Chronos: L'Occident aux prises avec le Temps

by François Hartog

Omniprésent et inéluctable, tel est Chronos. Mais il est d'abord celui qu'on ne peut saisir. L'Insaisissable, mais, tout autant et du même coup, celui que les humains n'ont jamais renoncé à maîtriser. Innombrables ont été les stratégies déployées pour y parvenir, ou le croire, qu'on aille de l'Antiquité à nos jours, en passant par le fameux paradoxe d'Augustin : aussi longtemps que personne ne lui demande ce qu'est le temps, il le sait ; sitôt qu'on lui pose la question, il ne sait plus.Ce livre est un essai sur l'ordre des temps et les époques du temps. À l'instar de Buffon reconnaissant les "Époques" de la Nature, on peut distinguer des époques du temps. Ainsi va-t-on des manières grecques d'appréhender Chronos jusqu'aux graves incertitudes contemporaines, avec un long arrêt sur le temps des chrétiens, conçu et mis en place par l'Église naissante : un présent pris entre l'Incarnation et le Jugement dernier. Ainsi s'engage la marche du temps occidental.On suit comment l'emprise du temps chrétien s'est diffusée et imposée, avant qu'elle ne reflue de la montée en puissance du temps moderne, porté par le progrès et en marche rapide vers le futur.Aujourd'hui, l'avenir s'est obscurci et un temps inédit a surgi, vite désigné comme l'Anthropocène, soit le nom d'une nouvelle ère géologique où c'est l'espèce humaine qui est devenue la force principale : une force géologique. Que deviennent alors les anciennes façons de saisir Chronos, quelles nouvelles stratégies faudrait-il formuler pour faire face à ce futur incommensurable et menaçant, alors même que nous nous trouvons encore plus ou moins enserrés dans le temps évanescent et contraignant de ce que j'ai appelé le présentisme ?

François Hartog

Genres: History, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2020

About the author

François Hartog is a French historian and Chair of Modern and Antique Historiography at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Born in 1946, Hartog attended the 'École normale supérieure. A former student of Jean-Pierre Vernant and assistant to Reinhart Koselleck, Hartog’s early work focused on the intellectual history of ancient Greece and historiography, while his recent work deals mainly with temporality.

His most recent book to be published in English, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (Columbia University Press, 2015, translated by Saskia Brown), engages our “ways of relating to the past, present, and future.” Hartog also tackles the concept of “presentism,” or how we adhere to present-day ideas to attempt to understand the past via interpretations of writing as the “motor of history” and the “contradictory qualities of our contemporary presentist relation to time.”

Hartog’s research frequently attempts to situate the progressions of time and memory against the realities of repetition and methodologies of understanding history from various theoretical reference points.

His other publications include Mémoire d'Ulysse: récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne (Gallimard, 1996), Anciens, modernes, sauvages (Galaade, 2005), and Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne (La Découverte, 2007), as well as countless articles, lectures, and, more recently, a series of podcasts on ancient and modern history.

Selected Bibliography
-Le Miroir d'Hérodote. Essai sur la représentation de l'autre, Gallimard, 1980.

-Le XIXe siècle et l'histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges, PUF, 1988.

-Les Usages politiques du passé, avec Jacques Revel, EHESS, 2001,

-Régimes d'historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, Le Seuil, 2002 (Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, Columbia University Press, 2015; translated by Saskia Brown)

-Anciens, modernes, sauvages, Galaade, 2005.

-Évidence de l'histoire. Ce que voient les historiens, EHESS, 2005.

-Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne, La Découverte, 2007.

-Croire en l'histoire, Flammarion, 2013.

-Partir pour la Grèce, Flammarion, 2015.

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this courtesy of NetGalley. It's out on 27 September.

This is definitely a case of "it's not you, it's me".

This book was not written with me in mind. I do not have the literary, philosophical, theological, or even historical background to fully understand all that Hartog is discussing here - I didn't even recognise maybe half the names of people he referenced. There were large sections of this book I just didn't fully follow: some of the philosophical musings, and some of the conclusions he draws as well, went right over my head. Some of that is on me, and I'm not ashamed of it. Some of it, though, is on the writing, and I'm not sure whether that's a factor of being translated or a factor of academic French expectations or something else - or let's be honest, probably a combination of everything.

Did I learn something? Absolutely. It was utterly intriguing to explore the different conceptions of time from an ancient Greek point of view and how Christianity made/makes use of that, in terms of what it means in the now/not yet of the Incarnation/expectation of Second Coming. The challenges to the Christian conception of time and history were interesting enough, but then I was particularly taken with the discussion of time today, and the consequences of both the atomic bombs and Auschwitz (the idea that time has stopped in some sense, as there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity). And the discussion of urgency and the acceleration of modern life and how progress is the only way to show success...

I enjoyed it, mostly... or perhaps, I was challenged - usually pleasurably - and that's something I don't mind. But you definitely need to be prepared to have your brain working the whole time.

[Federico Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro excelente en donde Hartog descubre como se configuró la concepción del tiempo en occidente a partir del cristianismo, dandole un uso a la noción de régimen de historicidad. Todo eso con el fin de problematizar la epoca actual avasallada por el presentisimo y las implicaciones que el antropoceno plantea para nosotros y sus efectos en como sentimos el tiempo.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chronos: The West Confronts Time by François Hartog and translated by S R Gilbert gives the reader so much to consider about time that it almost demands a second (and likely more) reading.

I say that not because it is confusing, it isn't, but rather that it offers so much to consider about the history of time and things I haven't generally considered from a time-centered perspective. With so much information that could alter some of my perceptions, I found myself going off on my own mental tangents. While that is a definite positive of the book, who doesn't enjoy a book that generates additional ideas, it also meant I sometimes lost the thread of what Hartog was saying. So I intend to digest this information and then reread the book in a few months.

As a history of time I think the book serves to place so much of our history along side how time is perceived and used. From that history comes the confrontation with our contemporary world and how our understanding of time plays into the many crises we face. It is this latter aspect that has me rethinking how I view time and also recasting some issues and ideas in a time-centric understanding. Am I thinking about time as Hartog does? I'm frankly not sure, but I do know that working to understand his ideas has helped me to gain a better understanding and appreciation of where we stand now.

I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in history in general as well as those who want to better understand where we have been, where we might be going, and how to place it all into some context.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[David Guerrero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronos is an academic exploration of the conception of time in Western culture. How did the Greek civilization understand the concept of time? How was it portrayed in their mythology and customs? What changes did it have with the arrival of early Christianity, or later Catholicism? How does the modern idea of ​​'time' affect us, both socially and psychologically?

François Hartog, with the expertise of the great historian that he is, embarks us on a fascinating journey to answer each of these questions.

This is not an easy journey. Sometimes if you blink you can get lost in its dense chapters. However, is it worth it? If that's exactly what you're looking for, like me, then it's worth it.

That's where you might stop to think. Maybe this book is not for you, or maybe it requires a bit of effort to be fully enjoyed. However, if you are willing to dedicate your time and attention to it, this is a unique book that you cannot miss.

[Arevik Heboyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Academic writing on perception, and understanding of time in Western Culture, is a slower read due to the style of writing, but it such a great read for anyone, who is somewhat prepared to understand the author, and has previous knowledge of the history of the subject, and philosophy. I believe that was the reader that the author has in mind because grand ideas presented in the book, do not always break them down, and the assumption is made, that you'd understand where the author is coming from.
still, an amazing read, took me way longer than expected, but I deeply enjoyed the mental state this work put me into.

[Rayfes Mondal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of science books and time is fascinating. I looked forward to learning the perspectives about time presented in this book but sadly I could not comprehend this book and gave up after reading the beginning of several chapters.

[Nello Maruca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opera di una chiarezza straordinaria, é una vera e propria Storia della storia, o per meglio dire del pensiero storico.

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 2 out of 5]

The French are glad to die for love write their academic books incomprehensibly.

Alright, maybe "incomprehensibly" is an exaggeration, but their school of academic writing loves challenging readers (something the Romanian school of academic writing has cheerfully copied, but that's a topic for another time). If you are reading their books, you are presumed to be not just highly educated, but also in the know about their topic of choice. They write, in short, as if you had in-depth previous knowledge of all topics at hand, except for the main thesis they wish to express.

Perhaps it's because of this that the book as a whole has a somewhat atemporal (or perhaps anachronistic feel). Everyone is oddly in dialogue, and you feel that time barely passes between Saint Augustine (late 4th century - early 5th century) and Blaise Pascal (17th century, over a millennium later). The French Revolution (late 18th c.) is mentioned almost in the same breath as Roland Barthes (d. 1980). For a book about the concept of time, this is odd. For a book about the eternal present, this is oddly fitting.

I was expecting better structure and more of an explanation of how the concept of time influenced the Western world. Instead, I got a text that seems to follow Christian mysticism a whole lot more than I'd bargained for, with an author who seemed almost to regret that the initial apocalyptic views of early Christians were modified over centuries and millennia. (There's a whole thing about the prophet Daniel having this idea that there would be four empires in the history of the world, with a fifth and final divine one crashing them all; and then who Christians thought those empires referred to, and their debates on that. Not to put too fine a point upon it, but those chapters could've been a shorter essay.)

There's also a bit of a (stretched?) explanation of how the secular world borrowed ideas and terminology from the Church, which makes sense, until it somehow doesn't (I can sort of see people during the Renaissance thinking of the ancients as living during "better" times, in keeping with the Biblical ideas that the world was better in the past; I'm not so sure about the arrest of time in a very mystical, Church-ish fashion during the French Revolution).

I found it interesting to see the way Christians calculated and recalculated time over the ages, as well as how they changed calendars. The main point of the book, dividing time into "chronos" (our usual, "objective" time), "kairos" (a somewhat spiritual time, if I understand correctly, where the end of the world is constantly approaching) and "krisis" (a time of change, if I got it right), is interesting. But the amount of effort needed to understand what the author is saying is a clear minus for me; it's hard to tell if someone has a point or not if you spend more time figuring out their argument than weighing it in your own mind.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for providing me with a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.