1st Edition

Hidden in Historicism Time Regimes since 1700

By Harry Jansen Copyright 2020
    270 Pages
    by Routledge

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    Hidden in Historicism considers how the nineteenth-century philosophy of historicism depicts three "forgotten time regimes": a time of rise and fall, an ambiguous time of synchronicity of the non-synchronous, and a time in which decisive moments dominate.

    Before the eighteenth century, time was past-oriented. This inversed in the Enlightenment, when the future became dominating. Today, this time of progress continues to be embraced as a "time of the modern". Yet, inequality, increasing violence and climate change lead to doubts over a bright future. In this book, Harry Jansen moves away from the heritage of Reinhart Koselleck and his single time of the modern towards a historicist, threefold temporal approach to history writing. In the time regime of the twenty-first century past, present and future coexist. It is a heterogeneous time that takes on the three forms of historicism. Jansen’s study shows how all three times exist together in current historiography and contribute to a better understanding of the world today.

    Based on the idea that an incarnated time rules everything that happens it reality, the book offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing discussion about time and time regimes in contemporary philosophy and theory of history for students and scholars, both time specialists and the non-specialist.

    1 Introduction

    Part 1: In Search of New Times

    2 The Empty Time of the Enlightenment

    3 The Incarnated Time of the Counter-Enlightenment

    Part 2: The Romanticist Time of Politics

    4 Hegel’s Time of the State

    5 Ranke’s Undulating Time of Continuing Entities

    Part 3: The Ambiguous Time of Societies

    6 Tocqueville’s Time of an Aristocratic and Democratic Society

    7 Marx’s Synchronicity of the Non-Synchronous

    Part 4: The Kairotic Time of Cultures

    8 Nietzsche’s Augenblick

    9 Huizinga’s Time of the Historical Sensation

    Part 5: The Time out of Joint 

    10 Historicist Times in the 20th and 21st Century 1: France and the Anglo-Saxon World

    11 Historicist Times in the 20th and 21st Century 2: The German Way

    12 Epilogue: The Benefits of Historicist Times.

    Biography

    Until his retirement, Harry Jansen lectured philosophy of history at Radboud University Nijmegen.

    "[A]n extraordinarily rich book … with interesting insights on almost every page. Above all, it is a very ambitious book in which [Harry Jansen] introduce[s] a surprising and completely new division in the Western time regimes since 1700."

    Frank Ankersmit