he was still at war "With
France and wished to damp down conflicts within the empire. The Diet
proposal that, was actually presented carne from his brother Ferdinand, however, rhe emperor's viceroy in Germany. He presented the harsh regulations,
issued as imperial regularions, that evoked. the pro test. The reason for th.ese
wrongly attribured harsh proposals can now be determined in a chronologically definite form-something that was only discovered in rhe rwentieth
century. Because of the war with France, the emperor's accommodating
propositionsihad to be sent by sea, across the Mediterranean and then to
Vienna. They arrived roo late to be presented on time ro the Diet of Speyer.
Therefore Ferdinand acred on bis own authoriry, and he d.id so with consequences rhat hada world-historical elfect. He passed bis own, uncompromising proposals off as che emperor's.
Only an exact chronology of "earlier than" and "later than" informs
us-ex post facto-abour rrue occurrences and allows us ro give an interpretati:on that is adequate to real evenrs.
Admittedly, no historian will reduce his inrerpretation of Protestantism to t~e events of the Diet of Speyer in 1529, at which the Protestant
minority assembled for che first time according ro imperiallaw. But already
the questio~ of how the protest carne about in actu and concrerely, the
question ab~ut what role Charles V piayed. in it and what role his brother
Ferdinand played, can only be answered if the exact chronology, in this case
that of tbe path that che documenrs took, is reconstructed and safeguarded.
The evaluatipn of statesmen's actions depends on such procedures.
A hisrJrian will, of course, stop at such evaluations, which involve the
motives of agems and rhe ways in which these motives influenced the network of acrions, so as final! y to issue in a chain of evenrs. He will, for example, ask about the general conditions that made it possible for such actions
as rhe one at the Diet ofSpeyer to happen at all. He might surmise that general conditiofs during the time of the Reformation would have given rise to
a protest of the Protestant Estates, if not in 1519, then perhaps one or rwo
years later. The conflict that had erupted abour the church constitution of
rhe German empire had longer-term causes than those that led, in a single

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Chapter 6

act at a Diet, to the protest that made the schism ir11parable. Even an interpretation of rhe Reformation in rerms of social or religious hisrory will already give less weight to this, or perhaps not even mention ir ar all.
But our mema! operations, which are familiar ro every historian, make
clear rhe fOIIowing: rhey lead further and furrher away from the hisrory of
evems that take place along a chronological arder. This procedure is necessary, but it cannot be infinitely cominued.
Each individual event is embedded in a chronological series of dates
that s to be narurally presupposed, and irs uniqueness remains unparalleled. No matter how I research and represent the hisrory of rhe Reformaran-in economic terms, in rhose of the sociology of religion, of constitutional history, of rhe hisrory of ideas, or of politics alone-no general
sratemem can get past the fact of an unalrerable befare and after of events
that are actually past. What happened once cannot be undone, ir can only
be forgotten. Individual dates are pregiven; they have to be presupposed
and are often no longer known. In their unalterable succession, they form
a chronological grid, and any interpretaran that goes beyond this rnust be
capable ofbeing brought imo accord with it.
To stay with our example ofhow Protestantism is explained and comprehended historically-as a movement of religious internaliz.ation, as bourgeois emanciparion, as rhe revolution of the rulers, as a superstructure of
early capitalism, as the severance of the German people from Reman rule,
as a German uprising, just ro name a few familiar interprerations frorn the
!ase one hundred years-no interprerarion is able to bypass the irrevocable
acr of a solemn protesration at Speyer in 1529.
I just stated thar, chronologically, generali2ations cannot be extended
to infinity. Let us cominue to pursue this thought for a moment. Even
longer-term statements about the Reformarion as a unir of evems remain
tied ro milestone dates, befare and after- which ir does nor make any sense
to speak of the Reformation as a historical period at all. Among these are,
on rhe one hand, backdating the beginning to the late Middle Ages with
its popuJar religious movemems, or preconditions pertaining ro the history
of ideas, which one can find in the entire history of the Christian Ch urch;
and on the other, continuadons of the Reformarion a.~ a f:Ktor with effeci:s
right into the modern age. Any such procedures-which are completely
legitimate iJJ historical rerms~remain, finally, tied toa unique succ:ession
of eveJJts.

Time and Htory

We can take our histodographical thought experiment one step further and bring into play seemingly extratemporal factors. Thus one might
srart out from.human narure and interpret rhe Reformation in psychological or even psychoanalytical terms: as a case of the detachment from externa! authority rhat allegedly led to the establishment of an interna! authority (namely, conscience), which then could be engaged in differentways. In
purely theoretical terms, it is also possible to use an anthropological model
of enduring applicability that is intended to rise above any historically
unique siruation. We wouid then be on a levd of proof of supertemporal
achronic permanence, as it were, this being the condition for any possible
hisrory. Such explanarory patterns have occurred again and again, in different attire. T~us it is possible to quote a proverb for any history-many
dogs are the de'\th of the hare, or pride goes befare a ~~~~in arder r~ _reduce a lost war to general human and, as ir were, antehlsroncal regulant1es.
I do not want to underestimate or downplay the inlluence of such
pieces of wisdom, which can also be translared into the statements of an anthropologically based academic discipline. But on closer view, even these explanations always contain the inescapable indicator of a before and an after,
without whic:h a piece of epigrammatic wisdom ora psychological or sociological model of explanation become meaningless. Neither rhe reorientadon of a need for authoriry nor the pride thar goes befare a fa!! can do without temporal indicacions. When they are applied to history, even seemingly
general patte~ns of explanation inevitably refer to chronological succession,
wirhout which every history would be not only meaningless bur impossible.
Chronology borrowed from natural time is thus indispensable for a
historical reality that is to be redeemed empirically, whether approximation
~o the absolute exactness of data esrablishes meaning, or whether the cogency of the. relacive befare and after, which is unalterable in itself, is the
prerequisite for a meaningflll ceconstruction ofhistor.ical events.
We rhus arrive ata result that appears to be banal but is :ally fundamental: natural time, with iu recurrence and irs time limits, is a perrnanent
premise both of history and of irs interpretation as an academic discipline.
. Everytping we have dealt with so far can be defined as the objectifiable coreo~ rhe calculation and determination of rime. ~ow that it has
been discovered and recognized, rhere can be no mo.re dtspute about the
chronological order of che file thar did not reach the Diet of Speyer on time.
No matter which imerpretation of the Reformarion one subscribes ro, che

uo

;-.:.

H.'

.......

Chapter 6

above-mentioned milenone date widn thc chronology rcma.im; within ra~

tional conrrol and generally acceptable. But do we sufficiendy understand
what can, as a result, be ralled h.storical time or historical times? Cenainly
not. 1 thus. a.rrive at the second p;an of my lecture.
The singular farm of a single hisrorical time, which j~ supposed to
di~tingui~h irsdf from measurable natural time, i~ alre;ady open to doubt.
~~storic~l rime, i~ the cerm is to have <1 me.1.ning, i:oo cied ro social and po~
lmcal untts of acuon, co parcicular accing and suffing human heings, and
ro rheir nsrirucions and organzatians. They all h.ave cena in inherent modes
of patormancc, each ofwhich has it:s own temporal rhythm. Let us, to remain in rhe world of rhe everyday, think of rhe ditfc:";tCn t fesri val calendars
that srructure sociallife, of ch.anges in work rimes and rheir duraran, which
have determincd and continue ro determine the succession of life on a
daily basis.

We might speak, not of one historical time, but of many rhat ovc:";rlie
one anorher. Even here, measures of rime rhat derive from the mathematicalphysical understanding of na tu re are needed: the dates or length of a life or
of an institution, the nada! points or turning points of political or military
series of events, rhe speed of means of uansponarion and irs increase, the
accelerarion-or retardation-of a producdon line, the velocity of weapons systems. All these, w give justa few exampb, can be historicafly evaluated only when calcula redor dared with reference to the natural measurememoftime.

But an interpretation of the interrelations that result already leads

beyond na rural, physically or astronomically processed determinations of
t1me. Poltica! constraints on decisions made under the prcssure of deadlines, the repercussions upon rhe economy or military actions of the time
spans required by means of travel and communication, rhe permanence or
mobility of social modes ofbehavior in the 6eld of temporally limired political or economic requiremenrs-all this, plus other things, in rheir mutual imeraction or dependence finally forces us to adopt social and polirica.l determinations of time that, although rhey are natural! y caused, must
be defined as specifically historical.
In contrast ro the objective determinations of rime oudined so far
one could cal! them "subjective," if this is not associated with an episremo~
logical devaluation.
The uncovering or discovery of such subjecrive hisrorical times is -

Time and History

III

sclf a prod~a of modernity. In Germany, Herder was the first to define

this, in his metacritique ofKant's Critique ofPure &ason. lrutead of seeing
time only as a formal, a priori condition of aH phenomena, a condition of
inner intuiriion, Herder pointed roward the plurality of concrete carriers of
action. "'Prperly speaking, any changeable objecr contains the measure of
its time within itself; ir exists even if there were no other one; no two things
in the world share the san1e me~u.re of time .... At one time, there exist
(one can say it truly and bold.ly) coundessly many times in che universe."
Has anyrhing been gained from such a hisrorical-anthropological
premise for the recognition of history in its relation to time or, rather, its
times? Historical research that becomes involved in factual questions does
not explicidy have ro pose the question ofhistorical time. In addition, the
sources "frqm" a cenain rime rarely provide any direct information ~about"
this rime.
We mwt therefore clarify our question theoretically in arder ro make
ir operational for research. I will attempt todo t:his in conclusion, ~in with
examples, which will-as before-engage firsr history, then historiography.
Hinoricaltimes c;an be idencified if we direct our view to where time
itsdf oc;-urs or is subjeniveiy enacred in humans as historical beings: iri
the relationship between past and future, which alwa~ constitutes an eiusive present. The compulsion ro coordinate past and future so as ro be able
ro live at aJI is inherent in any human being. Put more concretely, on the
one hand, every human being and every human cornmunity has a space of
experience out of which one acto>, in which past tbings are present or can
be rememl)ered, and, on the ocher, one always acts with reference to specific horizohs of expectation. l propase invesrigating this relationship berween pase and future or, more precisely, che relationship of specific experiences and expectarions, so as ro get a grasp on historical time. That
hlswrical time occuu wirhin the difference between these tWO temporal
dimensions can airead y be shown by che fact rhat rhe differcnce between
experic:";nce and apectarion irsdf changes-that is, it is specifically historical. Lc:";t m~ explain.
Until'che early modern period, it was a general principie derived from
expericnce ~hat che furure could bng nothing fundamentally new. Untl
che expecred rnd of the world, snrul human beings (as seen from a Chrisrian perspecrive) would noc change; unril then, the nature of man (as seen
from a humanisr perspective) would remain the same. Por that reason it was

Time and Hi.<to1y

ll2

~-

'-

"

\.

:.:

'
'
.: .
''

..

)F'.

:_
:

possible ro inue prognoses, beca use rhe facmrt of human :~.crion or rhe narurally pos~ible forms of governmcnr (a!; seen from an Arisrordian viewpoim)
remained fundamentally rhe same. W'hatever was 10 bt cxpccred could be
sufficiently justified by prcvious expetience. The Solomonic wisdom of ni/
novum JUb so/e was equally valid in rhe world of peasants and of poltics,
even though individual cases mighr bring surpri,es. Using .~u eh an intcrence
from experierlce to expecration, Frcderick the Gre<tt, for insrancl.", whose
date of binh was our point uf deparrure, made an astonishingly clear prognosis of the French Revolution. He anived at his predicrion by confronring
his coUtcted historical-political experience wirh the discreet expectations of
a French philosopher, Holbach. The prognosis is found in a review ofHolbach's Systeme de /.a Nature: "For the fantastic ideas of our philosophers to
be fulfilled, the forms of government of all rhe stares in Euro pe would firsr
nced to be transformed"-which undoubtedly imerpreted Holbach's secret
expecrarion correcdy. Yer Frederick wenr furrher in his condusions, for he
mobilized the expectations of a polirical history that was rwo thous:md years
old. "lt would be necessary for rhe dethroned generarions of rulers ro be
complete!y exterminated, or che seed of civil wars will ase, in which pany
leaders put rhemselves ar the head of facrions in arder ro disrupt rhe state."
Then, it would no longer be possible to stop revolts and revolutions, and
rhe misery ro come would be a thousand times greater rhan that caused by
all foreign wars being waged at the cime.
Roughly speaking, the events of rhe French Revolurion verified Frederick's prognosis. He undoubtedly saw the misery to come and che drawbacks of the Revolution more dearly than those who placed rheir hopes in
a coming radical change of the consritution. This is authentically a prognosis thar draws condusions from previous experience fOr the finure. Seen
from a strucmral perspective, rhe difference berween past and future hisrory is zero, even ifindividual concrete events as such cannor be foreseen.
In the same time period, the difference between experience and expecrarion has also been drawn out in a completely different way. For this,
Kant can be called as our wirness. For him, a prognosis rhat in principie expects the same as what has always been possible so far is no real prognmis
at all. Kant assumes rhat the future will be differem from the p3st becau>e
it is supposed ro be different. For him, rhe moral rcquirement of establishing a re publican constitucion recei ves a pol itical eh rus e chat is suppo~ed to
change rhe history W come ;os wdl. He i~ concerned to mrpa~s al! previous

JI3

experience'and open up a new fi.aure-for instance, ro establish a league

of narions: which had thus far been unprecedented in hisrory.
His is aurhentically a prediction ruled by willpower, in which past
and furure are coordina red in a completely new way. If Frederick is right,
sois Kam,jn his way. For Kam addresses a specifically historical time, one
that ir is possible to experience only in our Neuzeit, in wmrast ro earlier
agcs. For in our modern age (Moderne), as it is shaped by science, rechnology, and industry, the future in fact implies different and new things, which
cannot be rmcirely derived from previous experience. Precisely the impossi-.
bilicy of fore~eeing tedmical inventions has become a principie derived
from experience, and permanendy keeps open che ditlcr<:':nce berween past
and futurei
1 d nt need to explain furrher the f.u-reaching way in which the
suucrure of sociecy- and its modes ofo<ganizarion ha\e changed sincc technological progrrss ser in. The enormous accderarion in communication
;md rates of production is t:he most conspicuous crirerion for a changed
time, which is also oonsrandy changing our everyday world and its habits.
As Goethr noted ~hrewd!y: "Ir is bad enough thac now one can no longer
learn anything for one's whole lik Our ancesrors sruck ro the lessons they
Ieceived in their youth; we, however, have ro rdeam chings every five years
if we do not want ro fall our of fashion completdy."
Here Goethr articulates shonened temporal rhythms and time limits
thar cannot be dcrived any more from natural rime and che succession of
biological g.ener;nions. And-to speak in more absuact terms-he also illustr.nes r~e differenrial ex:perience of past and IUrure. The shonening of
the time spans necessary for g.Un.ing new ex~riences rhat t..lle technicalindumial world forcrs upon us can be described as a historical acceleration.
lt provides evidence of a history in which time continually seems to ovcttake
irself, as ir 'fe re, and it is thus conceived of as Neuzeit in an emphatic serue.
ln Frederick, Kant, and Goerhe we have called three witnesses; each
of rhem ha; been righc and has continued ro be right in his own way. Frederick uses an anthropological-historically based time structure as it has
been kno~n since Thucydides. It refers ro sequences rhar, as it were, appear on th~ir own out of a cerrain pregiven situation-a revolution, for instan ce. History, roo, has its reeurring possibiliries. For that reason, his
prognosis carne rrue. Kant assumes that there is a moral demand for a difference between past and future, so as ro open up a horizon of planning,
1

!:-

from which rhe pn:sem siruation can be changed. This has an efttct on history. These nason~ underlie his demand for a le;ague of nations, which was
real ized in t he long ter m. Goethe, final ly, ob~erve~ rhe s honening of the
spans of t>xperience as rhey ;are forced upon mode.rn rn.Hl by the emerging
industrial world. There is a limit to infereoces for the fuwre that can be
drawn from convenrion. In this respect, the fururc is as unknown as it is
opt'n-not only in individual cases, but in principie.
We have rhus made three differenrial determinations, all of which.,
]ocatcd at three different temporallevels, represent accurate aspects ufhis
rorical reality. Our supposition that t is only meaningful to speak of bis
torical times in the plural has thus been confirmed. In addition, our dilt"rrential determination of pasr and future has shown that rhis difference has
irs own history and is thus suited to themati:ng historical time.
Thu~ we have al! of a sudden arrived at che final queston: How can
rhe times of hisrory themsdves be histori<::ally recognized and described?
The quesrion of which remporallevel needs to be thematized in ea eh case
is a question of historical perspective. Using our example, I can cut out rhe
historical sphere rhar Frederick, Kant, or Goethe h.as illuminated, and I can
attempr ro combine them. But any perspective that 1 <::hoose has itself a
temporal contenr, because the temporal difference between my posidon today and rhe past histories (Geschichten) investigated enters into my recognition. To have recognized this finding is also an achievement of our
Nmuit. As Goerhe once said: "One will, in che same city, hear an important event narrated differently in the morning and in the evening.~ Wiili
his usual casualness, Goethe has recorded an apt observadon, which reveals
more than rhe long-known fact rhar people ralk abour the same rhing in
diffetent and comradictory ways. It is a historical time that he is referring
to, and the pressure to perspecrivalism he reveals was first conceptualized
in the epistemology of the Enlightenmenr, at a time when the plurality of
hisrorical times was made conscious for the first rime.
lt may therefore be thar at other times one will speak differently about
historical times rhan we have done this afternoon.
Tramlttt~d by

Kermn Behnkt

---:;-1~

/~

Concepts of Historical Time and Social History

During the last rhirty years, roughly since the Sewnd World War,
there ha ve been significam changc:s on rhe scene of historical scholarship.
One of these concerns a field of hiscory rhar has been fashionably termed
"social hisrory.'' This rerm can be llkened ro a rubber band, that is to say it
is flexible enough to embrace severa! more or l~ss hecerogeneous areas. But
the term "social hisrory" seems to exclud~. wrongly. l think, that kind of
historr which limirs irself stricdy ro factual evenrs and which is, again
wrongly, liDked with polilica.l history. lt is only for reasons of scho\arly
polemics that the hisrory of events or political history is presumed not to
h~ part of s9cial hisrory, as are for ins[;lJlce the long-cerro changes in the relarions berween different strata and dasses.
A second change on the historieal scene is che fact that theoretial debates are exening a significant and growing influence on the discipline.
The subjecr;of theory is rejecred by the determined advocates of che hiswry
of evenrs as_an imposition and aberration, but is welcomed by social historians. In thils context, we have to single out those theories of the social sciences that have had a general influence on the science of history and that
have srimulated many ideas and questions. 1 am referring to those rheories
that originated in economics, sociology, the polirical sciences, anthropology, linguisbcs, and other research areas in the humaniries and that have
extended into the diachronic optics of our discipline.
Another strand of che theorerical debate has remaned, at least in Ger-

116

ChtJpur 7

many, relatively. ine~ctive. 1 am rekrring ro rho~e epi.stemological problems that are bemg d1scussed by Anglo-Saxon pnilosopher5 and that since
Hempel and Popper have cleveloped a lively exi5rence of cheir own. Their
inBuence on pracrical res~arch ha.s been limiced, unlik~ che theories of the
social sciences rhar have srrongly influcnced our parcicu!ar field. The reason
fo~ rhis seems clear: the emprica! example5 chat are examined by an analyrJcall~ and linguisrically inspircd philosophy nave been diS5ecced very cleverly, Jt JS true, bur mostly chey are of sud! smplicity rhat they have no immedi.:ne merho~ological value for the pracr:cing historian. Thi.~ is notro say
that mey ;UC of no episremological intc:resr. Bur. as we well knnw, the theory of knowledge does not necessarily have an dfecr on che practica) re
sea~ch r~ which ir refers. The siruation is differern for those rnaterially and
soaologJetlly ba.sed rheor.ies clut originared in economic.s, mathc:matics, th.e
polirical sciences, sociology, and so fonh, and that have inspired a great
many models and hypotheses found in modern hiswrical research.
So, under the heading of social history, the subjecr area of historica]
research has greatly expanded. Today there is nothing that does nor fit
someho:V in.ro the hisrorical sciences. The history of wages and prices, rhe
econornc chmat~, productiviry, economic development in general belong
ro the best esrablished research areas rhat after a period of isolation, are increasingly being reabsorbed imo social hiswry. Bur chis is not the end of rhe
story, considering all the subjects that have been-'added sincc:: demography,
the hi.story of fiunily relationships, of childhood, even the hismry of death
which, as we know, s beyond human experience; or the history of dseases,
~f modes of behavior, customs, rites and legends, a.s well as of transportauon, the press and communication networks, thc: hiswry of verbal and nonverbal relationships, of mentalities and unconscious behavior, not ro mention rhe particular history of the various sciences.
All ~is can be more o~ less covered by rhe umbrella of social history,
although Jt ?a.s-under a Jfferenr name-had quite a long rradition in
our field, gomg back ro Herodorus. We can say rhar therc: is hardly a relic
&om the pasr thar is not considered worth preserving (thanks ro rhe technical acceleration of our living conditions) and that has.nor been dedared a
subjecr for research. The boundary with archc:ology, too, is becoming less
well defined since even the unwritren and silent sources of tradirion have
become a theme for social historians who are concerning themselves wirh
everything wirhout exceprion.

Historical Time and Social Htory

117

So wt are faced with two facts, first hi.srorical research, which is becorning increasingly theorerical, and second, an enormous extension of empirical questions. Both facts are closely related, of course. The more use is
made of them in differing and numerous ways, the more confusing are thc:
results. Small wonder that the theorists have cometo -the fore to establish
boundaries, fit together subject areas, or make them comparable. Theorems, modds, and hyporheses accompany and order the surge of curiosiry.
On the orher hand, it should be borne in mind that the enormous extension of historical fields of imerest calls for theoretical darification so that
rhey do not lapsc imo rhc antiquarian or the anecdotal.
Exreosion of research and a need for theory are thus obviously connecred anq seem ro be complememary phenomena of our discipline. 1t is
against this background rhat the catchword of social. history has come to
play a key.role. lts concepts have been frequenrly described by Braudel,
Hobsbawm, or Kocka among others, so that Ido not have to list them all.
In any case, rhe boundaries are not stricdy de6ned: at one end, there .is the
so-caJied nonpolitical history of human rdationships involving groups,
communities, or ~pecific societies, and at rhe other, the history of politica.lly organized sorieties that is vinually daimng to interpret social history
~s the totalitv ofhistory. Social history can for instance mean che history of
ind.ividual da.sses or ind.ividual areas as well as rhe hiscory of al! mankind.
Nothing is gained by this.
Befo~e 1 begin ro ask questions about historical time in relation to
social-hisr()rical modek I would like to rai:Je two methodological cautions.
The fim is' aimed at the concept of a rora! hisrory and the second at the use
of the rerm ~sociar histor)'.
Anyone who arrempts to integrare che sum toral of individual hlswries imo orye single total history is bound ro fail. This can only he attempred
if and when a cheory has becn devdoped thar would make a total histo:y
possible. This would in rurn reveal dur any rotal hinory would always be
rhe product of a necessacy perspective. lt would h.ave to be established for
inuance wherher ir is the relacions of production or rhe market conditions
th.at play a primary role. The same applies ro power and social strarification,
or to rdigibus acritudes and expecrarions in a ~ocial a:mtext, which for instance rcmain open ror discussion in relarion to the Reformation period. In
de\eloping such a model, we would be joining in the concroversies over
possible rheories. ,-"\1[ rhis s happening in che area of empirical research,

II8

Chapea 7

Historical

me

howeva- abu.nlhl\t
empiric:al RSWts may be mu t'ffiCrg'l! from thc Varithe:orctical prem~es.

OUS

The second waming concerns the: casual we of the word "social." Social hinory as ~ subject of discourse obviously dates from me ninetet:nth-

~nd t_We~tieth cc:nruries. This exprc:sson revc:als a modern problem whose

tmphcauons c.annot ne<.:essarily daim validiry fM e:.arlier cerHuries. Bdim:

:he ~French Revolu_ron, evcr~ sociery was always a "sociecas civilis et politJca. The economrcs of cradmg companies or of che territorial states re-mained integral pans of the esrates rhat were charanerized by che fact that
economic, social, and political definitions converged. Only stnce the development of world trade and the rise of national economic systems has it
beco me possible to define economics as a separa te arca alongside rhe sane,
sociery, culture, or religion. And only since then has it been possible, from
the point of view ofhisrorical development, ro distinguish empirica.lly between polirical rule, social constitutions, and economic srructure-diiferentiacions that were not possible for people living in a feudal world.
Iris permissible, of course, w take such modero discinctions and ap-ply rhem analytica.lly roan earlier pase, but always remernbering rhar they
were not meant for the dimensions of human experience of that rime. k, ]
said, an esta te could be defined polirically, social!y, and economically at the
same time whereas a class of the nineteenrh cemury could be defined differencly fr"om any of these angles. Nevenheless, thett modern c.ategories
e~ be projected onto the past so rhat, in analyzing it, resulcs may be obtamed, something rhar could not be done by those who were alive rhen.
Afi:er rhese two cavears regarding the naive notion of a rotal hisrory and
against rhe uncrirical use of"social," I would like ro propase three items for
discussion. First, 1would like ro say something on the origin of an awarenes.~
of a specifica.lly historical time. Secondly, I would like to speak on rhe variow dimensions of time thar are pan of events and strucrures, and thlrdiy and
lastly, I would like ro make a propasa! as ro how, in the area of palitical and
social semanrics, something like historical time can be invesriga;ed.

I. Development of <m Undemanding of

Specific:dly Historicallime
lt s a rruism thar history has always to do with time. But it took a
long lilne unril wmething like hi.swrical time carne ro be explicidy ddined.

Tim~

and Social Hinory

ll9

Its disco~ry probably oa::urred, 1 suspect, during the Enlightenmem. Be-for"e then, the historical time-plan was divided up according ro mythical or
tbeo!ogical categories and hada beginning, a middle, andan end. We also
know of rpe doctrine of eons into wbkh individual historical events wcre
made to fit. Eve:ryday chronology was based on the natural measurements
of the solar and lunar orbirs, justas it is today. In cases where this chronology was hstorically enriched, we find rhe recurrent rites of seasonal cale-ndars or the biological ages of ruling dynasties and their representarives. Al1
these defi~irions of time placed che many histories exisring rhe-n imo a ce r.rain arder, bur they did not attempt to deduce the crireria of time feo m rhe
course of hisrory irself.
Theinvemion of the Middle Ages was a 6rst step toward building out
of histori4al evenrs something like a historically immanent conmuccion
that did not haveto jusrifY itself by referring to persons, nature, or mythology. But three to four centuries wem by until the eighteenth century
when rhe Middle Ages had gradually become accepted as a specific name
for a period. The notion of Renais.sance became a general historical name
for a perio,d onJy in the nineteenth cemury. During those cemuries that enabled hiswry to be rearranged ex post facto only, the notion of modern
time became establshed jun as slowly. My thesis would be thar only this
notion of modem time has ga.ined a genuindy historical meaning, discinct
&om mytlical, thcological, or natural chronological origins. As Kant pur it:
so far hiscqry had fullowcd chronology: and now ir was necessary that chronology should follow history. That was the program of the Enlightenment:
ro subjecc hiscorical time to criteria which could only be derived from an
undersunding ofhil;tory itsdf. Then and only then clid people begin to organiu: hs~ory according to generalized aspecrs of polirics, and larer of economics, or of a history of 30d<:ties relating to the churches or peoples, or
a.ccording\ro aspects of the history of scientific d.iscovery, or w ask about
culmral ac;hitvemenrs chat were suppo"sed ro provide a criterion for a histarically tT~manent structure. In the eighteenth century, the frut was picked
chat had wown since its rebirtb. in the Renaissance.
For the new posicion to be developed further, reHeccion on criteria of
historical ~ime became ncces~ary. This reflection rook place thmugh the
medium df the philosophy of history, which is a product of the eighteenth
century, even if its subjecr mauer had been described in earlier periods.
But the leve! of reflection can be deduced from the use of two central no-

no
tions of time: th:at of modern time and that of progress. Modem rime df-

fer~ from tl~lie~ "age" theories in rhar it is experienccd, not ex post factt_>
bu! dt_rccrly. rlus 1s one Qf the novdties of this panicular new nmion. I 1 s
~ess ot : rctrospective noti~n because t has arisen from the pre~ent, which
ts openmg our .row.ud tite future. The future of modern time is rhoughr ro
be open and w1thour boundaries. The vision oflasr things or rhe theon..- of
rhc r~turn of all thngs has been radically pushed aside by the vemur~ of
openmg up a new furure: a fUrure which, n rhe emphatic sensc of the nis totally different from al! thar has passed before.
T~rough rhis experience of hstoric.1.l time as modern time, many
condus10ns became possible. I would like to memion a few. Modern time
w_as idemified with progress, sinct ir w~s progress that conceptualiz.ed the
dtfference between the p:m so far and rhe coming furure. This meant that
time gained a new historical qualuy whch, within the horizon of sameness
and recurrence of the exemp}ary, ic did not pos:;ess befare. One cou!d also
say that progress is the first genuindy hiswrical delinirion of time that has
not d~rived its meaning rrom orher areas of expcrience such as theology or
myth1cal fon:knowle~ge .. Pro~ress .could be dscovered only when people
be~an to rdlect on hlStoncal nme 1tself. It is a reflexive notion. 1n practice
tlm meam that progress,can only occur, if people wanr ir and plan for it.
That the future should be a horizon of planning, not only of davs, w-ks.
or even years, but of the long-tenn kind in terms of changes, s ~ne of rh~:
feaum:s of a historica! rime that is seen as progressive.
Funhermore, to name anorher criterion rdared ro rhe dscovery of
progrcss, therc: is rhe discovery of the historical world. The hi!>tcrical and the
the world have a common origin. Thcy complemem
progrcssve views
one anorher. hke the f:<<:es of Janus. If the new time is afferi ng somerhing
~ew al! ~e ume, the d.ifferenr past has to be discovered and recagni:zed, that
IS to say: Jts strangeness which increases wirh rhe passing of years.
History became a modern scit'nce ar the point where the break n tradition qualitativdy sepa.r:ues the pan from the future. Since then it has
~en necessary ro develop specal method.s that teach us to recognize the
different character of the past. Since then it has heen possible rhat the trurh
ofhistory changes with ch.anging time, orto be mo.re e.xact, that historical
trurh can become ourd<Jted. Since thcn historical method has also meant
h~ving to define a poim f view from which condu.~ions can be drawn.
SJnce then an eycwirnes~ s no longer che authenrc principal wirness of an

Htt!rical Time and Social Hstory

121

~ent; he will be questioned in the light of changing and advanced per~

spectve~ that are applied to the past.

Finally, is on\y since then that the a.xiom of the uniqueness of all
history and its individuality has become conccv;hJe. This wa.s a countermove agan,st previous historical experience which, in the sense both of anquicy and Chrisan.icy, had not expected anything fundamentally new,
but something similar or analogous in the future.
With Lovejoy one could call these processes that 1 have bridl.y descrbed "thr cemporalization of hismry."
So far I ha ve ooly talked about methodological ccireria chat have served.
to expose hstorical time, particular! y within our discipline. This means, of
course, that we are dealing with implications nvolving facmal. h.istory. The
consequen~es for the concepts of social history are dear. If we, the hi..srorans, want w de-.'elop a genuine theory that is ro be distinct from the theo
res of the socb) scence$ in general, it obviously has to be a theory rhat
makes i1 possible ro accommodate rhe changes in temporal experience.
The di&covery of cemporalizarion, to use this ex post fa.cro expresson, was cen.nly at first an Ldea of the intellecrual elite. Bur wth it, new
mode.s of bdu.vior emerged that reached beyond the world of the esta res,
thac is m say rhe anden rgime. We see an acceleration in the change.>
which, sin~e rhe advem of technology and ndustry, have provoked an ad
ditonal and specfic experence of time. The transition from the stagecoach, by way of trains and motor cars to .iet planes has fundamemally
changed all time-space relations and with rhem our working cond.irions,
social mobiliry, war technology, global communica.tion networks-all of
thern facrors th:at constitute the history uf our world as t proceeds on this
finite planet of ours. Temporaiizarion and accelerarion constitute the tempor;al framework that will probably have to be applied to al! concepts of
modern sqcal history. Ths framework ma.kes possible diachronic and
synchronic comparisons, and provokes one central question, the question
of what has changed (in rhe sen se of hisrorical times) when rime has remained th~ same (in a chronological sense). I am thinking of the classic
wvrk by Barrington Moore.
Or t~ mention an example from Prussian history: after the French
Revolution . Pru~sia was f.lced wth the challenge of reformng its social sysem of est.ues. a challenge that was taken up with the intention to intro-duce a wTtten consrurion. A! though the latter was promsed seve-tal times,

122

Chaptrr 7

ic w:u inuoduced u lace as r848 and only by force. Let us lc;~Qk at thi~ proc:ess from a temporal perspective.
During the reform period :ter 18oy, the fim ca:;k wa:; w liberalize rhe
economy in order ro ueate a free market in pwpercy ~d labor. lt was necessary to creare thc economic conditions for che e~tablishment of a funconing liberal constitution in which thc e su ce:; would be represemed, not
bec.llu~e of binhright, but beatusc of educarion and propeny. So rhere was
a practic.al priority for economic reforms, if a liberal wmritution was to be
implernented. In rempora.l rerms: 6rst rhe economic reforms and then the
poltica] consequences. Hardenberg dcarly saw rhe alternative. If, under the
ruling powers as they c:risted at tl'te bcginning of rh.e reform era, he had irnmediardy convened a parliamentary ch.amber, the result for rhe economic
reforms would have been &asrrous. The nobiliry werc the firsr co insist on
a consrirurion, and they would havt: been sufficiendy powerful roan against
rhc weak bourgeoisie and the politically ignoram peasamry and rejecr any
legislation for economic reform. In short, the economic conditions for lib..
eralization would have been made impossible. lt was coo early in 1815 to introduce a wrirren conscitution. Paradoxically, the resu!t of this was that at
any time afrer that it was always too late. The more successful the reforms
were, the easier it became for che nobiliry to pul! the leading bourgeois
dasses over ro their side. Around 1848, nearly half of the estates of the nobility were in bourgeois hands, but with the result that the nobility became
a modernized propertied class as well as nnancially secure. lmpc;~rtam sections of the bourgeoisie had becn absorbed, a prerequisite for rhe failure of
the 1848 Revolution and the liberal hopes placed in it.
In one senrence, one could say that the economic modernizarion based
on the principies of Adam Smith prevented a poUtical moderniza don in thesense of aWestem constirutiona.l system. The economic dimension of time
and me potical dimension of time led [O contradictory results, if they are
measured against the inicial planning data. The outcome was rhe so-calied
speci6cally Prussian solution in which rhe traditional es tates, who were po~
litically reactionary, provided the resources roran economic modemizarion.
The transformation of an old society of estates inro a class society must
thercfore be measured with different rime scales in order ro explain the specifically Prussian implications against the horizon ofEuropean indusuialization. This would be a rough oudine of how temporalization can be utilized
for social"hismrical quesdons. I arn not assuming that the temporal priorities

Hirtorica/ Time and Social Hstory

I23

of economit reforms thar 1 have described, and their political ronsequen;:es,

namely th~ the constituticmal opportunicies were missed in this way, provide an adequate explanatory model fof the long-term social changes in P~
sia. How~, ir seems ro me that the questi.on of the temporal strueture.s LS
a conditio sine qua non of social-historical knowledge.

IL Relations of Events to Social Structures

1 now come to the second part of m y talk. 1 shall speak about the re-
lacionship of events to so-called structures, but allow me first to co~me~t
on someth~g befare 1 proceed. lt is a false simplification t~ regard _hm?ncal time as l':ither linear or circular. This approach has dommated htstoncal
rhought for roo long, un ti! Braudd made (and implemented) an important
proposal, namely to analyz.e historical time on_ seve_rall.evels. The antonyms
"event" and "structure" are suirable for throwmg hght on these levels.
UProgrcss," roo, and "modern time," which 1 described earlier, contain
simplfications that were undcrstandable in the. eighteenth centu~ becau5e
rhe discovery of modern time also conceprua!Jzed modero expenence. In
the case of our own discipline, however, thi.s category of the fOre:ver modero
time, in wl)ich we are supposedly living, does not fit. Progress, which ~
on!y be thought of as a linea.r time proa:ss., ronccals. tht broad fuundauon
of al1 those strucrures that have survived and which, in temporal ternlS, are
.
.
.
.
based on rercition.
Events and structwes are of course interlocked m lWwncal rcal1ty. lt
is the historian's task to tak.e them apart methodologically on the assumpcion rhat he cannor discuss both of them at che ~arne time. One could compare this process ro a phorographlc lens that cannot at the same time take

a close-up tnd a long-distance shot.

What, rhen, is the temporal nrucrure of an event? Events can be
perceived hy those affected as intetcormecred or as a uni_r of meaning.
This was the reason for the methodolc;~gical pric;~rity of ey~messes whose
accounts were considered as parricularly reliable up w che eighceenth century. This fact also accounts for rhe high rdiabiliry of tradicional srories
thar rell of~ounrless eveots. The first framework in which a numbet of incidents combine inm an event is narural chronology. Only a minimum
ofbefore-and-afrer consrirures a unir of rneaning mar makes an event out
of single inciden cs. The inner cohcren.:e of J.n cvenr, irs before-and-afrer,

r24

,,_.

::..

Chapter 7

m ay be ~ended, but irs consisrency remains linked w rhe progression of

natural ttme. We only need to think back to rhe event5 at che ourbreak of
war in I9I4 or I939 What real! y happened, rhe interdependence of actions
and omissions, became dear only in the subsequent hour, rhe nexr day,
and so on.
The transposition, roo, of past acrions and experiences into historical
know!cdge remains inseparable from rhe chronologica!ly mr:asurable sequence. The before-and-after constiwres rhe semantic horiwn ot ~ story
rhat can hardly be briefer than Caesar's brief story, "veni, vidi, vici." Everv
evem has to conform to the inevitable progression of rime. It Js in thi$ ~ens~
that Schiller's dictum-that world hisrory is at once the tria! and judgmem
of the world-should be read. What is losr in one minure, eterniry will not
replace. As we know, sequences of evems are not incidental. Evenr~. too.
have their diachronic strucrures. The before-and-after or the roo early and
roo late prescribe the inevitable sequences of things tha[ w~ld be called diachronic strucrures. Only in this way is ir possible ro compare rhe ~equtnte
of revolmions, of wars, or of consrirutiens on a ~pecifi<.: levd of abstraction
or of cypology.
Apart from these diachronic srrucrures of evem~ rhere Jre lunger-rerrn
structures whose temporal chacacterisric is repetiriDn. 'Whereas m rhr case of
evems, rhe bdoreand-~frer is vinually consrirutive, rhe exacrness of eh ro"
nological definitions seems less importam when describing rhe stare of
sometlng ora long-rerm process. All evems are based on preexistent strucrures that beco me a pan of the evenrs concerned, bur thar existcd b~fore rhe
evenrs in a diffnenr way ft~:.Jrn the chronological sense of the before. Let me
memion sorne scruccures in chis connection. Consider constitucional forms
and modes of power which are based on the repetiran of well-known rules.
Or uke productive for;.es and the relations of production, which change
s~ow!y, wich ~udden bursts ar intervals. Their effea: derives from rhe reperitJon of certaJn procedures and from rhe rarional constancy uf general marker con~ri~ns. 1 could al~o mention che given geographcal and spatial faccors whJCh m che long-rerm stabilize everyday life or which may also provoke
policical conA.ict situarions which in the course ofhistory are similar ro and
repeat one anorher. Furthermore there are conscious and even more subconscious modes ofbehavior that may be determined by iris;irutions or rhar
can in rurn shape their own instirurions, and whose characteristic is their
longue dure. They include customs and legal systems whose suength tends

Historinzl Timr .md Social History

125

to arrange and oudive individual events. Finally, l wouJd like ro mention

procreative behavior, which despite all lovl': affairs or !ove tragt"dies, implies
supraindividual continuiries or long-term changes. This list could c:asilv be
concinued,.but enough is enough. The tempnral charactersc of such muetutes les in the repetiran of the same iliing, Nl':n if rhar thing changes cumulativdy in rhe long or medium rerm,
Evems and srructures thus seem ro have wichin me rnovemem ofhi.srory different temporal dimensions rhat shnuld be srudied separarely by
hisrorical scholarship. Usually me accounc nf srrucrures renm ro beco me a
description, and chat of Nenr~ a n3.rracive. Buc j would mean serting rhe
wrong prioritie~ 10 define history exdusive!y in one way or another. 8oth
levels, of eyents and of srructures, remain interdependent.
/1.1y proposition would be that events can never be fuUy explained by
~5-~umed Sl'rucrures, just as srructures cannot only be explained hy evems.
There is an epistemological apora involving che two levds so rhat one can
never enrirely deduce one thing from anocher.
The before and after nf an event gives ir irs own temporal qualiry that
can never be entirely reduced ro its longer-rerm conditions. Every evem is
more and at the same rime less than what is indicated in such condirions:
hence irs always surprising novelry.
Let me give you an example. The strucrural prerequisites for the: barde of Leuthen cannot adequately explain why Frederick the Great won the
hattle in rhe way he did. There were certainly preexiste m structures for this
evem: rhe Prussian army regularions, its recruitment system, and the fact
thar t was firmly roored in rhe social and agracian constitution of the terrirories east of the El be, as well as the tax sysrem and war fund based on
that consrirution. All chese factors made the victory at Leuthen possible,
bur December s. 1757. remains a unique event in its chronologically im;
manent scoquence.
l wil I give you anod-x-r example: a court case involving labor Ltw may
be a drama!ic event for the person concerned. But at the same time, ir may
be an indieator of social, legal, and economic conditions oflong standing.
Depending on how the qwstions are asked, che emphasis of the described
evenr is. s~ifred, just as the way in which ir i.~ mld changes. The account is
rhen looktd ar from different temporal angles. Eirher the exciting before
and after of rhe incidenr, che uial, and its outcome are discussed, induding all rhe consequences, or che evenr s taken apart into its elements, giv1

126

Chapur 7

ing indicators of thO&t soci.tl cond..itions chac providc an insight into the
t happened. In that case the descripnon of su eh suucrures can somerimes be more dramaric ehan the accounr
of rhe court proceed..ings themsdves.

s~ucture of the ~ent and inca how

So we couJd uy thar hsror:y can only be invesrigued if the various

temporal dimensons are kepr separare. 1 wanr w repeat my proposition:
events and scructures are intcrlocked wirh one anmher, bm one can never
be reduced ro the ather.
. Two condusi~ns may be drawn tor rhe pracrice of soc1al history. In
keepmg apart the d1fferent temporal levds, the condirions and limitations
of possible prognosis are revealed. Single evems are difficulr ro forecast
s~nce _rhey are unique in themselves. But the prerequisites for what is possJble_ m the furure e~ b_e predicted insofar as certain possibilities keep repeatmg themselves wnhin the snuctural frame. So we can forecan the con
dirions of possible events, for which there is ample evidence in the history
of prognostication.
Secondly, I would like to draw attention ro the peculiar feature of
modern social history. It seems to be characterized by the fact that since
the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, strucrures rhemsdves
have changed more rapidly chan they did before. Structural changes ha ve
taken on the quality of an event, so ro speak. But rhis statemenr does nor
apply to all strucrures, and the investigarion of their diffi:rent temporal dimensions will remain a subject for research.

III. How Historical Time Could Be Examined within

the Life Cycles of the Various Generations
.
I am now coming to m y third and final pare, and at chis nage I would
hke ta make sorne suggestions a.<l to how historical time could be o:amined
within the life cydes of the various generations. As we al! know, hisrorical
time is a difficulr thing to convey; it lives on sparial background connocations and can be ex:pressed in meraphorical rerms only. Bur chere is a way
of analyzing sources with respect to historical rime. This purpose is served
by rwo anrhropological cacegories that are suired for deducing from written s_ources the notion of time contained in them. I am speaking of the categon_es o~ the space of experience and the horiwn of expectation. There is
no lusronral act rhat is not based on the experiences and expecrations of

Historical Time and Social History

127

those involved. To this exrent we have a pair of metahistorical categories

that ser OiJ.r the condition of potencial history. And boch these categories
are ocellfndy suited for discussing historical time, for the past and the future are jpined mgether in the presence of both experience and ex.pectation. The~ categories are suired also for discovering historical time in empirical res;earch, since, through thcir content, they guide concrete agenrs in
cheir actions relating ro social and political movement. 1 will give you a
simple example: the experience of tbe execution of Charles 1 opened up
Turgot's horizon of expectation when he insisted that Louis XVI should iJ!troduce r~forms so that he might be spared rhe same fate. Turgot warned
his king, put to no avail. However, a temporal connection between the pasr
English aPd rhe coming French Revolution could now be ex.perienced and
explored,. and rhis connection pointed beyond mere chronology. Through
the medium of certain experiences and certain expectations concrete history is produced.
Unfornmarely, I cannot analyze in detail the interplay of experience
and expe~tation on dlis occasion. But let me say this much, that both temporal exreruions are dependent on one another in very different ways. In
experience, historical knowledge i.'i stored that cannot be transformed into
expectation without a break. lf this wcre possible, history would always repeat itself Just like memory and hope, these dimensions have a different
srarus. This is highlighted by a political joke from Russia: "On the horiwn,
we caP see communism, ~ Khrushchev remarked in a speech. Someone interrupted and asked, ~Comrade Khrushchev, what is a horizon?" "Look ir
up in the dictioru.ry,~ he rcplied. Back home, the inquisitive fellow found
che following definition; "Horizon; an imaginary line that separates the
earth from rhe sky and that moves away when being approached."
Thu which ls expected in the future is apparently lin;lired in a differem way from that which lus been expericnced in the pa.<lt. Expectations
rhac one 'may be entertaining can be superseded, but experiences one has
hadare being collected. The space of ex:perience and the horizon of expecrarion cannot thercfore be: related to one another in a static way. They consrirute a Femporal diffcrence within the here and now, by joining together
the past ~nd rhe furure in :ut asymmetrc manner. AH chis means that we
have found a characteriscic of h istorical rime which at che same rime demonstrates irs variabiliry.
M y hiscorical thesis would be that in modern time, the difference be-

128

Chaptrr 7

tween experience and expectation ha5 steadily increased. To be mor~exact

modero time has only been conceived as su eh since expectations have moved
away from all previous experiences. In dw beginning, l explained how the
expression pwgress conceptualized rhis difference for the firsr rime. Ar
this point, I would like to add rhat since the eighteenth cenrury, the entire
political and social vocabulary ha.~ complcrely r.:hanged. Poltica! and social
concepts have a temporal interna! srructure which rells us rhar since rhe
eighreenrh century rhe weight of cxperience and the weight of expenarion
ha ve shifted in favor of rhe latter.
It has been a consstenr linding from Arisrotle ro rhe Enlighrenment
rhar rhe concepts of politicallanguage have prirnarily served to c:ollect experiences and develop chem rheorctically. The notions obtaincd from rhis
such as monarchy, arisrocracy, democracy, and rheir degenera te varieties:
were sufiicient f~r co~dusions to be drawn for the furure from past experiences processed m rh1s W<ly. And rhis is true despite changing social strucrures. W~at could ~e expe~red frorn the future could be derived directly
from prev10us expenence. Smce the Enlighrenmem rhis has changed radically. Ler us look at the old general ter m "res publica," under which the
speci~c f?rms of rule were lisred. During che Enlightenmem, al! cypes of
cons~ttuuon were forced into an alrernative choice. There was only the Repubhc: everyrh1ng else was dcspotism. The decisive aspect of these antonyms is rheir temporaliz.arion. All constitutions were given a temporal indicaror. The path of history led away from che ryranny of the past- toward
rhe republc of the furure. The notion of "republic" which wa 5 fil h:d om
wirh experiences became a concept of expectarion.
It was a change of perspeccive that can be demonstraced by raking
Kam, for example. The republic was fur him a historical objecrive rhat could
be deduced from pra([ical reason. In amiciparion of this future, he used
the ~ew .expression "republicanism." Republicanism indicared a principie
?fh1sto~Jcal movemem, rhe promoting of which was a moral and polirical
1mperatrve.

~epublicanism meant a concepr of movemem rhat achieved for polit-

caJ ac~1~n whar progress promised ro achieve for history in general. Ir served
to annnpate rhe forthcoming hisrorical movernent in rheory and ro influence ir in p~actice. The temporal difference berween che forros of rule previOtJsly expenenced and the constitution ro be expecred and inrended, was
conceprualized by this term.

Historical Time and Soal History

I hav~ now defined the temporal structure of a concept rhat recurs in

nurnerous subsequent concepts, and the projections based on it have been
superseding and outdoing one another. Republicanism was followed by
democratism, liberalism, socialism, c:ommunism, and fascism. Considered
from a temporal angle, all of rhem have something in co~mon. At the tim_e
when rhese conceprs were crea red, they had no content m terms of expenence. 'Whereas rhe Aristotelian notions of forms of government were direcred at the finite possibilities of political organizaran so that one could
be deduced from another, rhe new concepts of movemenr were rneant to.
open up a new furure. The lower their content in terrns of experience, rhe
greater we~e rhe expecrations rhey created~this would be a shon formula
for the nevj- type of poltica! and historical concepts.
Our amhropological premise can thus be veri6ed semantically. Modero time is characterized by the fact char rhe difference berween experience
and expectation has increased. Of course, the demems of experience and of
expectation change positions ro rhe extent that the projected system~ are being realized. But the temporal rension that was once created has left tts mark
on our poltica! and sociallanguage ro this day. The new concepts of movement served che purpose of reorganizing rhe masses, released from the system of estates, under the banner of new slogans. In this respecr rhey also
had a slogan-forming effecr that could be instrumental in creating parties.
Polirical and social conceprs become the navigational instrumenrs of
rhe changipg movement of hisrory. They do not only indicate or record
given faas: They themselves become factors in the formacion of c:onsciousness and d).e control of behavior. This brings us to the point where linguistic analysis of experiences of time merges into social history. Properly speaking, the la~rer would require sorne differenriati_on ~n terms o~ ~e specific
leve! invol'>ied and pragmatism oflanguage. Bur m vtew of out mmal theme,
the above ~ill suffice. The linguistic reRection of the changing experiences
of rime is :probably one of rhe speci6cally hisrorical conrriburions ro the
concepts of social history, regardless of the extem to which they are other.
wise contr?lled by systematic considerations.
I havt! attempted, in three steps, to formulare the challenge that anses
out of the ~uestion ofhistorical time and that has a bearing on social history.
I have tried ro show historiographically that temporalization was at
rhe beginqing of the modern history rhat today is being studied &o m a
social-historical angle with regard to general change.
1

130

Chapur 7

Secondly, I h.ave uied, by using the antonyms of"evenr" d ..

~
h
h
:m srructure, l~ s ow t eoretically rhat we depend on the disrinction berween differem tl~e kvels in order to be able ro work within social hisrory.
Thmll~, f ~ave employed the metahistorical categories of ex.perience
and cxptttanon ~~ _order ro show how the change of hismrical rime nsdf
can be made empmcally transparenr.
;:::.-

1-

h; ..

Transfated by Adelheis Bakrr

The Unknown Future and the Art of Prognosis

,.,.
;

"'
'

h"

:! f.''<

"Can one recognire rhar which is past if one does not even understand
thar which is presenr~ And who can conceptual! y appraise what the present
is without knowing wh:n is to come in rhe future? What is ro come determines what is present, and tbis determines whar is pasr." These words are
those of Johann Georg Hamann. :;or every reader who metaphorically construes rillje as a line th;u runs from che pase through the fictive point of the
present ittto tht": open future, Hanunn's statement is nonsensical. For imellectual hifroriam, iris readily apparenr rhac Hamann,s words draw on rhe
expectatiqn of salvar ion hisrory which is acc~ssibl~ through revelation and
offers a kttowledge of the furure, affecting not only every individual p~r
sonally bqt also world history in its entirety. Por political or social hisrorians
pmf~ssio~ally occupied with the past and who, for instance. investigare it
by sttki~ out causal chains lead.ing into the present, the future rema.ins
systemari~ally left out. Such historians migbt concede on psychological or
e~istemo~ogi:al grounds that their own cxpect.ations _migh~ influence the
kind of ql).esuons rhey pose and that these quesuons m1ghr snmu.l.lte the so-

called CO!lnitive intereses (Erkmntnisintemse) that rhey pursu~. Th.ey can,

after al!, ~ntenain a few thoughts about the future without compromising
rheir pro~ssional inregrity. More is required, nowadays, of rh.: sp.:cia.lized
d.isciplines of political science, economics, and sociology, insofar as they
pruject stt;ucrures (as opposed to individual cases) in order to deduce fu cure
trends from them.

1
1

.1