Koselleck on histories versus History or: historical ontology

versus historical epistemology

In fact each changing thing has the measure of its time in itself; it exists,
even if nothing else did; no two things in the world have the same measure of
time In fact there are (one can say this truly and defiantly) in the universe
infinitely many times (Herder)1.

1. Introduction
After 1945 the conflict between the West and the Soviet empire determined the worlds
political realities for almost half a century. This bi-polar order broke down in 1989 with the
implosion of the Soviet empire. Then Francis Fukuyama came along announcing in his The
End of History that a mono-polar world dominated by the West had now replaced the former
bipolar one. But a mere four years later Samuel Huntington presented a far more compelling
narrative telling us that we now live in a multi-polar world comprising seven or eight
civilizations2. Clearly, this must have its consequences for how the citizens of this world
relate to their past: each civilization will have its own way of conceiving of the past. Hence,
there is no longer one privileged relationship to the past for example, the one developed in
the West that has to be adopted by all of them as a matter of course. I shall not question this
view, since it is reasonable enough.
Instead I shall turn to Reinhart Kosellecks theoretical writings in order to figure out
what living in a multi-polar world may mean to historical consciousness and historical
writing3. Koselleck developed a theoretical toolbox that can be of use here. I especially have
in mind two concepts of major importance in his writings: the notion of the layers of time
and that of History as a collective singular. The former invites us to conceive of the past as
consisting of a multiplicity of temporal layers coexisting more or less peacefully next to each

1
Quoted in R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt am Main 1979;
10.
2
F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, London 1992; S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of World Order, London 2002 (1st ed. 1996); 21.
3
For an excellent sketch of German historical thought in the years witnessing the realization of Kosellecks
conceptual history, see D.T. Goering, Absolute Logic is Ideology: Three German Perspectives on Analytic
Philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s, Journal of the Philosophy of History 10 (2016); 160 195.

1
other whereas the latter stands, roughly, for history as a unitary whole. Self-evidently, the
former notion is easier to reconcile with the fact of a multi-polar world than the latter. I shall
argue that the difference between the two notions parallels that between ontology and
epistemology. I will refrain from choosing between the two and be content to suggest that
whatever choice one makes has its implications for whether we should, or should not
postulate a new Sattelzeit (i.e. a time saddling two different times).

2. Ontology and epistemology in Koselleck

In his still authoritative The History of Political and Social Concepts of 1995 Melvin Richter
contrasted Quentin Skinners and Reinhart Kosellecks variant of conceptual history in a most
illuminating way. Both reject older traditions of intellectual history or of the history of
political thought traditions to be associated with the names of Arthur Lovejoy in the Anglo-
Saxon world or that of Friedrich Meinecke in Germany4. But each of them offers a different
substitute for past practices. When offering a theoretical justification for this approach
Skinner relies on the later Wittgenstein and Collingwood. Skinner took over from the former
the idea that the meaning is the use, hence, that if we wish to understand the meaning of a
word, concept or text we should ask ourselves what its user wanted to do with them. As
Skinner put it concepts must not be viewed simply as propositions with meanings attached to
them; they must also be thought of as weapons (Heideggers suggestion) or as tools
(Wittgensteins term)5. From Collingwood Skinner learned that if the historian wishes to
understand a historical agents thoughts and actions he should put himself in the historical
agents circumstances and grasp what the agents world looked like if seen from that
perspective. Clearly, the emphasis in Skinners theory of the writing of conceptual history
(Im not talking about actual practice here!) is epistemological rather than ontological. He is
more interested in how knowledge can be achieved than in what it is knowledge about. The
anti-ontological bias in Skinners thought is reinforced by a direct corollary of his statement I
quoted just now: namely, that the historians of concepts can, strictly taken, only write a
history of the uses of concepts but not of concepts themselves6. Thus the inventory of the past

4
Few historians and historical theorists if any - will nowadays be prepared to take stand for the kind of
intellectual history as exemplified by historians such as Meinecke. And probably justifiably so. Nevertheless, a
price had to be paid for this: the existential struggle with time-transcendent political questions was now struck
from the agenda. Illustrative is Skinners recommendation to the historian to shift his focus from the major
political thinkers of the past to those of the second rank. The history of political thought thus lost much of its
political relevance for the present. Oddly enough, Meineckes critics were, in this way, more historicist than the
historicist Meinecke himself.
5
Quoted in M. Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts, Oxford 1995; 133
6
Ibid.

2
as studied by historians of concepts is robbed of what seems to be its obvious subject-matter,
namely concepts. Actual historical practice is, of course, less extreme than theory suggests
here nevertheless, the suggestion of privileging epistemology at the expense of ontology
remains.
It is the other way around with Kosellecks brand of conceptual history as can be
found in the eight volumes of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe edited by him, Otto Brunner
and Werner Conze and in the Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680
1820 edited by Rolf Reichardt, a former student of Koselleck7. For Koselleck concepts and
language are very much a reality of their own, as is the case with the more material aspects of
the past that political historians, socio-economic historians or art historians may be interested
in. A striking illustration is how Koselleck relates the history of concepts to social history.
Whereas for Skinner concepts will lose much of their ontological autonomy since they must at
all times be regarded in their interaction with their social context, Koselleck places concepts
and social reality ex aequo next to each other: between social history or the history of
societies and conceptual history obtains a historically determined tension referring each of
them to each other, though one of them could never wholly be taken up into the other (my
translation)8. Exactly this is why conceptual history may offer knowledge about social
history that social history itself could never achieve if left exclusively to its own devices9.
Moreover, time and again Koselleck urges us to disconnect the level of concepts and of
language from that of actual historical social reality, since, in his view, there always exists an
asymmetry between the two of them. Language and reality are never congruent with one
another10. Language may say too much or too little about historical reality, whereas historical
reality, in its turn, will always resist being wholly captured in words and concepts. Language
is not just the world put into language, but a world on its own. Hence, language and concepts
belong, in Kosellecks view, no less to reality, in the ontological sense, than the more
uncontroversial inhabitants of historical reality studied in political or socio-economic

7
O. Brunner, W. Conze, R. Koselleck eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch
sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. 8 Bnde, Stuttgart 1972 - 1997
8
R. Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten. Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache,
Frankfurt am Main 2010; 13
9
R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 118 ff.
10
R. Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten, Frankfurt am Main 2010; 13 ff.

3
history11. I would therefore emphatically disagree with Richters view that the Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe should disclaim any ontological assumptions12.
Next, epistemology. As opposed to Skinner, Koselleck does not seem to have a
historical epistemology at first sight. It is true, he has several directions for how the historian
of concepts should proceed, beginning with the instructions handed out to those who had been
invited to contribute to the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. With regard to the sources to be
consulted Koselleck gives priority to dictionaries, lexica and encyclopaedias published in the
past, next comes the use of concepts in newspapers, journals and letters and finally their use
in the great texts. Next, the historian should establish what a concept meant at a certain time;
afterwards this synchronic approach will have to be complemented by a diachronic study of
the shifts in a concepts meanings through time. When establishing these meanings the
historian of concepts must make use of both semasiology and onomasiology. Semasiology
gives all the meanings of a given word; onomasiology all the names or terms in a language for
one and the same thing. And Koselleck has several more instructions, unnecessary to
enumerate here. It will be clear, anyway, that these directions and instructions add up to a
historical methodology (a Historik, as Koselleck might put it) rather than to a historical
epistemology. An effective methodology may tell us how to achieve truth, but not what truth
is and what cognitive criteria a true account has to satisfy. From this perspective it could,
indeed, be argued that Koselleck has no historical epistemology in the proper sense of the
word.
However, at the end of this paper we shall see that this conclusion is wrong and that he
has an epistemology, after all. Though we shall find that Kosellecks epistemology is hard to
reconcile with his philosophy of historical time, which undoubtedly is the heart of his
historical thought. In fact, disentangling in Kosellecks thought the ontological from the
epistemological threads will be one of my major purposes in this paper. As will then become
clear Kosellecks epistemology is Euro-centrist because of its roots in European historical
thought, whereas his ontology, though sharing the same genealogy, is free from Euro-
centrism. To put it in the terms of this panel-discussion: Kosellecks epistemology must be
associated with the inside, and his ontology with the outside, or at least, with a hospitable
openness to possible outsides.

11
Self-evidently, the fact that it may require a sophisticated methodology to get hold of historical concepts is
insufficient to deny to them an ontological status.
12
Richter, op. cit.; 135. Admittedly, Koselleck will agree that concepts have no enduring, essential quality
(which is how Richter argues his claim), but this does not imply that for Koselleck concepts should not be part of
the pasts ontology. See also the argument in section 2 on the existence of structures and the layers of time.
Nevertheless, there is a problem here; see for this note 49)

4
 3. Ontology: anthropology and the layers of time
Ontology manifests itself on two levels in Kosellecks thought. Though Koselleck admired
the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit, he was aware that the book had little to offer to the historian
because of its complete disregard of human interaction which is, self-evidently, what
historical writing is all about:

the times of history are not identical and cannot be fully be deduced from the existential modalities that
have been developed for the existence of the individual human being. The times of history are right from
the beginning constituted on the basis of human interaction (my translation)13.

In order to overcome this shortcoming of Heideggers philosophy of human existence

Koselleck postulates five extra existential determinations (existentiale Bestimmungen14):
1) the existential determination that human beings may kill each other under certain
circumstances, 2) the opposition between friend and foe that Koselleck took over from Carl
Schmitt, 3) the opposition between what is within and what is without and of the
borderline we draw between the self and the other hence, what is at stake in this panel-
discussion, 4) the existential determination of birth, death and the chain of generations and,
finally, 5) the Hegelian opposition of lord and slave15. When commenting on Gadamers
hermeneutics Koselleck raises the possibility of still a sixth existential determination, namely
the use of language, but without clearly pronouncing whether he adds it to the list or not. In
the end he seems to decide against language being an additional existentialist determination,
though he discerns in the perennial difference, or tension between language and fact a
primeval human experience16. Finally, it might be argued that even with the language versus
fact dichotomy we havent yet come to the end of Kosellecks list of existentials. A recurring

13
R. Koselleck, Zeitschichten, Frankfurt am Main 2000; 101. Niklas Olsen demonstrates that Kosellecks
addition to Heidegger can be retraced to a letter he wrote to Schmitt on January 21st 1953. See N. Olsen, History
in the Plural. An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck, New York/Oxford 2012; 57. For the
inadequacy of Heideggers Sein und Zeit as a philosophy of history, see also I. Farin, Early Heideggers Concept
of History in the Light of Neo-Kantianism, Journal of the Philosophy of History 4 (2010); 1 30 and F.R.
Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth and Reference in Historical Representation, Ithaca/London 2012; 6, 7.
14
Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 109
15
Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 99 110.
16
And he emphasizes that this is where historical writing differs from law, theology and philology since the
latter three remain bound to the world of texts. This is also how Koselleck demarcates his Historik from
(Gadamerian) hermeneutics (Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 114 116). Though Koselleck elsewhere emphasizes that
the historians sources are often textual as well (see Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten; 18). Moreover, they will
even be exclusively so in the case of the history of concepts, which makes one wonder whether Kosellecks
demarcation would have to be abandoned for the latter. So that seems to wipe out the differences between history
and law, theology and philology. Finally, since the claims made by adherents of the linguistic turn focus on the
texts produced in scientific research and not on what is their object, Kosellecks demarcation would make little
sense to them.

5
theme in his writings is the dichotomy of the space of experience (Erfahrungsraum) and the
horizon of our expectations for the future (Erwartungshorizont)17. The main idea here is that
there should be an asymmetry between our experience of the past and our expectations of the
future - an asymmetry resulting from the difference between past and future. This asymmetry
only came into being, and could only have come into being thanks to the widely shared
awareness since the eighteenth century that politics, culture and social reality are all functions
of historical time. As such this category is, presumably, considered by Koselleck to be
specific to the West; at least, he nowhere explicitly argues that it could be found in other
cultures and civilizations as well. Anyway, the five existentials mentioned above add up to
what Koselleck likes to call his anthropology. Clearly, this anthropology is what, according
to him, unites all of humanity in its relationship to its past. Here he is heir to Heideggerian
Existenz-philosophie.
But Kosellecks historical ontology goes beyond these existential determinations. This
gets us to his theory of the so-called layers of time (Zeitschichten) - which undoubtedly is
his most important contribution to historical thought, a theory he worked on and refined
through all of his intellectual career18. In his excellent essay on Koselleck Jordheim
summarizes Kosellecks notion of the layers of times as follows:

He [Koselleck (F.A.)] investigates how specific historical events and processes, from the Reformation to
the French Revolution to Prussian legal reforms, are shot through by different temporalities, some long,
some slow, some going back to Greek or Roman Antiquity, some short, some fast, and even immediate,
caught up in the decisive moment, but all of them evoking the past, anticipating the future, and
intervening in the present19 .

Hence, we should conceive of the past not as some massive substance slowly moving from
one period to another, but rather as consisting of a multiplicity of such layers of time each of
them having its own duration rarely coinciding with that of others. Koselleck often refers here
to Herder:

In fact each changing thing has the measure of its time in itself; it exists, even if nothing else did; no two
things in the world have the same measure of time In fact there are (one can say this truly and
defiantly) in the universe infinitely many times (my translation)20.

17
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 349 - 376.
18
Over more than thirty years, Koselleck has been distilling and redistilling this notion of historical times as
his key to a theoretical grasp of the possibility of history. J. Zammito, Kosellecks Philosophy of Historical
Times and the Practice of History, History and Theory 43 (2004); 125
19
H. Jordheim, Multiple Times and the Work of Synchronization, History and Theory 53 2014; 504
20
Quoted in Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 10. Herders argument can be seen as the common ground between
Kosellecks theory of the layers of time and systems-theory as developed by his Bielefeld colleague Niklas
Luhmann, since the latters systems can also be said to possess a time of their own.

6
When analyzing time, both natural and historical, the layers of time and their challenge to the
practice of history hence, the nexus of theoretical issues that would preoccupy him during
all of his scholarly career - Koselleck begins with the observation that whoever discusses
time will inevitably have to resort to metaphors21. Time resists being directly addressed, we
can get to it only by detour. This is why only metaphor, and above all spatial metaphor 22, will
enable us to discover the secrets of human and historical time. To put it in terms of Hayden
Whites tropology: Koselleck proposes, first, a metonymical understanding of the historical
past in terms of time and, next, a metaphorical understanding of time in terms of space23. In
agreement with his reliance of metaphor, he proposes the following metaphor:

layers of time, just like their geological prototype, refer to various temporal events of diverse duration
and diverse origin, which still exist and are effective at the same time. Even the simultaneousness of the
non-simultaneous (die Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen), one of the most informative historical
phenomena, is taken up in this concept. Everything that happens at the same time, everything that
emerges from the heterogeneous interconnections in in human life, both simultaneously and non-
simultaneously24.

Almost all of Kosellecks commentators refer to this metaphor and it thus acquired the status
of a quasi-official summary of his views about time. All the more reason, therefore, to warn
against a possible misunderstanding of it. When looking at the rocky, barren wall of a high
mountain one will discern on it more often than not some more or less clearly defined parallel
layers. As we now know these layers have their origin in the fact that once they were on the
bottom of the ocean and they demarcate the layers of sediment deposited on it billions of
years ago. Hence, what we find on one such individual layer is more or less
contemporaneous, hence, indicating synchrony instead of diachrony. But this is not what
Koselleck has in mind! Kosellecks layers of time are layers cutting vertically through
geological time instead of following how the layers are ordered. Only in this way can they be
said to connect different times (or layers) together and to effect this simultaneousness of the
non-simultaneous that fascinated Koselleck so much. Think, for example, of the fact that we

21
Koselleck, Zeitschichten, 9, 305
22
Zeitliche und rumliche Fragen bleiben immer ineinander verschrnkt, auch wenn die metaphorische Kraft
aller Zeitbilder anfangs den rumlichen Anschauungen entspringt. See Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 9. Koselleck is
well aware of following Kant here who, when presenting his transcendental deduction of time, made use of much
the same kind of argument when doing so for space.
23
For an exposition of the dangers of spatial metaphor in historical epistemology, see my The transfiguration of
distance into function, History and Theory 51 (2011); 136 150. Needless to say, the metonymical
understanding of the past in terms of time further increases these dangers. Weve all been warned of the danger
of mixing up metaphors; mixing up tropes may pace the White of Metahistory - be no less precarious.
24
Koselleck, Zeitschichten, 9

7
still have contemporaries living in the Stone Age25. I shall now give a very brief summary of
Kosellecks main claims with regard to the layers of time.
Firstly, since the past consists of this multiplicity of time layers all of them beginning
and ending at different times, their life-times are out of step with each other, so to say. Think
again of the example that while we are living in the Age of Modernity some others still live in
the Stone Age. This is what Koselleck referred to in the quote as to as the simultaneousness
of the non-simultaneous. Hence, layers of time all have different time tempi, with the result
that if we were to map them on each other complicated patterns of acceleration and slowing
down will present themselves26. It would be no exaggeration to say that for Koselleck
historical writing is, basically, the research of all the temporal tensions provoked by the
simultaneousness of the non-simultaneous. In any case, this surely is the core business of
Kosellecks geschichtliche Grundbegriffe) that is, the writing of the history of basic social
and political concepts. Each concept has, as it seems, many layers of time (my translation),
as Koselleck put it27. Clearly, we should think here of the huge and ambitious enterprise of the
eight volumes of the Historische Grundbegriffe published between 1972 and 1997 under the
editorship of Koselleck, Otto Brunner and Werner Conze. Moreover, his theoretical writings
abound with fascinating examples of these temporal tensions. Koselleck added here a new
sub-discipline to contemporary historical writing; many scholars in several countries would
follow him in his footsteps.
Secondly, the notion of the layers of time self-evidently raises the question of how
these layers of the past should be understood; exactly what aspects of the past has Koselleck
in mind when speaking about them? Unfortunately, Koselleck nowhere gives a clear and
straightforward answer to this question. Anyway, the question could be understood in two
ways. First, can layers of time be found for each aspect of the past that is investigated by the
historian? And second, what is a layer of time? With regard to the first question, the answer is
presumably: yes. And it is certainly true that layers of time can be found in social history and
the history of concepts. With regard to the second question, we should note that the notion of
the layers of time has much in common with the notion of structure so popular amongst
French and German historians in the 1970s and the 1980s. So this gives a helpful clue for how
to conceive of them.

25
Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 307
26
Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 15, 66, 184, 195 ff. and passsim
27
Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten; 90

8
 Thirdly, when originally speaking of historical structures28 rather than of layers of
time Koselleck demonstrated his indebtedness to the structure/event distinction
popularized by the Annales-school. Structures comprise events that are 1) repeatable, 2) may
have an element of surprise and 3) occur over relatively long stretches of time. Koselleck
insists on the basic equivalence of structure and event in the sense that both the event no
less than the structure - have a certain extension in time: the difference between the two of
them merely is that structures comprise a far longer duration than the event 29. To put it
differently, structure and event have a common denominator that can be polarized in two
opposite directions, thus giving us the event, on the one hand, and structures, on the other.
Koselleck admits that the historical significance of structures can only be established post
eventum and can only be captured in the medium of events30, nonetheless they have the
same ontological status. Both are indisputably part of historical reality31. The fact that
structures are not directly observable and that establishing their nature will require a certain
amount of reconstruction and theoretical sophistication does not count against their being part
of historical reality32. Similarly, bacteria do exist even though we need a microscope to see
them.
Koselleck comes closest to a definition of structure in his essay Darstellung, Ereignis
und Struktur (Representation, event and structure) and his definition then is as follows:
structures are inter-connections that cannot be reduced to the mere succession of events that
have been experienced at some time. They manifest a longer duration, a greater fixity and
they change only in the long run33. Examples are constitutions, manners of government that
do not change from one day to the other and are the conditions of political action, or long term
economic changes effecting social change. All of this still is regrettably vague, of course, and

28
As examples of such structures Koselleck mentions: Verfassungsbauformen, Herrschaftsweisen, die sich nicht
von heute auf Morgen zu ndern pflegen, die aber Voraussetzung politischen Handelns sind. Oder die
Produktivkrfte und Produktivverhltnisse, die sich nur langfristig, manchmal schubweise wandeln (). See
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 147.
29
Koselleck agrees with Simmel when arguing that if one pushes the duration of an event below a certain limit it
ceases to be an event at all. See Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 145. For an illuminating discussion of
Kosellecks conception of event and structure and of the relationship between the two, see K. Palonen, Die
Entzauberung der Begriffe. Das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin Skinner und Reinhart
Koselleck, Mnster 2004; 221 225.
30
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 149.
31
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 152.
32
Koselleck,; 152
33
Dann werden unter Strukturen im Hinblick auf ihre Zeitlichkeit solche Zusammenhnge erfasst, die nicht
in den strikten Abfolge von einmal erfahrenen Ereignissen aufgehen. Sie indizieren mehr Dauer, grssere
Stetigkeit, Wandel allenthalben nur in lngeren Fristen. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 146

9
seems to go little beyond the notion of a pattern, and where the patterns diachronic axis is
generally longer than the synchronic one34. This, then, gets us to the following point.
Fourthly, there is a peculiarity in how Koselleck opposes stucture and event we cannot
afford to ignore. First of all, it seems reasonable enough to associate the event with
synchronicity and structures with diachronicity. Elaborating on this, Koselleck takes the
example of a princely wedding35. The historian describing this wedding and accounting for all
its dynastic, political and financial aspects clearly describes an individual event. As such it
could be said to be part of a structure and this is, indeed, Kosellecks view. But having in
mind the synchronicity versus diachronicity opposition we should be careful here. Clearly, the
opposition between wedding and any of such structures should fall into step with that between
structure and event. But it does not. For the event in question, the princely wedding, merely is
an element, or a component of the entity that does so: the entity that does so, is not just this
wedding, but some synchronic cross-section of princely weddings all through the ages, or for
whatever duration the historians decides to give to his diachronic structure of princely
weddings. Put differently, when using the terms synchrony and diachrony we presuppose
there to be one thing or substance remaining the same through time taking on different
features on each synchronous cross section on its diachronic journey through time36. Surely,
the princely wedding mentioned in Kosellecks example is part of such a synchronic cross-
section, but surely not all of it. Here we should rather think of all princely weddings, in say,
Europe in the first decades of the sixteenth century. In sum, not the individual wedding, not
the individual event is synchronic, but a certain set of such weddings.
Fifthly, there is more to these observations than immediately meets the eye, as we will
recognize when discussing Helge Jordheims essay on Kosellecks theory of the layers of
time. Jordheims essay is characteristically entitled Against Periodization: it aims to
demonstrate that Kosellecks notion of the layers of time should leave no room for
periodization (though he is ready to admit that Koselleck himself might take a different stance
on this37). His argument is, basically, that even if one layer of time would come to a more or

34
There is little hope to find more clarity about the notion in writers such as Braudel - from whom Koselleck
drew his inspiration. So one has no choice but to acquiesce in the notions vagueness.
35
See for this example, Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten; 22 ff.
36
See also note 48) for this notion of identity though time and change.
37
H. Jordheim, Against Periodization: Kosellecks Theory of Multiple Temporalities, History and Theory 51
(2012); 151 172. Kosellecks own attitude towards periodization is rather ambiguous. He periodizes himself:
his demarcation between de Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe agrees with how this is customarily done
since the days of Cellarius in the 17th century (see Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 225, 226). On the other hand, at the
occasions when Koselleck addresses the theme of periodization (see e.g. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 302
304, Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 294) he rarely speaks about it with much love or sympathy.

10
less sudden and dramatic end and be followed by a wholly new one, most others layers will
continue undisturbed by it. Periodization necessarily distorts the past by giving unduly
significance to one or several layers of time at the expense of others. Put metaphorically, the
past as seen through Kosellecks eyes is like an endless long thatched roof consisting of a
multiplicity of individual reed stems, each of them beginning and ending at some place on the
roof, so that if one would wish to draw a line perpendicular to the reeds there is no place
where to do so rather than any other.
From a logical point of view Jordheims argument surely makes sense. Nevertheless,
assume that the shift from the old to the new concerns a decisive aspect of the socio-political
order, suppose furthermore that by some coincidence such dramatic discontinuities occur on
several different aspects of society at more or less one and the same time? Think, for example,
of Hobsbawms Dual Revolution. Or think of one cataclysmic, almost mythical event
having its resonances literally everywhere in the social and political world. For example,
World War II. In both cases the social and political fabric is torn up in many places at more or
less the same time. Now, are these not the kind of events we like to appeal to in order to bring
some preliminary order in the chaotic welter of past events by means of periodization?
Moreover, is Kosellecks Sattelzeit not in obvious agreement with how historians ordinarily
periodize history that is, by opposing a pre-revolutionary Alt Europa to the modern world-
order coming into being in the first decades of the 19th century? And does the transition from
the former to the latter period not coincide with the transition from an agrarian, pre-industrial
to an industrializing Europe? Hence, does Hobsbawms Dual Revolution not offer a
powerful factual support of the periodization implicit in Kosellecks notion of the Sattelzeit?
Admittedly, periodization is and always ought to be a matter of disputation; but as an, indeed,
heuristic instrument38 it is indispensable in the practice of historical writing39. What would
our encounter with the past be like if it presented itself to us without even this absolutely
minimum of orientation provided by periodization40? Or suppose we would have to think of

38
Koselleck; Zeitschichten; 302
39
Thus, for example, Le Goff: the act of periodizing is justified by all those things that make history a science
not an exact science, of course, but nevertheless a social science that rests on an objective foundation built up
from documentary and other sources. See J. Le Goff, Must we Divide History into Periods?, New York 2015;
114. I would not know of any historian who would wish to disagree here with Le Goff.
40
As is also recogznized by Lianeri: this means that the very distinction between the contemporaneous and the
non-contemporaneous involves a certain form of periodizing, which at least makes it possible to recognize the
foreignness of the past to the present. See A. Lianeri, A Regime of Untranslatables: Temporalities of
Translation and Conceptual History, History and Theory 53 (2014); 492. As will be clear from the title of
Lianeris article she would agree with Palonens view that Kosellecks conceptual history is a proposal for how
to translate the past to the present (see Palonen, Entzauberung; 241 244). But though this view probably has
its origins in Kosellecks own writings (see Palonen, Entzauberung; 243), one may have ones doubts about it.

11
our own past without making use of notions like childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity
and old age. Finally, since we associate both the notions of synchrony and that of a historical
period with a relative absence of diachronic change, it seems definitely odd to embrace the
former notion while rejecting with Jordheim - the latter.
Sixthly, and lastly, there are the notions of synchrony and diachrony themselves. They
are undoubtedly the best known part of Kosellecks theory of conceptual history, but also the
hardest to understand. They are the best known and most important part since the vocabulary
of the synchronic and the diachronic has virtually overtaken all of contemporary reflection on
conceptual history. It is true that John Pocock had already proposed them41, but it is
Kosellecks use of them that is at the center of interest nowadays42. It might even be argued
that as far as the theory and methodology of conceptual history is concerned, it was thanks to
these two notions that Kosellecks variant triumphed over its Anglo-Saxon rival, the
Cambridge School of conceptual history as founded by Quentin Skinner and John Pocock43.
At the same time, though, Kosellecks use of the notions of synchrony and diachrony
is not easy to explain and to understand. The main problem being that they seem to exclude
each other. So much will be clear if we go back to the locus classicus of the use of the two
notions: Saussures Course in General Linguistics. I quote Saussure:

we shall speak for preference of synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics. Everything is
synchronic which relates to the static aspect of our science, and diachronic everything which concerns
evolution. Likewise synchrony and diachrony will designate respectively a linguistic state and a phase of
44
evolution .

For Saussure the distinction was not a neutral one. He proposed it in order to reject historical,
diachronic linguistics and to make room in this way for the study of language as a synchronic

We translate words, not meanings, even though meaning will be our guide in the translation of words - whereas
meanings are unquestionably at stake in Kosellecks conceptual history. For example, if we come across the
word libertates in a late Medieval text, we will unproblematically translate it as freedoms, but then have to
insist that at that time the word had a meaning much different from the one it has now. To rephrase it in the
terms of Lianeris article: the words used in texts from the past are (almost) always translatable, but it may be
hard to find to find the exact modern semantic equivalent of a word used in the past. Perhaps even impossible
(which is where Lianeri may be right with her thesis of the untranslatability of the past). Just think of Thomas
Nagels famous argument about what it is like to be bat. We can, at most, say what a past meaning might mean
to us, but never what it must have meant to people having lived in the past itself. Here we hit on the limits of all
hermeneutic understanding, tied as we shall inexorably remain to the present.
41
J.G.A. Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on History and Method, Cambridge 2009; 90
42
See e.g. the articles in the Forum on Multiple Temporalities in History and Theory. Volume 53 (2014); 498
592.
43
Both Richter and Palonen seem to prefer Kosellecks variant of conceptual history to those of Pocock and
Skinner, though Richter is more outspoken about this then Palonen.
44
F. de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics.Translated & Annotated by Roy Harris, London 1993; 81 (117)

12
differential system of signs. His approach is openly and unambiguously anti-historical45. So
no compromise between synchrony and diachrony seems to be possible here, and, in any case,
at odds with Saussures manifest intentions. And yet Koselleck holds precisely the reverse,
namely that it should be impossible to separate them:

synchrony and diachrony cannot be separated empirically. The conditions and determinations that, in a
temporal gradation of various depths, reach from, the past into the present intervene in particular events
just as agents simultaneously act on the basis of their respective outlines of the future. Any synchrony is
eo ipso at the same time diachronic. In actu all temporal dimensions are always intertwined. And it would
contradict experience to define the present as, for instance, one of those moments that accumulate from
the past into the future, or conversely, that slip as intangible points of transition from the future in the
past46.

So how could any synchrony eo ipso be diachronic as well (and vice versa)? Again, speaking
about time will necessarily be metaphorical according to Koselleck, so I shall not betray his
intentions when having recourse to metaphor here as well in my attempt to answer this
question. Two metaphors may help us out here: Kosellecks metaphor of the geological layers
resulting in his thesis of the simultaneousness of the non-simultaneous (die Gleichzeitigkeit
des Ungleichzeitigen) we discussed before already and the one of the thatched roof I
proposed a moment ago myself. To begin with the latter, take one individual reed stem of the
roof and move from a certain place on it synchronically (hence perpendicular to the reed stem
itself) to others. Kosellecks thesis of the simultaneousness of the non-simultaneous ensures
that this will give us access to the diachronicity of other reed stems. Hence, of other layers of
time. In this way synchrony and diachrony can indeed be said to go together. In the practice of
conceptual history all meanings can be gathered that have been given to a concept in different
layers of time or associated with a certain word thanks to their union47. I shall be the first to
admit this to be a somewhat clumsy way to explain Kosellecks fusion of synchrony and
diachrony48; nevertheless, it may explain that the meshes of Kosellecks net for capturing past

45
He is criticized by Koselleck because of for this. See Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten; 21. Koselleck preferred
Eugenio Coserius use of the notions of synchrony and diachrony returning to Humboldts concept of language
as energeia. See Olsen, History in the plural; 181. Much of the incompatibility of synchrony and diachrony is
then taken away. But at the same time much of their analytical potential. See also note 49)
46
R. Koselleck, The practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Translated by Todd
Samuel Presner et al., Stanford 2002; 30
47
In the introduction to the first volume of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe defended the peculiar view that it
should be impossible to strictly distinguish between words and concepts, whereas it seems natural to say 1) that
words have meanings, 2) that concepts are meanings and 3) that this is how to distinguish between the two of
them. See R. Koselleck, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Band 1; XXII. This has occasioned a lot of debate,
unnecessary to rehearse here all the more so since that debate has little relevance for how conceptual history
was actually practiced in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.
48
The clumsiness having its origin in that problems remain. Saussure introduced the synchrony versus diachrony
opposition, and then firmly and uncompromisingly chose for synchrony. Theres nothing wrong with this from a

13
meanings are exceptionally wide precisely thanks to his lackadaisical definition of synchrony
and diachrony and of how they relate to each other. As a consequence, thanks to this lack of
precision his variant of doing conceptual history has an unparalleled openness to the historical
other, or to the outside, to put it in the terms of the present panel-discussion. There is no
well-defined theoretical matrix determining what it will and will not take into account. This is
why Kosellecks conceptual history will work just as well for other civilizations as it does for
the layers of time within our own he had in mind himself - a fact that certainly goes a long
way to explain its present popularity49.

4. Kosellecks historical epistemology

We get a very different picture when looking at Kosellecks historical epistemology: in
contrast to his ontology it is ineradicably Euro-centric though at the same time perhaps of
more interest from a theoretical point of view. As is the case in all of his historical thought,
Koselleck develops his historical epistemology in the closest possible connection with the
development of Western historical writing.
His point of departure here is the transition in the course of the 18th century of histories
in the plural to History as a singular term. Initially histories-in-the-plural stood in a paractical
relationship to each other, each of them being basically a separate entity that was neither
intrinsically nor extrinsically related to other histories. This remained the situation in Europe
until the second half of the 18th century. But at that time not coincidentally the beginning of
the Sattelzeit whose conceptual revolution is recorded in Kosellecks Geschichtliche
Gundbegriffe a different experience of the past gradually took over.
The past was no longer regarded as an aggregate of separate, individual histories but
rather as a coherent system50. Before the Enlightenment chronological time was the

philosophical point of view. Nor is anything necessarily wrong with combining synchrony and diachrony. But in
that case an appeal to identity through time will be inevitable in order to explain how something may remain the
same thing it is on some (synchronic) point in time as it was, or will be at some other point in time (diachrony).
Think here of Neuraths ship that remained the same ship even though all of its parts were in time replaced by
similar ones. For what this must imply for historical writing, see my Narrative Logic. An Semantic Analysis of
the Historians Language, Dordrecht/Boston 1983; 120 134. However, it is highly unlikely that Koselleck (or
any other theorist of conceptual history) would feel much affinity with the notion of identity through time, since
it not only seems to invite a return to the kind of history of idea that was proposed by Arthur Lovejoy but even to
historicism. So synchrony and diachrony would have to be reconciled with each other in some other way.
Koselleck himself does not tell us how, in spite of his appeal to Coseriu, who no less than Koselleck evades
rather than solves the problem. For Coseriu, see also note 46). This is, in my view, the main weakness of
Kosellecks theory of historical time
49
Theoretical weakness is thus transformed into a strength from the perspective of actual historical practice - a
fact of some interest as such, since it problematizes the relationship between historical theory and historical
practice.
50
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 322

14
naturally given substrate for ordering human events, such as wars, the reigns of kings and
Popes and so on. But the Enlightenment made the big discovery of the simultaneousness of
the non-simultaneous; and it could make this discovery since it was, in so many respects, the
take-off of modernity51. Each significant moment of the Enlightenment was, so to say,
Janus-faced: thanks to this take-off each moment was since then as well a farewell to the past
as an eager salute to a better future and, thus, an exemplification of the simultaneity of the
non-simultaneous. In this way, the Enlightenment combined the past and the present; in that
sense it could be said to be different from itself. The Enlightenments experience of its own
temporality is, thus, the origin of modern historical consciousness: the experience broke open
the stiffly frozen ice of chronological time and in the crack welled up the wholly new
experience of historical time as differing from itself. Historical time now became a
differential system; its differences from itself could only be expressed in terms of that
system itself and no longer in that of how the aggregates implied by a former conception of
historical time could be measured on the scale of chronological time. As such, as a differential
system history could become an object for itself. As Koselleck puts it:

in this way the science of history has arrived at a concept of historicity, describing the conditions of the
possibility of history itself as well as of the science of history in the narrow sense of the word (my
translation)52.

Koselleck thus defends here the ambitious claim that the Enlightenments experience of the
past was both the ontological condition of the possibility of history as an object of potential
historical research in the sense of having created it - as well as the condition of the
possibility of historical writing or knowledge53. It was, therefore, an epistemological category
- the Enlightenments experience of the past - that lay at the root of both the historical object
54
of research and of all historical writing and knowledge since the Enlightenment . Natural
chronological time could now no longer serve as reference-system for ordering the past;
historical writing now had to find such a reference-system in itself. Hence Kants
requirement: that chronology should follow history instead of the reverse (my translation)55.

51
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 306, 307.
52
Koselleck, Zeitschichten: 300
53
It is telling that when discussing historical Erfahrung Koselleck tends to wipe out the difference between
how the historian and the historical agent studied by him may experience the past. See Koselleck,
Zeitschichten; 27 ff.
54
For a much similar argument (though historical experience is elevated there to the heights of sublime historical
experience), see my Meaning, Truth and Reference in Historical Representation, Ithaca/London; 2012; 179
181.
55
Koselleck, Zeitschichten, 322; Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 58, 146.

15
 In sum, the histories-in-the-plural that were the object of pre-18th century historical
writing were now replaced, transformed and elevated into History-in-the-singular, a vast
coherent all-embracing process continuing in its aspiration of a more perfect human world and
society the permanent reminiscence of its birth in the Enlightenment. The past now no longer
was the chaos of individual histories, but a meaningful whole that should always be
understood as such and from which no part could be eliminated without distorting the
whole56. Clearly, the hermeneutic demand of Verstehen, of contextual understanding,
directly followed from this and was to be codified by Humboldt in his essay The task of the
historian of 1824 - often seen as the more or less official manifesto of nineteenth century
historical writing - as follows: the historian worthy of that name should present each event as
part of a larger whole or, what comes down to the same, demonstrate the form of History in
each of them (my translation)57. And this notion of History as such would be echoed by
Johann Gustav Droysen later on with his above all histories History elevates itself (my
translation)58.
Finally, Kosellecks argument as given just now must be distinguished from his
idealist reading of it elsewhere59. Admittedly, in both cases there is a shift from Geschichte
understood as res gestae to Geschichte as historia rerum gestarum . But in the former case
res gestae takes on the features of historia rerum gestarum by being suffused with objective
meaning, whereas only in the latter the projection on the past of subjective meaning may
result in an idealist identification of knowledge with its object. As was the case in Droysens
Hegelian equation of the knowledge of history with history60. It is true that both arguments
aim to fill up the gap between historical writing and its object either from the side of the
object or from that of the subject - and this may explain why Koselleck does not clearly
distinguish between the two of them. Nevertheless, we are well advised to keep them apart for
two reasons. Firstly, a conflation of the two of them will raise the obvious question how an
idealist conception of history could come into being in the third quarter of the 18th century.
Hence, at a time when German idealism was still a thing of the future. Secondly, and more

56
was man von der Minute ausgeschlagen/ gibt keine Ewigkeit zurck, as Koselleck quotes Schiller on several
occasions. See e.g. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 145
57
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 54
58
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 50.
59
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 48
60
Vor allem bei Droysen, einem Schler Hegels, lassen sich zentrale Elemente der idealistischen
Geschichtsphilosophie nachweisen, insbesondere die Vorstellung von der Geschichte als einer dialektischen
Selbtshervorbringung des menschlichen Geistes ().. See F. Jaeger and J. Rsen, Geschichte des Historismus.
Eine Einfhrung, Mnchen 1992; 34. For a detailed analysis of Hegel and Droysen, see C.J. Bauer, Das
Geheimnis aller Bewegung ist ihr Zweck. Geschichtsphilosophie bei Hegel und Droysen, Hegel Studien. Beiheft
44 (2001); 1 - 410

16
importantly, that conflation would imply that all of history since the late 18th century down to
the present insofar as it fits the history-in-the-singular model would be written on idealist
assumptions. And such an ambitious claim will be hard to sustain.
I now get to Kosellecks epistemology of historical writing - a topic having, as far as I
know, attracted little attention until now. The explanation is, probably, that in agreement with
the habit of many Continental philosophers, Koselleck rarely states his own position directly
and prefers to do so while expounding the views of some more or less illustrious predecessor.
In Kosellecks case this is the admittedly not so very illustrious 18th century philosopher and
theologian Johann Martin Chladenius (1710 1759). There can be no doubt about
Kosellecks identification with Chladeniuss views, even though Koselleck is no less explicit
about what he considers to be Chladeniuss shortcomings. He always comments most
favorably on Chladenius, whenever mentioning him, he declares him to be the most
influential 18th century German philosopher of history and he wrote in the laudatory preface
to the recent re-edition of Chladeniuss Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft of 1752: he
[Chladenius (F.A.)] enriched the one thousand year old tradition of history with an
epistemology of history that had never been conceptualized before (my translation)61.
Chladeniuss claim to fame in the history of historical thought is based on his notion
of the Sehepunkt, the point of view from which the past is perceived and organized by the
historian. As he avowed himself62, Leibnizs monadology had been here his source of
inspiration and indeed, one need only recall section 57 of Leibniz Monadology to recognize
what he owed to Leibniz:

Just as the same city viewed from different sides appears to be different and to be, as it were, multiplied
in perspectives, so the infinite multitude of simple substances, which seem to be so many universes, are
nevertheless only the perspectives of a single universe according to the different points of view of each
monad63.

Thinking over the notion of the Sehepunkt, of the point of view or perspective, as defined
here by Leibniz, it will immediately be clear how much it is in agreement, nay, even
presupposes this idea of a History in the singular that we discussed a moment ago. Clearly,

61
R. Koselleck, Vorwort, Johann Martin Chladenius, Allgemeine Geschichtswissenschaft. Mit einer Einleitung
von Christoph Friederich und einem Vorwort von Reinhart Koselleck, Vienna 1985; VII
62
Der Sehepunkt ist der innerliche and usserliche Zustand eines Zuschauers, in so ferne daraus eine gewisse
und besondere Art, die vorkommende Dinge anzuschauen und zu betrachten, flsset. Ein Begriff, der mit den
allerwichtigsten in der gantzen Philsophie im Paare gehet, den man aber noch zur Zeit zu Nutzen noch nicht
gewohnt ist, ausser dass der Herr von Leibniz hie und da denselben selbst in der Metaphysik und Psychologie
gebracht hat. Chladenius; Geschichtswissenschaft; 100, 101
63
G.W. Leibniz, Monadology, in L. E. Loemker ed., Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Philosophical Papers and
Letters, Dordrecht/Boston; 1967; 648

17
the metaphor would disintegrate into meaninglessness if we were to replace in it one city in
the singular by cities in the plural. What Chladenius effected were, according to Koselleck,
two things. In the first place, he gave to the idea of history-in-the-singular a form that was
both ontologically and epistemologically consistent. Operationalizing the metaphor of the
point of view enabled Chladenius to combine with Leibniz - history-in-the-singular with a
multiplicity of points of views on it. As Koselleck puts it:

Chladenius departed from the idea that the past and its representation ordinarily should coincide with
each other. In order to expound a history and to assess it, a methodological separation is necessary:
history is one thing, but its representation quite another and it can take many different forms. A history as
such can without contradiction only be conceived of in its uniqueness, but each comment about it is
perspectively broken (my translation) 64.

This was for Chladenius such an important observation since it allowed him to claim that
different stories about the same (part of the) past could all be true, since each of them told the
historical truth about the past if seen from a certain perspective. Second, this was how he
succeeded in removing the sting from the historical Pyrrhonism of his time that had always
seen in the perennial disagreement between historians about what the past had been like a
decisive argument against the reliability of historical knowledge. As Koselleck does not
hesitate to add, Chladenius designed with his perspectivism a theoretical matrix that has
remained unsurpassed until this very day65. It need not surprise, therefore, that Koselleck
lengthily expatiates on Chladeniuss historical epistemology having been welcomed by his
contemporaries as an act of liberation (Akt der Befreiung66) which was enthusiastically
embraced by theorists such as Schlzer, Wegelin, Semler, Kster and Abbt. It was sometimes
as in the case of Gatterer already inferred that a consistent application of Chladeniuss
argument would also necessitate the historicization of the historian himself67. Clearly, an
anticipation of what Gadamer would argue in his monumental and magisterial Truth and
Method (Wahrheit und Methode) of 1960.
So much, then, for Kosellecks historical epistemology68.

4. Assessing Kosellecks epistemology

64
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 185
65
For an argument much similar to that of Chladenius, see my Narrative Logic; passim.
66
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft;187.
67
Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; 190. According to Zammito Koselleck followed here Chladenius as well:
Koselleck is a distinctly modern philosopher of history in accentuating the historicization of the historical
interpreter. See Zammito, Kosellecks Philosophy of Historical Times; 134.
68
Clearly, Gadamer himself would have argued that the historicization of the historical subject, as suggested
already by Gatterer, would reduce historical epistemology to ontology again.

18
It is a truism that history always has to do with time (my translation), thus Koselleck69. And,
indeed, nobody will wish to protest against this observation. But it does not automatically
follow from this truism that time should be of central interest for the philosopher, or theorist
of history. Similarly, though all natural processes studied by the physicist take place in space
and time, books like Reichenbachs Space and Time rarely played a major role in the history
of the philosophy of science. What scientists say and write about the spatial-temporal
characteristics of the natural world has seldom been a topic of debate in philosophy of
science. Though there are exceptions, of course. One may think of philosophers investigating
how the theory of relativity complicated our more commonsensical conceptions of time and
space a dangerous game, though, since it exposes the philosopher of science at the risk of
doing physics with the tools of philosophy (Cassirer being a notable example of what may
then go wrong).
It can be argued that much the same will be true of historical writing. Recall, in this
context, that time (and space) will typically be mentioned in the predicate-parts of the
statements about the past. This strongly suggests that time and space are never autonomous
agents themselves in the historians subject-matter. A historical statements subject-term is
better suited for linking the historians language to the past described by him than its
predicate-term. Only the subject-terms of historical statements can give us access to the real
historical agents of whatever kind they may be that the historical text is about; time never
does so since temporal determination always remains firmly tied to the predicate-part of
statements about the past70. The reification of time we so often encounter in recent historical
theory is, therefore, to be distrusted71. Putting time first in historical thought is like making
the tail wagging the dog. Or to rephrase it (again) in Hayden Whites in this context most
suitable terminology: time is metonymical insofar as it forces the events of past and present in
a scheme that is basically alien to it. But after having thus reduced the events of the past to
their temporal determinations these are presented as their synecdochical essence. In this way

69
Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 321
70
In fact, one further step would be needed. Not only is a historical statements predicate tied to its subject-term,
the statement as a whole is, in its turn, tied to the historians text or representation in the sense of contributing to
a recursive definition of it. Put differently, a historical representation is self-referentially defined by the
statements it contains. This still further reduces the significance of temporal determinations for a correct
understanding of the nature of historical knowledge. See my Meaning; 80 82.
71
This is certainly not meant to deny or belittle the role of time in the existentialist relationship between
ourselves and our individual and collective past. One need only read Bevernages and Lorentzs excellent
introduction to Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Past, Present and Future, Gttingen 2013 in
order to recognize the narrowmindedness of such a view. My argument merely is that little is to be expected
from a reflection on time for a better understanding of most of contemporary historical writing (including the
practice of Kosellecks conceptual history).

19
the celebration of time risks to transform the marginal into the essential. Indeed, if one looks
closely and carefully at those presently so very popular texts celebrating historical time, oen
will find that it ordinarily is not time, but things happening in time that do the real work72. In
this sense the contemporary glorification of time may seem a bit of a mystification.
Next, we found that Koselleck chose Chladenius as his guide in epistemological
matters. It is of interest in this context, that Chladenius can meaningfully be compared to a
philosopher of history of the recent past, namely Louis O. Mink. Admittedly, Mink did not
explicitly advocate the point of view metaphor proposed by Leibniz and Chladenius; but the
pictorial metaphors he does use, either implicitly or explicitly, come down to exactly the
same. Mink defended a variant of narrativist philosophy of history and asked himself the
question how a historical narrative may make sense of the past. According to him a historical
narrative brings together what was temporally separate in the past itself. Historical narrative
binds within one synopsis what happened separately and seriatim in the temporal succession of
the past itself. Thus Mink writes:

() action and events, although presented as occurring in the order of time, can be surveyed as it were in a
single glance as bound together in an order to significance, a representation of a totum simul (). The
outcome must seem either a truism or a paradox: in the understanding of narrative the thought of temporal
succession as such vanishes or perhaps, one might say, remains like the smile of the Cheshire cat. () In
the configurational comprehension of a story (..) the end is connected with the promise of the beginning as
well as the beginning with the promise of the end, and the necessity of the backward reference cancels out, so
to speak, the contingency of the forward references. To comprehend temporal succession means to think of it
in both directions at once, and then time is no longer the river which bears us along but the river in aerial
view, upstream and downstream in a single survey.73

Clearly, Chladeniuss historian seeing the past from a certain Sehepunkt, or point of view, is
identical with Minks historian seeing the past as a river upstream and downstream in a single
survey. In both cases we have to do with a spectator replacing temporal distinctions by the totum
simul of the historians narrative and the order of time by the order of significance74. Time is
respected, but sidetracked in historical narrative. Chladeniuss notion of the Sehepunkt and

72
For example, Koselleck likes to speak of the speeding up or the slowing down of time, suggesting that time is
a historical agent itself. But what is meant, in fact, simply is that within a certain span of time relatively many (or
few) events took place demanding the historians attention. See e.g. Koselleck, Zeitschichten; 187 ff.
73
L.O. Mink, Historical Understanding. Edited by Brian Fay, Eugene O. Golob and Richard T. Vann, Ithaca and
London 1987; 57.
74
The insight was formulated already in 1714 by Fnlon: la principale perfection de lhistoire consiste dans
lorde et dans larrangement. Pour parvenir ce bel ordre, lhistorien doit embrasser et possder toute son
histoire; il doit la voir tout entire comme dune seule vue () Il faut en montrer lunit, et tirer, pour ainsi dire,
dune seule source tous les principaux vnements qui en dpendent. Quoted in R. Koselleck, Geschichte, in O.
Brunner, W. Conze, R. Koselleck eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch sozialen
Sprache in Deutschland. Band 2 E-G, Stuttgart 1972 1997; 662.

20
Minks of the historian seeing the past as a totum simul robs temporal determinations and
hence Time itself of the privileged position many theorists are nowadays so eager to grant it.
And are not all historians familiar with the phenomenon that time and chronology play a less sig-
nificant part in historiography the better we begin to understand a given historical event or
historical period? Dates are of merely preliminary significance for historical insight. All that is of
real importance in historical writing begins only once we have left time and chronology behind
us. The great masterpieces of twentieth-century historical writing rarely mention dates. Think, in
particular, of so-called cross-sectional studies, such as Braudels book on the Mediterranean
world at the time of Philip II, which does not present us with a development over time but is
instead content with describing what that world looked like at one specific temporal cross-
section. We have, therefore, every reason to agree with Mink's thesis that time is not the essence
of narrative.75 Put differently and more accurately in historical representation temporal
determinations have no logical priority over any others.
In sum: Kosellecks adoption of Chladenius historical epistemology may well be in
agreement with his thesis of History in-the-singular but, if so, then is in contradiction with the
glorification of historical time in most of his oeuvre.

5. Conclusion
One would expect ontology to be more susceptible to cultural bias and prejudice than
epistemology. For is it not party of epistemologys task to show us how tell apart prejudice
and biased opinion from truth? Was it not the triumph of Western science to demystify
ontological and metaphysical delusions? Did epistemology not thrive on the effort to give a
philosophical explanation of the successes of Western science? And is ontology not prone to
mistake parochial beliefs about ourselves for universal truths about humanity?
So it may seem and may be this picture of the relationship between ontology and
epistemology can even be shown to be basically correct. But whatever may be the truth of the
matter it is the other way round with Koselleck. The theory of the layers of time is the heart
of Kosellecks ontology. As we have seen, their main function is to give us access to what is
strange and alien to us, or as one nowadays likes to call it, to the other, or the outside, to
use this panels terminology. They do not foster cultural bias and prejudice on the contrary,
they open our eyes for the social and cultural world of the other. They succeed in doing so
by means of Kosellecks simultaneousness of the non-simultaneous. In terms of this notion

75
Mink, ibid.

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Koselleck builds a bridge of synchrony between diachronies separated from us either in time
or in space. Admittedly Koselleck does not inform us about the maximum span of this bridge.
But since he once referred to the Stone Age to elucidate the principle of the simultaneousness
of the non-simultaneous, an optimist estimate seems more appropriate here than a pessimist
one.
Clearly, Kosellecks epistemology presents us with a much different picture. It is
indissolubly tied to History-in the-singular that came into being in the second half of the 18th
century under quite specific circumstances. Kosellecks epistemology is, therefore, very much
Eurocentric and adopting it will leave little or no room for other experiences of the past than
the one developed in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Furthermore, whereas time is so central a category in the ontology of Kosellecks
historical layers, it plays an only marginal role in his epistemology, as we have seen when
discussing Chladenius and Mink. Even more so, pushing time aside is an integral part of that
epistemology. So a choice between Kosellecks ontology and his epistemology will have to be
made; one cannot have both at one and the same time. At least as far as theory is concerned
practice may well be more messy.
Anyway, the choice one makes will have its consequences for how one positions
oneself with regard to Kosellecks Sattelzeit the period in which historiesin-the-plural
were exchanged for History-in-the-singular. The Sattelzeit is, and will remain the big
ceasura if one opts for epistemology; however, a new era of histories-in-the-plural must be
postulated when Kosellecks ontology is preferred. It then follows that we are now living in a
new Sattelzeit. As I said at the beginning of my paper, the latter option seems to agree best
with what our present world looks like. And we must be grateful to Koselleck for having
given us with the notion of histories-in-the-plural a point of departure for how to conceive of
what historical consciousness may be in the near future. For there is in Kosellecks historical
thought no room for such a thing as the Layer of time in-the-singular taking up in itself the
layers of time in-the-plural. Hence, we must return to what antedated Kosellecks Sattelzeit
in order to get an inkling of what the present Sattelzeit may, or will look like.

Frank Ankersmit
Glimmen (the Netherlands)

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