Hidden in Historicism: Time Regimes since 1700 / Edition 1

by Harry Jansen

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367421007
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/24/2020
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

List of illustrations ix

Preface x

1 Introduction 1

Part 1 In search of new times 25

2 The empty time of the Enlightenment 27

3 The incarnated time of the Counter-Enlightenment 46

Part 2 The romanticist time of politics 65

4 Hegel's time of the state 67

5 Ranke's undulating time of continuing entities 86

Part 3 The ambiguous time of societies 101

6 Tocqueville's time of an aristocratic and democratic society 103

7 Marx's synchronicity of the non-synchronous 126

Part 4 The kairotic time of cultures 149

8 Nietzsche's Augenblick 151

9 Huizinga and the historical sensation 172

Part 5 The time out of joint 193

10 Historicist times in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 1: France and the Anglo-Saxon world 195

11 Historicist times in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries 2: the German way 214

12 Epilogue: the benefits of historicist times 225

Bibliography 237

Index 251

Editorial Reviews

"[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

From the Publisher