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Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time

Reinhart Koselleck (Translation),

Keith Tribe (Translator)

4.21 · Rating details · 191 ratings · 9 reviews

With a new, interpretive introduction by the translator, this revised edition of Koselleck's most acclaimed work is once again available in English. Koselleck explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: What kind of experience is opened up by the emergence of modernity? Koselleck explores the concept of historical time by posing the question: what kind ...more

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Paperback, 344 pages

Published June 16th 2004 by Columbia University Press (first published January 1st 1985)

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Mar 17, 2020 Marc rated it really liked it

Shelves: historiography, time, modernity

I have a few more books to go in my temporary reading program on time and temporality, but I'm pretty sure this book will be the highlight of the series I've devoured. Like most works by German history theorist Reinhart Koselleck, this is a collection of essays, published at different times, and therefore to some degree heterogeneous. The common denominator is the importance of temporality and of concepts, which themselves also evolve over time.

The first and last articles in particular are groun ...more

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Mar 20, 2020 Sense of History rated it really liked it

Shelves: cultural-history, french-revolution, intellectual-history, methodology-of-history, modern-times, philosophy-of-history, temporality, theory-of-history

This book contains 14 essays that Reinhart Koselleck wrote in the 1960s and 1970s. They present different angles on the study of history, but the common denominator is always the importance of temporality, namely the relationship between past, present and future. There is a lot of semantics involved in this relationship, certainly because Koselleck is a follower of a conceptual approach: the study of what a particular concept meant in a specific historical context, and how it evolved. That is, o This book contains 14 essays that Reinhart Koselleck wrote in the 1960s and 1970s. They present different angles on the study of history, but the common denominator is always the importance of temporality, namely the relationship between past, present and future. There is a lot of semantics involved in this relationship, certainly because Koselleck is a follower of a conceptual approach: the study of what a particular concept meant in a specific historical context, and how it evolved. That is, of course, quite theoretical, and this book requires a lot from the reader, but Koselleck always does his best to anchor his insights in a concrete anthropology. In particular, the concepts of 'space of experience' (what someone or a collectivity has experienced and takes from the past) and the 'horizon of expectation' (what someone or a collective expects from the largely unknown future) and their interaction are important perspectives. Finally, we must emphasize that Koselleck's view is almost always focused on modernity, in particular Western culture and society, as it gradually developed between the 16th and 18th centuries. This sketches the global framework of this book.

It is mainly in the first and last article that Koselleck explains his basic thesis. Namely that in the period 1750-1850 there has been a fundamental shift in the attitude of (Western) people towards the past and future. Until then, past-present and future were roughly in the same dimension, time and history were one intertwined whole, with constant repetition and cyclic movements, so that much lessons could be learned, especially in view of Christian salvation history. This homogeneous temporality was shattered by rationalism, the Enlightenment and some very radical events such as the French Revolution. The ever-increasing acceleration of changes and new insights made man's gaze resolutely turn to the future: it was there that (now secular) salvation could be found, in an ascending line of continuous progression. This also meant that the past fell from its pedestal: that was now a really 'gone' past, where man was not yet enlightened and things were worse. Because of the distance to that past, it could become the object of 'objective' research, as an external object, aimed at a 'true' reconstruction of the facts, and of course with the aim of confirming the ascending line to present and future. History immediately evolved from a fairly formless collection of stories about the past into an independent entity (a 'collective singular'), namely the history, with its own inexorable law of progress.

Of course, this is a rough summary, Koselleck goes into much more detail about the gradual evolution, even in fits and starts, of this modern temporality. He also does this much more didactically than in his very condensed article "History" in the conceptual work Begriffsgeschichte that I read earlier (see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). And he also does it with a broader view, wider than the German cultural world, although this remains predominant. In the various other articles in this collection he explores some aspects of the new temporality experience, but again and again with a very conceptual and philosophical focus. You also occasionally see him reformulating parts of his theory, sometimes with different accents, such as an eye for a structural rather than an evenemential approach, and the importance of perspectivism and linguistics. But time and again he returns to the fundamental disruption between experience and expectation in modernity. For him it is the key to empirical historical research: “experience and expectation are two categories appropriate for the treatment of historical time because of the way that they embody past and future. The categories are also suitable for detecting historical time in the domain of empirical research since, when substantially augmented, they provide guidance to concrete agencies in the course of social or political movement.”

I cannot possibly go into all aspects of this work here, it is far too rich, an inexhaustible source of insights (to quote just one: in the 12th article Koselleck discusses the importance of dreams as a source of historical reality, because also dreams have a strong temporality aspect). Maybe it's time to make some criticisms. Detailed criticism would lead us too far, but after Koselleck several other authors have zoomed in on the emergence of this break with the past, and they have made various corrections and nuances. Zachary Schiffman, for example, in his awesome book "The Birth of the Past" (see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) does not situate this break between 1750 and 1850, but earlier, namely between Descartes and Montesquieu, so rather 1650-1750. It’s an endless debate, of course, surely if your analysis is almost exclusively focused on writers and thinkers. This immediately exposes a weakness in Koselleck's approach: it is too intellectual, too conceptual; he takes too little into account the social, economic and political context.

More fundamentally, this book, published in German in 1979, but going back to articles from the 1960s and 1970s, exudes the spirit of its times. For example, Koselleck elaborates on the relationship between conceptual history and the then very popular new social history; and he also analyzes the relationship between event and structure, curiously attaching high predictive value to a study of structures. But it is mainly the focus on the modernist sense of time that feels somewhat outdated. Koselleck's analysis is now half a century old, our world has changed radically and it remains to be seen whether modernism still has the same relevance as it did then. Various writers, including Francois Hartog in particular, emphasize that we have entered the phase of 'presentism' with globalization, the end of the Cold War, and postmodernism since the 1980s. No longer the future, but only the present is decisive in our temporality feeling. Because that present has become so comprehensive and rich, the past is no longer the servant of the future, but of the present. I will not go into this further, because I do have my reservations about this theory (see my review of Hartog's work https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but the fact is that the modern concept of history outlined by Koselleck is no longer ubiquitous.

Nevertheless, this book remains a groundbreaking study. Because of the linguistic and other turns temporality thinking in the line of Koselleck hasn’t really broken through, but I feel that this concept of distance between the space of experience and the horizon of expectation can still be very inspiring for empirical historical research, with a strong social-anthropological impact. (4.5 stars) ...more

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Jun 29, 2020 Laura Esteves rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

TERMINEI ESSA DESGRAÇA DESSE LIVRO na moral ler koselleck eh igual ver dark (kleo, 2020) pois vc nao entende nada mas ai no final vc entende tudo

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Dec 27, 2015 Jaro marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: ph-h-philosophy-of-history

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Dec 17, 2012 Matthewaqq rated it it was amazing

The thesis of the iterability and hence the instructiveness of historical experience was itself a moment of experience: historia magistra vitae. No prediction departed from the space of previous history, and this was true in the same way for astrological and theological prophecies which remained tied to planetary laws or old promises.
During the Enlightenment all this changed slowly and then, with the French Revolution, quite radically. The horizon of prognosis was first extended, then finally br The thesis of the iterability and hence the instructiveness of historical experience was itself a moment of experience: historia magistra vitae. No prediction departed from the space of previous history, and this was true in the same way for astrological and theological prophecies which remained tied to planetary laws or old promises.
During the Enlightenment all this changed slowly and then, with the French Revolution, quite radically. The horizon of prognosis was first extended, then finally broken. While the exemplary nature of the Ancientsor the figures of biblical typology retained their control of the future until the eighteenth century, with the turbulence of the Revolution this was no longer possible. The decade from 1789 to 1799 was experienced by the participants as the start of a future that had never before existed. Even those who invoked their knowledge of the past could not avoid confirming the incomparability of the Revolution. Its incomparability did not so much consist in the new circumstances, suggested Rupert Kornmann, as “in the extreme speed with which they arise or are introduced. . . . Our contemporary history is a repetition of the actions and events of thousands of years, all in the briefest of possible periods.”Even those who were not taken by surprise were overwhelmed by the accelerated tempo which seemed to open up a new and different age.
Through its consciousness of a general renewal, which consigned previous history to a faded prehistory, the Revolution altered the space of experience. The new history became a long-term process which, while it could be directed, all the same unfolded itself above the heads of the participants. This being the case, conclusions drawn from the past about the future not only seem out of place but also appear impossible. The “ruse of reason” forbids one to learn from history; it subjects men. Apart from the accuracy of Hegel’s dictum, it indicates a new experience. Hegel’s experience does invoke “history,” but history in its totality, which, in its rising consciousness of liberty, was drawn to the French Revolution. The processual course of this history is always unique. ...more

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Jul 07, 2018 Rodrigo rated it it was amazing

Eu estava buscando um fonte de leitura para entender melhor a questão do revisionismo histórico. Essa aqui é uma boa referência. O autor se baseia na mudança de visão (séc. XVIII) ocorrida no conceito de história, de algo pontual ou contextualizado (Historie) para algo linear e conectado (Geschichte). Muito em razão do questionamento do apocalipse, que tornou o tempo mais "elástico". Isso permite criar-se uma visão de futuro elaborada. Passado e futuro são conectados. São experiência e expectati Eu estava buscando um fonte de leitura para entender melhor a questão do revisionismo histórico. Essa aqui é uma boa referência. O autor se baseia na mudança de visão (séc. XVIII) ocorrida no conceito de história, de algo pontual ou contextualizado (Historie) para algo linear e conectado (Geschichte). Muito em razão do questionamento do apocalipse, que tornou o tempo mais "elástico". Isso permite criar-se uma visão de futuro elaborada. Passado e futuro são conectados. São experiência e expectativa, cuja tensão faz surgir o tempo histórico. Quanto menor a experiência, maior a expectativa.

A partir daí, análises históricas tornaram-se “possíveis”. O autor cita o exemplo de Lorenz von Stein e as suas previsões sobre a constituição prussiana. Mas não só previsões como ações de construção do futuro: “Se o futuro da história moderna abre-se para o desconhecido e, ao mesmo tempo, torna-se planejável, então ele tem que ser planejado.”

O autor também destaca como a história dos conceitos está diretamente relacionada à história social, complementando que conceitos são temos cujo significado costuma não só ser complexo como mutável (no tempo e na perspectiva). E isso torna a análise histórica relativa. Schiller: “A história do mundo é a história do julgamento do mundo”.

À análise, soma-se a ideia de que o acaso passou a estar fora da história. Afinal, se tudo precisa fazer sentido, não há lugar para o acaso.

Também se comenta sobre conceitos antitéticos (que se opõem) fazem parte da análise histórica, como cristão x pagão. Nesta caso, análise é igual a divisão, que contém em si a oposição.

Mais ao fim, o autor destaca a oposição entre história e poesia com essa frase de Alsted: "Aquele que inventa peca contra a história; aquele que não inventa peca contra a poesia”. É uma revelação da complexidade de se tratar res fictae e res factae (ficção e fato), ou seja, objetividade e perspectiva do historiador. Lembrei da "fake fiction" do Haddad aqui...

Percebo que, sem a arbitrariedade de Deus, uma fenomenologia da história parece ser inevitável. Cada deusinho historiador com seu ponto de vista. Não mais a história de Deus com a humanidade, mas a história da própria humanidade. Eu entendo melhor o ponto de vista, ainda que consiga antever as altas confusões decorrentes dele. ...more

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Nov 29, 2021 Dermonduebersoho rated it liked it · review of another edition

Das meiste ist bei Koselleck immer ziemlich langweilig weil er ein hängengebliebener Konservativer ist, aber der Aufsatz zu Erfahrung und Erwartung als zentrale Kategorie der Geschichte ist ziemlich genial und man könnte wenn man es normativ liest sagen der gleiche Take den Benjamin in über den Begriff der Geschichte über die unerfüllten wünsche der Vergangenheit bringt, oder jameson und fisher mit anderen Beispielen.gibt auch einen interessanten Aufsatz dazu von jose Manuel Romero cuevas

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Dec 01, 2017 Patrick rated it it was ok

Shelves: europe, theory

Oh my god this was one of the most difficult to understand books I have ever read. Not easy. Would only recommend to those die-hard interested in intellectual history and historiography.

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Sep 05, 2014 Guilherme Martins rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hist-ria

Ótimo livro para se pensar o questionamento da construção histórica, principalmente dentro do campo conceitual (mudanças e manutenções que um termo ou expressão pode ter sofrido) para influir em outras áreas. As passagens com ampla transformações exigem a dominação conceitual para se chegar a uma certa dominação dos fatos, e Koselleck procura demonstrar isso. Pensar em como o fazer histórico, não se trata de um simples fazer, mas de elaboração de horizontes a partir de experiências vividas e com ...more

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About Reinhart Koselleck

Reinhart Koselleck

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Reinhart Koselleck was a German historian, considered as one of the most important historians of the twentieth century. He held an original position in the historical discipline and was not part of any historical 'school', working in such varied fields as Conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), the epistemology of history, linguistics, the foundations of an anthropology of history and social hist ...more