This transformation of the experience of time has been described in terms of two distinct forms of time: whereas preliberal humanity experienced time as cyclical, modernity thinks of it as linear. While suggestive and enlightening, this linear conception of time is still premised on a fundamental continuity between past, present, and future. Liberalism in its several guises in fact advances a conception of fractured time, of time fundamentally disconnected, and shapes humans to experience different times as if they were radically different countries.
