Sediments of Time: On Possible Histories

by Reinhart Koselleck, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (Editor/Translator), Sean Franzel (Editor/Translator)

Sediments of Time features the most important essays by renowned German historian Reinhart Koselleck not previously available in English, several of them essential to his theory of history. The volume sheds new light on Koselleck's crucial concerns, including his theory of sediments of time; his theory of historical repetition, duration, and acceleration; his encounters with philosophical hermeneutics and political and legal thought; his concern with the limits of historical meaning; and his views on historical commemoration, including that of the Second World War and the Holocaust. A critical introduction addresses some of the challenges and potentials of Koselleck's reception in the Anglophone world.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Essays

344 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

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 history, the history of law and the history of government.

Reviews

[Sense of History]

This collection contains articles that the German Theory of History specialist Reinhart Koselleck published between 1980 and 2006, thus in the later years of his life. In this book Koselleck only sporadically touches upon the view for which he has become best known, namely the new sense of temporality introduced by modernity in the period 1750-1850, with a strict separation between present and past, and an absolute orientation towards the future. Instead, he focuses on a whole range of other themes. I only mention a few here.

To begin with the opening article, which gave the title to this book: 'Sediments of Time' (in German Zeitschichten). Koselleck refers to the classic distinction between linear and cyclical views of history, but there are also many other layers of time, because certain events move within recurring structures with their own temporality. He refers, among other things, to the difference in generations, to political, social and cultural structures that flow within their particular temporality. He concludes with propagatin a multilayered theory of time, but does not elaborate on that; a missed opportunity, I think (see my end note below).

An absolutely wonderful essay is “Constancy and Change of All Contemporary Histories: Conceptual-Historical Notes”. That is a very abstract title for an indeed very theoretical subject, namely a musing on what contemporary history (‘Zeitgeschichte’) actually is. Koselleck argues that it is necessary to temporalize the different time dimensions themselves (past, present and future). He works out a matrix model that can make you dizzy for a while, but which has a very distinct logic. For example, he distinguishes "present past, present present, present future", to indicate how we experience the past, present and future in the now; "past present, past pasts, past futures" are the experiences of time at different moments in the past; and logically, "future present, future pasts, future futures" indicate temporality experiences we can have in the future. “The duration, change, and singularity of events and their sequences can be determined on the basis of this model”, Koselleck writes, and indeed it is a matrix in which the constant shifting of temporalities can be captured. I realize that this is all fairly abstract, but the relevance immediately becomes clear when Koselleck draws the conclusion that “Every history is Zeitgeschichte and every history was, is, and will be a history of the present”, simple because that present always is shifting, and our time perspective with it. It is a view that clearly reveals both the strengths and limitations of the study of history.

Another brilliant essay deals with the linguistic aspects of our experience of reality, and the consequences for the study of history. Here, Koselleck confirms and corrects the proponents of the cultural/narrative turn, like Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit. The confirmation actually lies in a very obvious observation: that our entire experience of reality and therefore also of temporalities is imbued in linguistics, we always perceive reality through language. But Koselleck points out that a lot of pre-linguistic elements also play a role in human experiences, which he arranges in the anthropological relationships “earlier-later, inside-outside, above-below”. And it are precisely those pre-linguistic elements that make it difficult to capture reality completely through language, and that includes historical events. There’s a fundamental difference between historical reality and its narrative translation. "This difference between a history in the moment of its occurrence and its linguistic processing remains in each case constitutive for the relationship between the two." That was also the conclusion of the narrativists, but Koselleck reverses their conclusion: they stated that historical research is so tied to language that its value is only relative; but for Koselleck it is just the other way around, and the fact that events can never be fully captured in language offers permanent opportunities for historical research to supplement, correct and deepen our views on the past.

These are just a few of the poignant views this book contains. I know this all looks very abstract and difficult to follow, but it are absolutely brilliant trains of thought. It has to be said though that Koselleck’s way of looking at things often isn’t completely satisfying. By that I mean that he touches upon some matters, formulates a great insight, but then but he concludes quite suddenly, regularly without working out his reasoning all the way to the end. I guess he wanted to leave room for others to do that.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with Koselleck's previous books, this work contains a collection of articles, each only 10 to 20 pages, in which the author explores a particular theme from the theory and philosophy of history. He previously impressed me with Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, in which he presents his theory on the modernist concept of time (the break between past and present and the future-oriented perspective). That book contained articles from the period 1960-1980, this collection covers the years 1980 to 2006, and is much more diverse in terms of themes, for example on hermeneutics, linguistics, memory culture and a number of other aspects of history theory. Overall, I am slightly less impressed than with his "Futures Past", but that does not prevent this collection from containing a number of brilliant essays. Koselleck confirms that he is rightly called one of the most important historical theorists of the 20th century. More on this book in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question my pick for publication of the year, made all the more wondrously experiential by having no idea it existed until the day Stanford published it. For the scholar familiar with Critique/Practice this is a no brainer. Thus, for a handful of subterranean bipeds this will be a joyous occasion. Koselleck's ontologico-heuristic cleansing for the empirical residue of technic-historicism here is a treasure trove.

[Catholicus Magus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koselleck's Sediments of Time, a book dealing with the conceptual development and refinement of temporal axioms, is an important insight into the philosophical refinement of time within the post-Kantian paradigm; with the proliferation of studies around issues such as accelerationism, hauntology, or other facets which question the monotonic, unipolar dimension of past transitioning into present and future - Koselleck demonstrates these as linguistic clarifications occurring only within the past two to three centuries. While rather demanding on historical background qua the French Revolution and German Idealism, Koselleck provides the reader with a presentation breaking the Spenglerian and secularized Christian eschatology which determines much of modern political, philosophical, historical, sociological, or other fields creations on a temporal plane. By stressing a phenomenological plane of cultural intentionality, in the tradition of Edmund Husserl, Koselleck refreshing solves the traditional problem within history of privileging primary sources v. metanarratives. Any would be philosopher, historian, politician, classicist - simply put, whatever your interest which involves a brushing up upon history - would do far worse than to consult Koselleck as a critical commentator on a well-stratified dialogue.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wichtiges Buch zur Methodologie von Geschichtsschreibung.

[Oksana R-H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will be so honest, I really struggled to understand this book. I am still trying to parse through individual chapters. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's attempt to interpret time as both linear and cyclical. Very interesting concept, I am just having difficulty parsing it apart.

[Mills College Library]

901 K86s 2018