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HISTORY

RE 1 N HA R T KO S ELLE C K is one of che most imporrant dteot'i.a> ~:?#ffil,;f.: of history and historiography of the last half century. Hs work has . implications r..,, contcmporary culturalstudies that extend far dscussions of the prac!cU problems ofhistorical method. fk foreman exponent and practitioner ofBegriffsgeschichte, a of historira! studies th.u focuses on the invention an4 developme[]_t;c. the fundamental wncepts undedying and informing a ds~:_q_\:;f --- hismrical manner of being in the world.

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2 Chapur 1

(Ge>rlhchaftswiJsrmchllji) somehow o..:onccived in sociological urms. ln-stead, l would propose rhat we can push our w:~y out of our own charac-teri>ric boulr:nech only by concemrating on those poinrs rhar are rhem-selves in need of rheory or rh:n promise theoretic.a.l imight~.

l. h is an irony of rhe semamic hiscory of ~history" that ~history ir-self" !Geschichu srlber) or "hisrory pure and simple" (Geschichu >chlechthin) original! y meant rhe nec:d for theory wichin our diwipline. As ~oon a.~ peo-plt gave up rhinking "history" in conjunuion widt (Crtain ~ubjecc.s and Re.:em discussons of hisroricity face the theorerical challenges th:

4 Chapter I

can legitimare itself academically only by going back to the histories thar inhabits or precedes it; for the purpose of research, i t has to unfold its own theoretical premises.

Tht: individual disciplines that have distanced themselves from the assumprion of a historical experience of the world ha ve al! developed par-ticular systematics relative w their own objects of research. Economics, po-litical science, sociology, philology, linguistlcs: all can be defi.ned in terms of their objects of srudy. By conuasr, ir is much more difficulr for history to develop a historical systematics or a theory referring 10 an object of study based on its actual objects of research. In pr..uice, the object of his10ry is everything or nothing, for his10ry can declare jusr abour anyrhing to be a historical object by the way in which it formulares its questions. Nothing escapes the historical perspective.

Significantly, history "as such" (Geschichte "als soiche") does not have an object-except for itself, which does not sol ve the quesrion of irs object of re.ation of the saddle period" between about 1750 and about IS)O amounts :o a statement that during this period the o id experience of time was denaturalized. The slow decline of Aristotelian semantic content which referred t~ a natural, repeatablc, and therefore static historical tim~, is the negarive i~dic:n:or of a movemcnr rhar can be describcd as the beginning of modernir;}. Since about 1770, old words such as democracy, frudom, and thf' Jtatr have lndlcated a new horizon of the future, which delimits the concept in a different way; traditional topoi gained an anticipatory content clm rhey did not have before. A common denominator of the sociopolirical vocabu-lary can bf found in the increased emergence of crireria pertaining to move-ment. The productivity of this heuristic anricipation is demonstrated by a series of ideas chat thematize concepts of movement themselves, such as progress, ~ismry, or developmem. Although these words are old, rhey art" al-

6 Chaptrr 1

mon neologisms, :rnd since about 1770, they have had a remporal coeffi~ cient of change. This offers a snong incentive toread and interrogare other old conc:epts of tl1e politirallanguage in tnms of ft>atures indiracing move-ment. The hyp01hesis of a denaturalization of the historica! experience of time. whjclJ also affects the semantics of sociopolitical expression.~. is sur-poned by the emergence of the modern philosophy of histDry. whic:h p-propri:ues these terms.

In orher wotd.s, on[y a theomical amicipation rhat uncoven a specific time period can open rhe pmsibilicy of working through certain readings and uansposing our dictiomry from the leve! of posirvtstic recording co thar of a conceptual history. Only theory ttansforms our work into histori-cal research. This presupposition ha.~ w far proved m worrh. The entire lin-guistic space of ~ociopolitical rerms ha5-while rt'raining rhe idenriry of many wonL-moved from a qu;~.Si-Haric tradition rhat changed only over rhe long term toa concepruality who.~e meaning can be inferred from a fu-tute to be newly c:xperienced. Thi~ presupposition does not have ro hold for a.ll words, however.

Once the natural comtants determining the old historica1 experience of.ti me ha ve been destroyed-in other words, once progress has been set free-a wealth of new questions emerges.

bj One of the most important concerns the theoretical premises of struaurai htory. The answer can be found only by asking about the his-torical determination of time in statements rhar are supposed ro indicare durarion. If one assumes that historical time remains embedded within na rural time withom being entirely contained in it; or, put differendy, rhat whereas the time of day may be relevant for political decisions, hisrorical cmmecrions cannot be measured with a dock; or, put differently yet again, that the revolution of rhe stars is no longer (or not yet again) relevam for historical time, we must find temporal categories that are adequate ro his-torical evenrs and processes. Categories of rhe type developed by Braudel can rherefore be introduced inro empirical research only if we are clear about the rheorerical significance of what can last. This considerationleads us into a fundamental dilemma.

We are a!ways using concepts that were origina!Iy conceived in spatial terms, but that nevenheless have a temporal meaning. Thus we may speak of refranions, frictions, and the breaking up of cerrain enduring e!emenrs that have an effect on the chain of evems, or we may refer ro the retrospec-

Thr Nerd for Theory in Hisrory 7 tive effect~ of events upon rheir end.uring presupposirions. Here, our ex-pressions are taken &om rhe spatial realm, even from geology. They ar~ un-doubtedly very vivid and graphic, but they also illumate our dilemma. h concerns the fact that history, insofar as ir deals with Um.e, musr borrow ts concepts f~om rhe spatial realm as a maner of principie. We live by narurally metaphorical expressions, :rnd we are unable ro escape from rhem, for the simple reason. that rime is nor manifio:st (arochaulich) and cannot be in tui red (anscho.uli"h grmarht wmirn). All htorical ca1egories, including progre~s. which is the flm specifically modern u.tegC>ry of hiswrical rime, are spatial expressions by origin, a.nd our discipline rhrives because rhey can be traM-lated. Hi~tory" originally also comained a spatial meaning, which has be-come tempor-.J.lized ro such a degree rhar we refer to rhe doubling of'suuc-tural hisrory~ if we wish ro (re-)inuoduce sratistics, durarion, or long-rerm extension imo our concepr of hisrory.

In comrast ro othcr modes of srudy, hiswry as a discipline lives by metaphorical expression. This is our amhropological premise, as ir were, for everyrhing rhat must be articulated in temporal terms is forced to rely on che sensory ba5es of natural intuirion. The impossibiliry of ntuiting pure time Jcads direcdy into methodological difficu[cies concerning wherher meaningful statements about a theory of period.aon on be made ar all. A specific danger lurks behind these difficulties: namely, rhar our emprica! research na.ively accepts metaphors as they come w us. We muse rely on borrowings from everyday linguistic usage or other disciplines. The termi-nology bo~rowed and rhe necessity of using mecaphorical expressions-be-cause time,does nor clearly manifesr itself-requires constant methodolog-ical safeguards rhat refer to a theory ofhistorical time. This leads us back ro the questiqn of"duration."

Evidfnrly, cerrain long-term processes preva.il, whether they are sup-poned or bpposed. One can, for example, ask whether the rapid industrial developmenr afi:er rhe Revolution of r848 happened despite rhe failed revo-lution or qecause of ir. Tllere are arguments for and against; neirher side is necessarily convincing, but both sides indicare a movement that esrablishes irself acroSf the polirical camps of revolution and reaction. In chis case, che reaction n$-y ha ve had a more revolurionary effect than the revolution.

If reyolurion and reacton are both indicarors of one and the same movement., susrained by both camps and driven forward by both, then this pair ofideological concepts evidemly indicares a concinuous historical move-

8 Chapttri

mem, a structurc of irreversible, longtcrm progn:ss, which transcends the polirical pros and cons of reacrion and revolution. Progress itselfis thus more than an ideological category. Even the category of the reasonable middle way, which was habirually invoked ar the time, is only meaningful if a scable coefficient of change is introduced. The scope of action for a movement that is already pregiven makes ir impossible ro statically grasp any reasonablc middle way, for this middle way is force_d ro oscillare berween "righr" and "left:." lts meaning changes by itself over time. When we ask abour their temporal meaning, spatial meraphors rhus necessitate prior theoretical con sidemtions. Only then can we define what, for instan ce, is meanr by dura~ tion, delay, or acceleration in our example of the process ofindustrialization.

e) The destruction of natural chronolagy leads toa third issue. Chro-nological sequence, by which our hisrory is scill guided ar times, can quite easily be exposed as a fiction.

In the past, the natural course of time served as the immediate sub-srratum for possible histories. The calendar of saints and sovereigns was or-gani:zed by means of asrronomy; biological time provided clte framework for the natural succession of rulers, on which selfreproducing legal ti des in the wars of succession depended-uncil rSyo, symbolically enough. All his-tories remained rooted in "nature," direcdy embedded in biological pre givens. The mytbological superelevation of astrological and cosmic time, which contained nothing ahistorical in the prehistoric age, penains ro the same experiencia! realm. But since the triad of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity has structured chronological succession, we ha ve succumbed toa myrhical schema rhat tacitly structures al! of our scholarly work. This schema is obviously not of any immediate use for the relacion between du-ration and event. We must, rather, leam ro discover the simulranei ty of the nonsimultaneous in our history: it is, after al!, part of our own experience to have contemporaries who li've in rhe Srone Age. And since the large scale problems of the developing countries are coming back to haunt w to-da y, it becomes impemtive to gain theoretical darity about rhe nonsimul-taneity of rhe simultaneous and to pursue related questions. The seemingly merahistorical question about historical structures of time has again and again proved relevant to concrete research questions. Among these, there also belon~

d) the interpretation of historical conjlicts. Historical processes are dri-ven forward only so long as the conflicts inherent in rhem cannot be sol ved.

The Need for Theory in History 9 As soon J ~ conflicr dissolves, ir belongs ro the pan. A historical theory of conflicrs can be suffidencly developed only by bringing out the temporal qualities inherent in the conflict. In historiography: confliru are us~ly dealt with by introducing opponents as stable subjects. as fixed ennnes whose ficrve character can be recognized: "Hicler~ and "Hitler within us."

The historical subject is an almost inexplicable quantity. Think of any famous p~rsonaliry or of the "people," which is no less vague than "d:S~"; think of the eronomy, the srate, the church, and other such abstraer entmes or powers . Perhaps only in psychological rerms can we undersrand how "ef~ fective forces" come about and how they are reduced to subjects. If one ap-plies the temporal question ro such subjects, they dissolve very ~uickl~, an~ it rurns out that imersubjective connecrions are the proper toptc of hJSton cal researcb. Such connecrions, however, can be described only in a tempo~ ral way. Tb.e desubstantialization of our categories leads toa temporalization of their meaning. Thus rhe scale of pastor future possibilities can never ~e outlined on the basis of a single modaliry or unit of acrion or from one urur of action. Such a scale refers, rather, to that of one's opponents. Therefore only temporal differences, refractions, or tensions can express the tren~ to-ward a new strucruring of reality. In this way different temporal relatwns and factors of accderation and delay unexpectedly come into play.

'When one rhemaciz.es long, average, and short periods of time, it is difficult to esrablish causal relationships between the temporal layers thus singled o~t- We recommend working with hypotheses that introduce con srant facto.rs, against which variables can be measured. This does not prevent us from ~ing the constant factors as themselves dependent on variables or other constant facrors. Such historical relacivism, if well thought through, seems ro lead ro che functional merhod. This method excludes infinire re-gress. On

10 Chapter 1

This made possible hisrorically naive statements at which we smile today. Nevertheless, there is a hidden difficu!ty here as well. Though I am not in a position ro evaluare ir, I wuuld like to diren attenrion ro it. I mean

e) temporal series. Schumpeter once said that one can only make his-torically meaningful sratemenrs if rhere is a possibility of comparison in sufficienr temporal depth. Comparisons based on temporal series, however, presuppose a subjecr conceived as being concinuous. Only when measured against such a subject can changes be discernible

12 Chapter 1

. . Any history, b:ause it is ex post F,.,cco, subject to final corutraints. 1t 15 I~possible ro do without rhem. Yet one can escape the schema of causal addn10n and n~rarive arbirrariness only by inuoducing hypothe~es that, ~or t-xample, bn~g _in~o play pase pos.sibilitie~. Put differcndy. pccsptivism 1s rolerab]e only 1f 1r lS not mipped of ics hypothetical and, rherefore, revis-able chaJacter. Stared more concisely: everyching can be juscified, but not everything_can be jusrified by anyrhing. The queStion of which justifications are admJS.!.JDle and wl;ich are nm s tlOt only a mattcr ofthe sources u hand, bu e ~bove _all a mauer of che hyporneses rhac rnake these ~ource> speak. The rtlauonshlp becween the circunl5tances, me sdecrion,

Chapter 1

hyp01:hesis formarion. The real objection rh.ar ~;an be r.Wed a.gainsr Marx-ists is. not to be found in monocausality as a pa>sible h 5torical categary but, first, m the hCI~ that they u~e rhis ~-.~regory naivdy (though precise! y on rhis poinr rhey agree with many of our hiscoriansL and, second ;u1d more im-porrandy, that they are afeen fora:d ca formulare rheir sratemerm upon command and are not allowed ro question chem criric.tlly. Properly seen, the objecrion against monocausa!ity is an obeGion ag;~inst blindness m hyporheses; on a different merhodical lcvd, it 1~ also dir~cted against any mbjection ro polirical directives. The rcflecrion on positionaliry and rhe determinaran of goals is rhus poliricized and eludes scholarly vtrification. This rouches an a rricky problem; everyone is familiar with rhe ambigu ous ground on which, far example, Communist historiography operares as a discipline. Yet we must keep in mind, with regard to Marxisr prob-lematics, party-polirical ties and the campulsion both ro change ane's goals (when rhe situation changes) and w self-criticism. I come thus m my con-duding section.

l The Communist camp has the specific poli rica! advamage of a con-tinuous refl.ecrion an the relationship berween theory and pn1ctice in schol-arly work. However valid objectians against rhe control of historiographical guidelines by party politics in Marxisr countries may be, every hisroriogra-phy does in facr perform a funcrion within rhc public sphere.

Yet we musr disringuish berween rhe pol.itical fonction that a disci-pline serves and rhe panicular political implication that it mayor may not have. Thus the pure natural sciences do not have any political implicarions if judged by their subject matter: their results are universally communica-ble, and, taken by themselves, they are apolicical. That does not preclude the fact that the polirical function of these sciences-ler me call ro mind rhe urilizarion of nudear physics or of biochemistrv-can be far more in-

Aue~rial than that af the humanities or the social ;ciences. The discipline ~f hlstory, by conrrast, always performs a poli rica] funcrion, albeir ot chang-mg one. Depending on whether it is conducted as church, legal, or court histo_ry, wh.ether it is polirical biography, universal hisrory, or somerhing ebe. lts soCJal place changes, as does the political function exercised by rhe results ir a.:hieves asan academic discipline. The political implications of hiswriul re~e~rch are nat adequately determined in this way, however. They depend on the kinds of quesrions posed by a given line of research. How-evu trivial ir may sound, one must bear in mind thar tapies in music his-

The Need for Theory in Htory

wry, for instance, do not involve political questions in the same way as do topics in diploma tic history. Nat even the idealogical reductian of hi~torical activiry w poltica! inrerests can substitute for the disciplinary evidence of a given method and the results thereby acleved. Polircal function and poli rica! i~licarions are not enough. Thase who blur the distincrion mm-forro history imo lessons in ideology and deprive ir of its critica! task, a function ir may (bur need not) have as a discipline.

Turning away from our initial question about the theorerical premises rhar guide us on our path ta the sources, rhe question ofhow dependem we are on forming hypotheses, let us take a path rhar leads from our ~nurces back into the public sphere. Mantist reflecrion always takes rhis path into consideratibn, whereas in aur profession ir is followed for the mos1: part naively or merely verbally invoked. Here, we rake an rhe wom-ou1: issue of didactics, which can cerrainly be discussed sciemi6cally, in a w.ty analogous to our spccialized research. 1 assume thar we can ralk meaningfully abour rhe didacrics of history only ifhistary as a discipline uncovers its own rheo-retical premises. The discontem with history as a school subject might then turn out to h~ve rhe same roots as rhe lack of a capacity for theoretical re-fiectian rhar characreres our discipline. Stated pasitively, if we accept the compulsion w do theory. didactic consequences that "didactics" itself is un-able ro locate will impo~e thern:;elves.

Alth~ugh we have refined and mastered our philological-historical rools over a cenrury anda half, historians all roo easily let their path from the sources to rhe public sphere be mapped out for chem by particular .:on ste!Luions crf power. Precise\ y the grear successes achieved on the positivis-tic levd served to encourage an arrogance that has been especially suscep-tible to nacional idealogies.

The path fmm re~~;;h into the sources back toward the public sphere has d.ifferent ranges: in che universiry, ir remains comparatively clase ro rc-seardl; at school, ir lead~ further away; at a greater distance, ir reaches the public ~phere of our poltica! spaces of action; it finally extends to the pub-lic in the glpbal sphcre of addressees of hisrarical statements.

Here re musr remcmber that historical statements can reproduce pasr stares of affl_irs on\y in a red.ucrive or rejuvenated way, for iris impossible to restare rhe t;arnliry af the past, which is irrevocably gone. Snktly speaking, the queston of ~how ir really wa.~" can only be answered if one assumes rhat one does not formulare res facrae but res fictae. lf it is no longer possi-

16 Chaprr 1

bk ro reswre thc: pasr ~ such, then I ;un forced to acknowledge thc: ficrive characrer of past acrualities so as to be able to theoretically safeguard my hiswrical sratemenrs. Any historical 5tateme;r is a reduction if measured againsr rhe infinity of a past totality that is no longer accessible to us as such. In the vicinity of a naive-realistic naively realisr theory of knowledge, any compulsion tow;ud reduction 1s a compulsion to le. However, l can dispense with Jying once 1 know thar rhe compulsion ww.ud reduction in-herently belongs to our di-.cipline. In addition, rhis both involves a politi-cal implication and allows didactics to ga:in a legicimate place wirhin rhe rc:alm of rhc: historical discipline. Wc: mu~r ~k oum:lves continually what hiscory means, what ir can be and whar it is supposed ro be for w; today: at che university, ar school, and in the public sphere. This is nor ro say rhar re-search accivity ouglu to ha ve its ms prescribed from the outside in politi-cal and functional rerms, but we should always be aware of rhe specific po-licical implicacions rnat our fidd of research do es or does not ha ve, and of che proposicional form that we must develop accordingly. Then we can bet-rer define the polirical function that history has or ought to ha ve on the ba-sis of the discipline of history itself It is importan! ro dissolve rhe apora of hi5toricism-its adherents were convinced thar one could nor learn any-thing from IJ.i~tories any more, ev~n though the discipline ofhistory coumed as reaching. For chis reason, I would like ro bring out four practica[ conse-quencfs of the previous coruiderations:

(a) The types of sysremacic quescions concerning "hisroriciry" men-tioned ar rhe beginning and the demand for a histories direcrly lead to ro-day's methodological dispute within the discipline of sociology. Method-ologically, the compulsion ro rorm hYPorheses, once it has been articula red, rnoves the discipline of history doser to the social sciences in general-closcr, thar is, rhan has perhaps been recognized so f.u-. In any case, it appears w me that the commonalities go so f:u as to suggest combining social stud-irs (Gemeimchafokum:k) and history lemms (Geschichtsuntrrricht) in school.

(b) The supposed wealrh of historical material and rhe difficulties of theotecical premises concerning ir discussed above both suggest studying the discipline of history as a singk nMjor. This is not ro say that minors are to be dispensed wich. Rather, minors ought to be srudied for the very reason thar rhey offer different theoretical approaches, but as subsdiary and compltmm-tary subjew, which are of panicular benefir to hsrorical quesrions. Foreign languages are cerrainly subsidiary subjecrs of rhis kind, and so are linguisrics,

t r i

The Nud for Theory in Htory 17 1

law, and ecpnomics, or any other subjects that promote specialization wirhin the subject area of hisrory and, above all, widen the angle of vision.

For schools, this would mean tha.t such subs.idWy subjem c.ould none-theless be s..bjecrs for teaehing. Why, for instance, should French be tauglu only by philologists bur not~for a cerrain strerch-also by h.isrorians of French constirutional history or by experu on polici.cal or philosophical texrs in the French languager

At the university level, al! minors would accordingly be udli:z.ed in different war-;, which would be subsidiary or complementary to the respcc-. ti_ve m:.J.jor~. Foreign languages fnr history majors would bave to be taught differencly co sorne dc:gree; insread of remaining uuncated majors (which they are), {oreign Janguage inmuccion would need ro specifically themarize historical or sociologica.l types of qucsrions.

Conversely, hiswry as a subsidiary subject for a stu.dem of linguistics ought not to be raught as merdy a rhinned-down extraer &om Plocr. [astan-dard reference work for hisrorians]. Bridges ought ro be builr i.n nterdisci-plinary tutorials and discussion secrions. Only experimenc can succced here.

(e) A further practical consequence results from me theory of peri-odizacion alluded to above. Neither a coursc of srudy decermined by chro nological sequences, which lives by :filling in their gaps, nor che triad of in-troductory seminars in ancient, medieval, and modern history, which is derived from a mythical sehema, is methodologically cogenc. Furthermore, rhus f.u professorships have been organized in a way that mms from che humanistc myth of Cellarius, which is no guarantee of its correcmess.

In addition, the purpose of a university degree required for che teach-ing profession must not be prescribed in political and functional terms-by referenCf to didactics-from the outside; rather, this purpose can only be defined ;anew by adhering to rhe necessity of theory formation in our discipline. So long as the still customary thrc:e introductory seminars differ only in ter~s of the areas of linear chronology studied and their respective means of analysis, their organization will remain impla.usible. The se-quence of anciem, medieval, and modern history plus "contemporary his-tory" is le~rimated neither by the general historical-philological method that dley s~are nor by a rheory of different remporallevds. The necessity of forming hypotheses is also common to all three areas. In accordance wirh ongoing planning at Bielefeld University, let me therefore suggest a new canon of undergraduate education.

r8 Chapter 1

A firsr courst oughr to serve as an mroduction into the historical-philological mcrhadology rhar incerprers sourccs fr to impose itsdf. ~xamples of social-historical and srructural-historica.l phenomena for reachmg cannm be sought on a short-term basis. Here, schools and univcrsities muse complement each other. It is important ro stimulate me imeraction b~rw~n schools and universiries, and i.t appears tome mar no one is more suJted tor this than the secondary-school reacher who is 1eaching in a universicy. These schoolteachers ought not to form a nonprofessorial ceaching scaff. which s che worst oif all possible solurions. Rarher, su eh reachers really oughc w be able to come from schools and also rerurn there or, upon proof of their aca-demic qualificuions. be able ro change over alrogether to university .teac~i~g or 10 adult education in general. Secondary-school teachers at umverslt!es ought todo both at the ~ame time: teach school at halfload and teach ar the universirv by conducng two- ro four-hour seminars. Disciplinary and di-danic

Social History and Conceptual History

Anyone who is concerned wirh hisrory-wnarever this may be-and defi~es it :-s social history is obviously ddmicing his topic. Anyone who speCifies hmory as conceptual history is obviously doing the same. Never-

~ele.ss, rhe two definicions are not rhe usual del.imiration of special histories wJrh? a gen~ral ~istory. The economic hiscory o( England, for ex:ample, or the dtploman~ h1sto?' of the early modero age or the church history o( rhe W~ az-c: speo_a.l to~1cs of such a kind, predetermined as worrhy of investi-gauon v1a the.~r subJect matter, time period, and region. In such cases, we arr deiling with ~pecial aspects of general hisrory.

Social history and conceptual history are different. On rhe basis of thcir theoretical self-jusrificacion, "rhey make a general claim, one thar can be extended and applied ro al! special histories. All history dea.ls with 11 te~ubjective relarionships, with forms of soci.ability or with social srrarifi cauon_s; rh~efore, the characterzation of history as social hisrory makes an endunng, lrtefutable, and, soto speak, anthropological da.im rhar les con cealed behind any form of historiography. And which history would nor ha~ to be comprehcndcd as such befare it congeaJs into history? [nvesri-gatmg co~~pts and rheir lingustic history is as much a parr of rhe mini-

~ai condm?n for recognizing history as is rhc ddinirion uf history as hav-mg todo Wtth human socictv.

1

; 1 1

Social Hrory and CorJCeptuai Htory 21

Historical Rerrospective

Bod~ social history and conceptual history !uve ex.isred as ex:plicit modcs of quesoning since the Enligluenment and me d.iscovery of th.e

hi~torical ~orld it induded; that is, since che rime when previous social for mations bf.'carne porous and linguistic reflection also came under pressure co change, from a history that was being experienced and aniculated ~ someching new. Anyone who follows the history of historical refl.oction and historical tepresentation since then encounters borh approaches again and again, whether they explcate one another, as in Vico, Rousseau, and H~tder, or whether they exiS[ in isolation &o m one an01her.

Theclaim to reduce all historical utterances concerning life and all changes id them to social conditions and ro derive them fi:om such condi-rions was ksened &om the t me of the Enghtenment philosophies of his-tory up to Comte and the yuung Marx. Such claims were followed by histo-ries that, methodologically speaking, employed a more posicivistic approach: from histories of society and civilization, to the cultural and. fo1k histories of the nineteenth cenrury, up co regional histories rhat encompassed all aspects of life, from Moser w Gregorovius to l.amprecht, their symhetic achieve-mem can aptly be called social-historical.

By conuas[, since the ~ightecnth century there have also been delib-erately rhem:.uiud. conceptual histOrie~ (Begrijfigeschichtm) 1-the rerm ap-parently derives from Hegel-which have rerained a permanent place in hinories df language and in historicai lex.icography. Of course, thq were chematizctl by disciplines that proceeded in a historical-philological man-ner and n~eded to secure their sources via hi!tm~nrutic questionng. Any translation inro one's own present implies a conceptual hisrory; Rudolf Eucken has demonsnared its methodological inevitability in an exempl.ary fashion fo~ the humanities and aii the social sciences in his c~schicht~ dn-phikopht~chen Terminvlogie. 2

In practical research, reciproca! refcrences that bring together social-historical analyses or analyses of constirurional hisrory roU'thcr with ques rions of conceptual hisrory are ubiquitous. Their mutual oonnection, more or less reflj:cted upon, has aiways been presenr in the disciplines concerned with anti~uity and in research on the Middle ~es: e~pccially ';her~ mini-mal sourc1s are avaibble, no &cr can be recog01zed wnhout taking m ro ac-

22 Chapur.<

coum rhe manner of its former and ptC'SC'nl conceptual assimi.lation. Obvi-ous!y, the reciproca! imerlacing of social and concepwal hi.~tory w:LS sysrem-arically explored on!y in the 1930s; we are reminded of Waiter Schle~inger 1nd, above all, of Oteo Brunner. In neighboring fidds, Erich Rorhackcr was a similar force in philosophy, as was Carl Schmin in jurisprudcncc and jost Tri er in ! i nguis ti es.

In rhe polidcal aspects of research, social and concepmal history werc conjoined against two very differem tendencies. both domin~nr ;n rhc 1920s. On rhe one hand, there was a parting with conceprs conceming rhe-history of ideas and of spirit (idun- und gmmgrJchicht!iche), which were pursued outside a concrete sociopoliticaJ comext-for their own sakes, as ir were. On the other hand, history cea~ed ro be regarded as primarily a po-lical hisrory of events, and instead its longer-lasting presuppositions were investigated.

As Ouo Brunnei: emphasized in the second edition of Land und Hen'-schaft,~ he wanred "ro a.:;k abour the concrete presuppositions of medieval politics, without, however, represencing it itself." He sought to focus on long-term munurt's of social condironality (Verfoftheit) and changes in these-which Wtl"l' ne-vcr merely of thc moment-doing so by rhemariz-ing panicular lingui>tic self-anicularions of social groups, associarions, or strata and the history of their interpreraon. lt is no accident that the An-na/cs, which emerged from an analogous re.scarch interese, established in 1930 the mbrk "Things and Words." For Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, linguistic analysis was an integral part of social-historical re~earch. In Ger-many, Gunther Ipsen did pathbreaking work in modern history by com plementing his social-historical, specifically demographic invesrigations with linguistic research. All rhese ideas were taken up by Werner Come when he founded rhe Workshop for Modern Social History in 1956-57. Thanks to Conze's initiative, conjoining social-histoncal and conceptuJ.!-hiswrical questions became one of its enduring challenges, as did rhe dif-feremial dcterminarion between rhem, which will be rhe wpic of rhe fol-lowing pages.

The lmpossibility of an UHisroire Totale"

There is no hiscory wirhom societal formarions and rhe concepts by which they define and ~eek w me-et their challcnges, whcther rellexively or

Soai Htory and Conaptual History 23

sdf-reflexi~ely; without th~m, it is impossible l:O eltpe~i~nc~ and to interput history, ro represent orto recoum ir. ln rhis scnsc, sociery and language be-long to the metahstorical premisc:~ without wh\ch CTt!st.hichte and Historie are unthiqkable. Social-historical and conceprua.l-hisrorical theories, ques-tions, and methods thus refer to all pos.sible ateas wirhin rhe discipline of hisrory. Thus, too, the wish to conceive a "toral hismr( occasionally sneaks in. Though for pragmatic reasons rhe emprica.! investigatiom of social or conceptual historians concern limited tapies, this self-limitation doe~ not lesscn rhe,claim to gencrality; ir follows from a lheory of possible history, which must presupposc society and language.

SociU-historical and conceptual-historical approaches necessarily pro-ceed in J.rj interdiscplinary fashion, because they work within speci~liz~ons that are merhodologically mandated. lt does not follow from this. however, that chcr thcoretical claim ro generaliry could be posited as ab-solure or rotal. Iris truc rhat they operare under rhe constraint ofhaving ro presuppose rhe roraliry of socieral relations, as well as their linguistic anic-uladons and sysrems of imerpretations. But rhe formal! y irrefutable prem-isc that all history has todo with society and language does not allow the farther-reaching condusion that it would be possible, so far as content is concerned, ro write a "rotal history" or even ro concrive it.

As numerous and plausible~ the empirical objections against a total history ar~, an objection againsr irs possibility follow~ from che very at-tempt ro make t conceivable. The tufflm of a social hisrory and the tofflm of a linguisric hisrory can never be completely projccted onto one another. Even if w~ make che empirically unrealizable assumpcion rhar both areas could be rhematized as a 6nitely delimited totaliry, dtcrc would remain an unbridgeable difference between any social hisrory and !he hiscory of com-

prehendi~ ir. Lin~uistic comprehension does nm carch up with what rakcs place or

what actual! y was the case, nor does anything occur without airead y being changed by its linguisric assirnibtion. Social hisrory (Sozilllgcschichtc orkr Gescllschaftsgrschichu) and conceptual history stand in a reciprocal, histor-ically necersitated tension rhar can never be canceled out. What you do will only be rqld ro you by rh~ following day; and whar you say becomes an event by duding you. WhH occurs interpersonally or socially and whar is said during that event or about it gives rise ro a consrantly changing dif-ference tnat rende(s any hroire totale impossible. History rakes place in

_,

Chapter 2

thc: ancicipation of incompleteness; any intc:rprc:tation thar is adequare ro ir therefore must dispense with rotaliry.

Characteristically, historical time again and again reproduces rhe ten-.sion berween society and its transformation, on the one hand, and its !in* gui.stic processing and assimilation, on rhe other. Any history lives by this tension. Social relations, conflicts, their solutions, and their changing pre-suppositions are m:ver congruent with rhe linguistic articulario os by which societies act, comprehend, imerpret, change, and refOrm themselves. This thesis can be tesred on two counts: history occurring in actu, and history thar has happened and is pasr.

History, Speech, and Wriring As They Occur

When social history and conceptual history are referrOO. to each other, the d.ifferential determination between them relativizes the claim of each co generality. History neither becomes resolved in the mode of comprehend-ing it, nor is ir conceivable without such comprehension.

The connection between everyday events is pregiven in an undiffer-entiated way, for humans, being endowed wirh language, are co-orginary wirh rheir societal existence. How can this rdation be determined? As. they occur, individual events depend on linguistic facilitation; rhis is compara-tively clear. No social activicy, no political deal, and no economic rrade is possible without accounting, wirhout planning discussions, withour pub-le debates or secret talks, without commands-and obedience-without rhe consensus of those involved and the articula red dissem of conflicting parties. Any everyday history in its daily course is dependent on language in action, on ralking and speaki.ng, jusr as no !ove story is oonceivable with-out ar least three words-you, 1, we. Any .socieral event in irs manifold connections is based on advance communicacive work and on rhe work of linguistic mediation. lnscirutions and organizations, from rhe smallest as-.sociuion to the Unired Nations, muse depend on rhem, whether in oral or in written form.

As self-evident as this observation may be, iris equally sdf-evidenr rhat ir must be qualified. What actually takes place is, obviously, more than the linguistic aniculation that has led to the event or that imerprers it. The command, rhe oooperative resolurion, or rhe elemental cry to kili is not idemical with the act of killing irself. Lovers' figures of speech are not re-

Social History and Conceptual History

solved in tP~t !ove that rwo people experience. The written rules of organi-zation or rpeir spoken modes of performance are not identical with an or-ganizarion's acts. .

There is always a d.ifference berween a history as it takes place and lt.s linguistic f:aciliration. No speech act is irself rhe accion that ir hdps prepare, rrigger, a~ enact. Admittedly, a word often triggets irrevocable conse-quences; fhink of the Fhrer's command to invade Poland, to memion a striking e;:.~ample. Bur precisely in chis case the relation becomes clear. A history does nor happen withour speaki.ng, bur ir is never idemical with [, it cannot ~e reduced to ir.

For that reason, there must be further advance work and performa-rive models beyond spoken language in arder for events to be possible. There is an area of semiotics that uanscends language. Think of bodily ges-tures in wlch language communicates only in an encoded form; of mag-cal riruals, including rhe rheology of sacrifice, which has irs hisrorical place not in the word but on rhe cross; of modes of group behavior habituated by symbols or by modern traffic signs. AH are maners of a sign language that is oomprehensible without words. Al! of the signals mencioned can be verbali2.ed. They can be reduced to language, but it is panicular to them that one has todo wirhout spoken language in arder ro trigger or control appropriare acrions, attitudes, or modes ofbehavior through them. Let me cal! to mind further extralinguiscic preconditions: spacial nearness or dls-rance; distances that either harbor or dday conflict; temporal differences berween age groups within a generation or due to the bipolarity of the sexe.s. Al! these differences contain in themselves events, confl.icrs, and rec-onciliations that are made possible prdinguiscically, even if they can, but do not ha ve ro, take place by virtue of linguiscic articulation.

Thete are thu.s exrralinguistic, prdinguistic, and posrlingui.stic ele-ments in ln actions that lead to a history. They are closdy ati:ached to the elememary gc:ographical, biological, and :z.oological conditions that, va che human consdtution, all have an effect on societal events. Birth, love, and death; eatlng, hunger, misery, and diseases; perhaps happiness, bur in any evem robbery, victory, killing, and defeat-all are al.so elements and per~ forma ti ve! modes of human history, reaching ~rom th~ ev~ry~ay to. the idemification of political power structures. Thea exualmgusuc pregven data are dficult to deny.

Certainly, rhe analyric distinctions made here can hardly be compre-

Chapter 2

hended in the concrete contcxt of the actions that constitute events. All prdinguistic pregiven data are linguistically recovered by human beings and are mediated in concrete conversation through their doings and sufferings. The spoken language or the writing that is readtthe panicular conversacion that is effcctive~or ovcrheard-interrwinc in the topical performance of what happens to form an event that is always composed of extralinguistic and linguistic elements of action. Even if conversation ceases, linguistic pre-knowledge remains present-ir is inherent in human beings and enables rhem_ to communicate with those confronting them, be rhey human beings or thmgs, producrs, plants, or animals.

The more highly aggregated the human units of acrion-for insrance, in modern processes of labor and rheir economic interconnections, or in the increasingly complex political spaces of action-the more imponant con-ditions of linguistic communication beco me for maimaining rhe ability to act. Linguistic mediation extends from tbe audible range of a voice through communication dcvices-writing, the printing press, rhe tdephone, and broadcasting w the screen of a television set ora data processor-including the i~rimcions of tbeir modes of transmission, &om the postman and print med1a to the news satellite, including rhe consequences thar intervene in any linguistic codification. People have always rried either ro fix rhe range of spoken languagc permanemly or to expand and accelerate ir so as to antici-pare, trigger, or control evenrs. This comment may suffice ro demonstrate the intenwining of any social history and any cDnceprual hisrory in their re-spective enactment of speaking and acting.

Spoken words, wriring thar is read, or cvents that take place cannot be separated in actu but can only be divided analyrically. Someone who is over-whelmed by a speech will experience this not only linguistically but all over his body. and someone who is being silenced through an action will experi-ence his dependence on language all the more, so as ro be able w move again. This personal interrelarion of speech and accion can he transferred ro alllevels o.f the soci_al units of acrion, which are becoming increasingly com-plex. ~e.~terreJ~[]OQ Oetween uspeech aets~ and "aetual" happenings tanges &om I~dJVIdual mstances of speaking and acting ro the mulriple social in-terrelauons through which evenrs, in all their inrerconnecrions, occur. De~ ~pire. all historical variacion, this finding constitutes any hisrory rhat occurs, a~d n has considerable effecrs on the representation of pase histories, espe-CJally on the difference between social hisrory and concepmal history.

. ---------

Social History and Conaptual History

Represented History and lts Linguisric Sources

The empirical connection be{Ween action and speech, acting and speaking, lS demonstrated so far, breaks up as soon as we shift our vicw back from che history occurring in romtu to past hisrory, with which thc professonal historian deals ex eventu. The analytc separacion between an extralinguisric anda linguistic leve! of action gains the status of an amhro-pological pregiven darum, without which no historical experience can be transferred nro everyday or academic statemeots at aH. What has happened, and has h;ppened beyond my own experience, is something that I can ex-perience merely by way of speech or wriring. Even f language may-in part-hav!= been only a secondary factor in che enactment of doings and sufferings, as soon asan everit ha.s become past, language becomes the pri-mary factor without which n recollection and no scientific transposition of this recollt;ction is possible. The amhropological primacy of language for the representation of past history thus gains an epistemological status, for it must be decided in language what in past h.istory was necessitated by lan-guage and whar was not.

In anchropological terms, any "history" constitutes itself rhrough oral and written communication between generations that Ji ve rogether and con-vey their own respective experiences to one another. Only when, with the passing of older generadons, the orally conveyed space of recollection mdts away, does,writing become the primary carrier ofhistorical impaning. Iris true rhat numerous extralinguisric remainders indicare past events and con-ditions: ruins left over from catasrrophes; coins that are evidence of eco-nomic organiz.ation; buildings that bespeak communities, poli rica! rule, and services; streets that bespeak trade or war; agrirulrurallandscapes that testifY w age-Long labor; monumenrs rhat tescify to victory or d.eath; weapons that indicare struggle; wols that indicate invention and use. Thcse are all ~relics~ or "fi.ndings" -or images-rhat can testify to c:verything at rhc same time. Everything is processed by special historical disciplines. Certainly, what "ac-tually" may ha ve taken place can, beyond all hypotheses, only be guaranreed by oral and written records, that is, by linguisric evidence. Only at rhe lin-guistic sources does the path divide between whar is to count as "linguistic" and what i$ to count as "actual" in rhe events of the pasr. Under this aspecr, genres and their differentiations can be related anew to one another.

'What belonged together, and how ir did so, in eventu can only be de-

Chapter 2

terrnined by linguistic evidence post romtum; depending on how these lin-guistic records, this oral or writcen tradirion, are handled, che most differ-ent genres move more dosel y together and others m ove apan.

Myths, falry tales, dramas, epics, and novels all presuppose and the-matize the original connection between speech and accion, between suffer-ing, speaking, and being silem. Only chis mak.ing present ofhistory as it oc-curs establishes a meaning that remains wonhy of memory. All histories do just chis, using true and fictitious utterances w do justice to events wonh re-membering or retrieving words congealed into writing that restif)r to the cornbinarion of speaking and acting.

Unmistakable situations bring about their own changes; behind th.em, something like "destiny" can appear. It remans a challenge for any self-inrerpretation and interpretation of che world to find them out and hand them clown. In a more or less accompli.shed fashion, al! memoirs and bi-ographies belong to this gente; in me English language, chey emphasize the interrelation between language and life-ULife and Leners. '' In addition, all histories that follow events in their immanem dynamics belong here. "He said this and did that; she said thac and did sornething else; something sur-prising, something new followed frorn it that changed everyching"-many works are strucmred according to chis formalized schema, especially rhose, like histories of political events or of diplomacy, that rnake ir possible to consrruct in actu the course of events by virtue of che state of che sources. Viewed as linguisric achievements, these histories emer inca a series that ranges from myths to novel.s.5 Only when they daim academic status do they depend on the authenticity-which needs ro be checked-of the lin-guistic sources; these sources need to vouch. for the interrelarion of speech acts and actions, an incerreladon that previously had to be presupposed.

What can be distinguished analyrically, rhe prelinguistic from the lin-guistic, is brought together again "in analogy to experience~ thanks to the work of language: ir is the ficrion of che ([)actual. Viewed in retrospect, what has actuaHy raken place is only real in che medium of linguistic fic-tion. In contraSt ro the speech that acrs in history as it takes place, language rhus gains an episremological prirnacy that urges it continuously to make decisions about the relationship between language and action.

When submitted to this alternative, sorne genres articula te rhemselves in a very one-sided way. There are annals, which only regiscer resulrs-namely, what happened., but not how ir carne to happen. There are hand-

Social Htory and Conceptual Htory 29

hooks aml "narrativ~~ wor!G of history, which concern actions, successes, and failures, but not che words or utterances that led to them, only that great men act, or rh.ar highly stylized subjecrs of action become active in a speechless fashion, as it were: states or dynasties, churches or sects, classes or parties, or, whatever else is hypostasized as a unir of action. Rately, however, are linguistic patterns of identification investigated; without them, such units of aation would not be able to act a e a!l. Even where spoken speech or its wricten equvalents are induded in the representacion, linguiscic evidence comes under ideological suspicion or is read only instrumentally with pre-given imerests and evil imemions in nnd.

E ven invescigations made frorn che perspective of the history of bn-guage, wh,ich primarily chematize che linguistic evidence itself. cend to refer it ro a "real" history that must first itself be linguistically constituted. But the methodological difficulties of teferring speaking and language to social conditions and changes, to which sociolinguistics in particular is exposed, ding to the aporia of having to conslitute nguistically the fidd of objects of which rhey are abour to speak, an apora rhat is shared by al! h.istorians.

For that reason, rhe other extreme will also be found in the future: editing the linguistic sources as such, the written remains of formerly spo-ken or written utterances. The accident of tradition will then h.ave thema-tized che dilference berween excralinguisric and linguistic action. And every-where, it is rhe task of the good commentator to track clown the sense of the document that could noc be found at al! wirhout che differemial determi-nation of speech and facts.

Thus we have esrablished three gentes, which, given the alternative of speech ~ct and actual act (T,handlung) either refer to each other or, in the extreme case, are thematized separately. Epistemologically, a double task always falls upon languagc: it refers to the extralinguistic connections of events s well as-by doing so-to itself Conceived historically, it is al-ways self-reflexive.

Event and Structure-Speaking and Language

Alt~ugh we have so far spoken only about history as ir occurs and history as it has occurred, asking how speech and action relate to each oth.er in actu, in a synchronic section, as it were, the question expands as soon as diachrony is thematized as wel!. Hcre, as in the relation of speaking and

30 Chamr 2

acting in the enactmem of events, synchrony and diachrony cannot be sep-ara red emplrKal.ly. The conditions and dererminants rhat, in a temporal gradar1on of vanous depths, reach from rhe "past" into the presem in1er vene in particular evenrs justas agents simultaneously" act on tht basis of rheir respective out!ines of rhe future. Any synchrony is eo ipso ar the same time diachronic. In actu, al! temporal dimensions are always intcrn~:ined, and it wouJd comradkt experience to define rhe ~presem" as, for inscancc, one of those momems thar accumulate from rhe past in m the fllture-or, conversely, that slip as intangible poim~ of transirion from rhe future into rhe past. In a purely rhetorical manner, all history could be delined as a per-manent present in which past and future are conramed-or as rhe contin-uous intertwining of past and fU!ure rhar rnakts any present constantly dis appear. If we focus on synchrony, hisroy deteriorares imo a pure space of consciousness in which a/J temporal dimcnsions are conrained at once, wher~as if w~ focus on .diachrony, che active prcsence of human beings would, lmtonCllly ~peaking, have no space ofacrion. This thought experi-mem is designed only ro refer to the fact that the differenrial determination berween synchrony and diachrony, introduced by Saussure. can cverywhere be .analytica.l !y of help wirhout being able to do jusrice ro the wm plei ry of ch.:: rcrnporal intertwinings in the hisrory rhat is caking place.

Wirh rhesc reservarions, we shall use the anal)'lic Gltcgories of syn-chr~ny, _which aims at the topical presentness of evencs, and dachrony, wh1ch alms at the temporal dimension of depth rhar is also cont

p. Chapter 2

diachronically and that make possiblc: each individual case. Both inquirc: into the long-term occurrences that can be derived from rhe sum of indi-vidual cases. Put differently; they inq uire into the pregiven linguistic con-ditions under which such sttuctures have entered imo social consciousness and under which they have been comprehended and also changed.

Let us first fo!low specifically social-hisrorical and then specifically conceptual-historical modes of procedure.

The synchrony of individual marriage ceremonies and of the speeches and leners exchanged in connection with them is not omitted by social his-rory. Rather, it is embraced diachronically. Thus. for example, numbers of weddings can be statistically ascertained from the perspective of social-historical quesrions so as to prove population increases for each social srra-rum. Questions to be asked include: When did the number ofweddings ex-pand beyond the number of the houses and farms pregiven by esta tes rhat hada speci6ed amount of food? How can the number of weddings be re-lated to wage and price graphs, to good and bad harvests, so as to make ir possible w weigh the economic and natural factors relating ro che repro-duction of the population? How can numbers of marital and extramarital binhs be related to each other so asto measure social situations of conflict? How do numbers of births and deaths of children, mothers, and fathers re-late ro each other, so as ro explain long-term changes in "typical~ married life? How does the graph of divorces run, allowing us ro draw condusions about the typical rnarriage? All these quesrions, which have been singled out almosr at random, have in common that they help construct "actual" long-term occurrences rhat are not directly contained as such in rhe sources.

Laborious prepararory work must be done ro render source state-ments comparable in order to aggregare series of numbers fmm them, and systematic reflection is needed, both bcforehand and afterwards, ro inter-pret the aggregated series of data. Longer-term strucrural starements can-not be derived direcdy from the linguisdc sources. The sum of rhe concrete individual cases that occur synchronically and rhat are verified is itself mure and unable to "verify~ long-tenn, medium-range, or in any way diachronic strucrures. In order to derive permanent statements from pasr history, pre-paratory theoretical work and the employmenr of a subject-specific disc:i-plinary terminology are necessary. These alone enable one to crack con-nections and interrelations that could not yet have been perceptible ro che people affected by them.

Socal History and Crmceptual History 33

Wh~t has "actually" -and not linguistically-occurred in hisrory in rhe long term remains an academic construction, viewed in social-hstorical rerms; evi;lence for it depends on the plausbiliry of the underlying theory. Any rheo.rrcally based starement must submit w m~odological control by the sources in order to claim past actuality, but the reality of long-term factors cannot be sufficiently ustified on the basis of individual sources. For that re aso~, ideal types can be formed, following Max Weber, for instan ce; they comiJine various criteria of describing realiry in such a way that the connectio~ rhar are to be presupposed can be interpreted with conssrency. To take a case from our series of examples, it is possible to devdop typical marriage apd family trajecrories for peasants and those below them, together with the average number ofbirth.s and deaths, in correlation with wage and price serie~ or with the sequence of crop failures, working hours, and the tax burden, to determine how marriage and family trajectories at the peasant level can be distinguished from those at lower levels, and how both changed in the transition fi-om rhe preindustrial age ro the industrial age.

The facwrs in individual cases, not me cases rhemselves, can men be structured in such a way that the economic, polirical, and natural presuppo-sitions-depending on rhe importance of the wage and price structure, the rax burden, or harvest results-become understandahle for a marriage rypi~ cal of a certain social stratum. Questions to be asked are: Whicb factors are

homogen~ous and for what period of time? When are they dominant and when rece~ive? The answers make it possible to determine time limits, peri-ods, or thresholds of epochs, according to which the history of peasant mar-rages and;of rhose below the peasant levd can be organized cliachronically.

So far our series of examples has been consciously selected for clus~ ters of faqcors that allow primarily extralinguistic series of evems to be struaured diachronically and to be related co each other. Establishing them

presuppos~s a social-historical theory. Aided by a subject-specific terminol-ogy (here that of demography, eoonomics, and finance), ir permits a deter-minarion of permanence and change that cannot be found in the sources as such. The theoretical daim thus grows in proportion with the distance i t musr ketp fi-om any "self-prodamation" of the sources so as to consuucr long-duration !imirs or rypical societal forms.

- Certainly, quite d.ifferem dusters of factors than those mentioned so far also enter inm rhe history of marriages posired as "typical." Such facrors cannot be invesrigated without an interpretation of rheir linguistic self-

34 Chapter 2

articulation. Wc thw arri'Vl: at thc conceptua!-historical proccdures rc:quim:l. to distinguish bmveen topical speech and its linguistic pregiven data, a dis-tinction analogous to that between event and structure.

Theology and n:ligion, law, cuswm, and rradition each posit thc &amework conditions for any concrete rnarriage rhat amedate rhe individ-ual case diachroncally and that generally ourlast ir. Altogether, institution-alized rules and parrerns of interprc:tation establish and delmir the lebens-raum of a marriage. In this way, "exrra[inguisticn patrerns of behavior are also deterrnined, but language remains rhe primary instan ce of mediaran.

A marriage can neither be enrered into nor conducted withour cenain linguistically arriculared pregiven conditions (although their number and stringency are decreasing). These range from tradirions ro legal acrs to ser-mons, from magic to the sacrarnents to metaphysics. "Whar therefore needs to be investiga red are the kinds of rexts, of various social dassifications, in which panicular marriages have been conceptualized. These texts may have come into existence spontaneously, like diaries, letters, or newspaper re-ports, or, at the other extreme, they may have been formulated with a nor-mative intent, as were theological treatises or juridical codifications and their interpretations. In all cases, language-bound traditions diachronically establish the life sphere of a possible marriage. And when changes beco me apparem, they do so only when the norion of marriage has been conceptu-alized anew.

The theologica! interpretation of marriage asan indissoluble instim-tion ordained by God is dominam right into the eighteenrh cenrury; its rnain purpose is to preserve and propagare the human race. Depending on rhe rules that determined the prerogatives of particular social groups, a marriage was authorized only when rhe economic basis of the home was sufficient to feed and bring up children and ro guaranree mutual spous:J suppon. Thus numerous people were legal!y excluded from the prospect of marrying. As the nucleus of the home, marriage remained embedded within esta te prerogarives. This changed in rhe wake of the Enlighten-ment, which in a new departure, dealt with marriage in rhe AUgemeines Landrecht in terms of con tracruallaw. The economic ti e was loosened, and the freedom of the spouses as individuals was so much expanded rhat di-vorce-which had been theologically prohibited-became permissible. The common law did not give up the theological determinations and those per-raining to estate prerogatives, bur rhe concepr of marriage-and this can

Social History and ConceptUd.! History 35

only be re$istered by way of a conceprual history-shifted decis.ively in fa-vor of greater freedom and self-determination for both spowes.

Ar rhe beginning of the nineteenth century. we finally find an en-tirely new: concept of marriage. Theological justifica on is replaced by an anthropological self-justification; the inscitution of marriage is divested of its legal framework so as to give space to the moral self-realization of two lovng pe9ple. The Brockhaus of 1820 emphatically celebrares chis postu-lated autanorny and innovatively conceptualizes it as a marriage of !ove. With this, marriage loses its previous primary purpose of begerting chil-dren; rhe economic rie is cut; and Bluntschli later goes so far as to declare a marriag;:; without !ove to be immoral. As such, it comes under the oblig-ation ofbeing dissolved.6

We ha ve thus sketched out three conceptual-historica! srages; each has strucru~ the inherited normative economy of argumenration in differenr ways and jnnovarively altered its decisive points. Scen in terms oflinguiscic history, common law and romantic-liberal conceptual formations both had rhe character of an c:vent. They affected the enrire linguisric structure on whose basis marriages could be conceived. It was not that diachronically pregiven language as a whole had changed, but its semamics anda new lin-guistic pragmatics had been ser free.

One cannot derive from the conceptual-hisrorical procedure any his-tory of the actual wedding ceremonies and marriages that may have oc-curred alopgside this linguistic self-imerpretation. The economic conmaints stressed by the social-historical viewpoint continue to remain in force to re-strict cert~n marriages, to m.ake them more difficult, and to weigh. them clown. E ven if the legal barriers were lowered, social pressures continued to rern.a.in in ~ffect so as not to turn marriage for !ove into empirically the only, normal e~. Certainly, much could be said in favor of the hypothesis that, in a case f temporal anricipation, as it were, the concept of the !ove mar-riage, once it was devdoped, found prospects for its re-Jlization that im-proved in ~he long ter m. Conversely, it cannot be denied that airead y before the romantic conceptual formation of the lave matriage, !ove asan ant:hro-pologically pregiven datum had enrered even imo marriages that, being de-fined by eftate prerogatives, do not memion it.

Wht follows, for derermining rhe rehtionship berween social history and concepmal hisrory, is that they need each other and relate to each other, yet cannot ever be made to coincide. What, in the long term, was "acm-

Chapur2

aJiy" effertive and did change cannor be complcrely derived from soum::s handed down in wriuen form. Thar rrquires preparacory rheoretical and termnological work. Yer whar can be demonsuared, from rhe written rec-ords, as conceptual hisrory involves the linguistically delimiteYet there is an analogy between social history and conceptual hismry, to which 1 will refer in closing. What, in each case, rakes place as unique in history as it occurs is possible only because presupposed condirions repe:.~.r rhemsd\'es wirh a longer-rerm reguJarity. A wedding ceremony may be sub-jecrivdy unique, bur n.-pe-.uable structures express themselv~s in ir. The eco-nomic conditions of a wedding ceremony depend on harvesr resulrs, which vary every yrar, or on longer-term ewnomic changes, or on rhe tax. burden rhar disrupts planned budge1~ every monrh or every year (apan from rhe regular services required of thc peasant popularion). All these presupposi-Tiom are effective only by vinue of regular, more or less sready reperition. The 1ame is uue for me social implications of a marriage ceremony, which can only be grasped in a spcx:ifical!y linguistic way. The pregiven data of tra-drions, of rhe leg...l ~etting :md perhaps of rheological inrerpretarion-all rhese insrirurional bonds are only effeccive in actu by repearing rhemselves periodiG.IIy. Thcy changc only slowly, but their strucrures of repetition do nor break as a re.sulr. What is called "long duration'' is only hisrorically ef-feccive if che time of the evenrs, unique in each case, contains repearable strucrures whose speeds of cransformation are different from rhose of the events themselves. The copie of al! social history is conrained in this imerre-lalion, which is only insufficicntly ddined by "synchrony" and "diachrony."

The inrerrelation berween topical speech and pregiven language is m

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Social History and Cartrtpruai History 37

be detem\ined in an analogous, but not homogeneous fashion. When a concep1, for instance that of "marriage,~ is used, experiences of marriage, which have a long-term effect and which have entered into the connpt al andas its foundation, are linguistically srored in it. And the linguistic con-text, which is also pregiven, regulares the range of its semantic content. With any topical use of the word marriagr, the linguisrically determincd pregiven data that structure its sense and it.s un.derstanding repeat them~ selves. He re, too, linguistic structures of reperion are set free, yer abo de~ limit rhe scope of speech. And any conceptual chnge chat bccomes a linc guistic event occurs in the act of semanrk and pr:1grnaric innovation, which makes ir possible to comprehend what is old in a different war and to un-dersrand i)l any way what is new.

Social history and conceptual hisrory have differenr speeds of trans-formation and are based in distinguishable srructures of reperition. There-fore, rhe acadcmic terminology of social history remains dependenr on the history of concepts, so as ro access linguistically stored experience. And c

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Time and History

Today is January 24. For us, it would be an arbitrary date if ir were not a Wednesday, on which this series of lectures by differenr speakers is regulady taking place. This date is only accidenrally connecred ro hisrory, because it is today and not on another- Wednesday that l a m supposed 10 speak about the topic "Time and Hiscory." In my yourh, things were dif-ferent. Back then, knowing thar the binhday of Frederick the Grear was on January 24 was an escablished pan of the general education of a Prwsian bourgeois family, and among the nobility ir would have been the same. One was able to remember this date-January 24, qr2-rhanks ro a fop-pish school educacion, even if the date was not cdebrared any longer. At the most, che day was publicly commemor-accd every fifty or hundred years. Today, huge exhibitions are organ ized for rhese occasions, as is well known. But cwo hundred. years ag

102 Chapter 6

1(> talk about hisrory and time is difficult fur a n:ason rhat Itas ro do "':ith more ~han "hisrory. ~Time cannot be intuired (ist arw:hauungslo;). [fa h1stonan brmgs pa.sr evcms back to mind through his language, then che lis-rener or reader will pcrhaps associate an intu[on with them as well. But does he thereby have an intuirion of past tim~? Hardly so. or only in a meta-phor.ical use oflanguagc, for instance. in rhe sensc in whch one ~peab of rhe time of the French Revolution withom thereby making visible ar1ything specifically remporal.

When une seeks t0 forman imuirion ot' rime as :uch, one s referred to spatial indicadoos. to rhe hand of thc dock ur rhe lea ve,; of a caletldar that one pul!s off every day. And when one tries ro guide one$ nrurion 111 a historcal.:lirecrion, one perhaps pays attention ro rhe wrinkles of an huma11 being or the scars n which a life's pasr fate is present. Or one c.alls to mind the juxraposition of ruins and new buldings or, today, looks at ob-vous changes in style that lend temporal depth ro a spatial row of houses. Or one looks ar the various levds-side by side, below, and above one an-orher~of different!y modernized means of transportarion, ranging from rhe sled to the supersonic aircraft. Entire ages meet within them-namely, the fast Ice Age or, rather, the Paleolithic Age as part of it and our century. Fnally, above al! one rhinks of the succession of generations within one's own family or professonal world; withn them, differenr space5 of experi-ence overlap and diffe~:ent perspectives on the furure intersect, nduding all the conRicts that they contain as seeds. AH the examples that are intended ro tender historical time visible to us refer us to the space in which humans live and to the nature within which they are embedded, be ir the system of planets by which clocks and calendars are regulated, or che succession of bi-ological generatons as it is expres.sed in the social and political realm.

With this, 1 arrive at m y first aspect, the prerequisites of natural time for human history and its historiography.

In order to be able to live and work, humans depend on time limits that are pregiven by nature. They remain dependent on such limits even when increasingly learn to manipulate these times more and more through rechno1ogy or medicine. Let me recall a well-known joke from the Soviet Union-"Sleep fascer, comrade!"-ro indicare a naturallmit rhar cannot be transcended by any planning.

Thc rmes of che day and rhe seasons were guiding forces for the 6rst :;elf-organization of human societies. The ha bits of deer for hunring cul-

Time u.nd History 103 1

tures; loouion, climaa:, and weather conditions for farming cultures; all this embedded within the seasons, sbaped everyday life and induced mag-ical and religious attitudes, plus the modes ofbehavior orienred by rhem. This is srill valid today, ithough decreasingly so, corresponding to tbe de-cline in the food-prod.udng se

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104 Chapter 6

ground. The mechanial dock, once it had been invenred, descended from rne church tower to wwn and city halls, rhen moved into rhe living rooms of the wealthy and rhe bourgeoisie, and finally found its way into warch pockets. Since the 5ixteenth century, thi5 dock has been able to indicau: minute5 and, since rhe sevemeenth century, seconds; ir indicated, bur also stimu.lared, a disciplining and r;tionaliz.ing of the world ofhuman work and irs larimde for acrion. In the first half of rhe ninereenrh cemury, numerous industrial worken m England already carried their own warches-as srarus symbob, but aho ~o as to check on their supervisors' watches. Wh rhe emergence of thc railroad traffic sysrem and its srandardized schedule, stan-dard rimes were finally introduced-in Prussia, befare the Revolurion of 1848-which complerdy differed from rhe respective local time and rhe po-sitian of the sun. Henry Ford began his career as an indusnialist by pro-ducing clocks that were able ro indicatt" standard time and local rime si-mulraneously on two faces: a final indkation of the developmem of units of time rnade necessary by technology, which b~:c~me separated from nature-bound, traditional rhythms of rime. Day and nigJ,r seemed to become more alike, justas tracks made it possible for railrnads to run at nighr. This cor-responded to the introducrion of night work m the large companies of che lasr century so as ro increase produaion.

What does this rerrospenive look ar the history nf chronometry in everyday life m~an? w~ are dealing with a long-te.rrn ptocess ofincreasirw; acts of absrracnon desJgned w remove humans trom what was naturally pregiven to them. First, chronomeny was insened rlto rhe human contexr of action. Second, the sundial made it possible ro, as ir were, objectify nat-ural time. Third, the mechanical dock and, later, the pendulum clock initi-ated a reshaping of everyday life chrough quamified, vniform unirs of rime, which penaded and causal! y affected social organization and economic pro-duction. One can also cal] rhis a denaruralization of the division of rime and of the experience of time induded in ir. In rhe course of mechanizarion (fl.:chnifiziuung), physical insrruments of measuremem have increa.~ingly conttibuted ro divescing the course of everyday life of its natural precondi-tions, a process that has been inrerpreted as both a relief and a burden.

Our retwspective look also tdls us about orher rhings. We have traced the h istory uf eh ronomerry in social changes in everyday l ife. H ere the in-terpretarion of a denaturalizacion takes on meaning, though wirh rhe reser vation thar, ro rh is da y. all forms of chronometry memioned ha ve rcmained

Time and History 105

dependem ~pon our planetary system, on the ~lucion of the earth around the sun, on 'that of the moon around che earch (though less so), and on rhe rurning of the globe around irs axis. In other words, regardless of the soo.:ial function of rhe respective form of chronometry, any form of chronomeay remairn enj.bedded in scientifically verifiable and, in this seme, ohjl"ctive data. The~e data of the solar system were already calculated with great pre-cision by ~tronomers of advanced civilizatiorn in the second millennium R.l:. ot by the Maya; rhcy are val id regardless of history, regardless of the his-torio.:al situation in which they were 6rst ascertained. Nor wirhout reason tS chronology called an auxiliary science of hisrory. It answers questions of dat-ing by rderring the numerous calendars and chronologies that have bee.n used in rhe cuurse of our hisrory back to a common time of our planetary system, which is cakulated in a physica!-astronomical manner.

Wirh rhe inception of overseas land acquisition, the number of cal-endars competing in Europt" around t6oo (Julian, Gregorian, Byzanrine, and also Muslim) was increased by sever.J chronologies. Employing differ-enr sequences of numbers, they all referred to objecdvely equal dates of the same natural time. Scaliger, for insrance, defined January 1, 4713 B.C., as day "one, n from which every da y and ewry year was to receive its natural iden-tity, to which al! calendars could be referred.

This brings me ro rhe second pan of our question, the narural pre-requisites of our history, nan1ely, hisroriography.

I can~ot here address rhe difficulries thar result &om the conversion of culric caleridar dates imo a natural chronology. Lec me just cal! to mind that rhe year ze}o is !acking; accordi.ngly, Christ was bom on December 25 of the year one a.c. Or ler me call to mind the difficulty that our months no longer correspond to the revolurions of the moon around the eanh, or that rhe days compnse neicher che year nor che month without remainder~ the oonversiom of rhe diff~rem calendars presuppose a science of their own. Or let me call ro mind the replacemem of Julian years by Gregorian years, who!'e intrc>-duction w!ts delayed over a period of centuries from counrry ro counrry in Euro pe; ac'cording to our calendar, which was introduced in Russia in 192j, rhe Octobfr Revolution of 1917 rook place thirteen days larer, that is, anu-ally in NoT_ember.

By addressing al! the difficulries of chronology, J want ro emphasi2e the follow.ing: our enrire chronomeuy, in minutes and hours, iri unirs of years and centuries, which we create anificially, is based on the regularity

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106 Chapter ti

and cyclical retum of narurally pregiven dates. For historical chronology, at least, time is measurable only beca use of i ts na rural recurren ce.

To be sure, all chronologies are products of certain cultures and are, in tbis respect, tdative. Thi5 is also true for the Christian chronology, which has been largely universalized. Since the sixth century, it has staned count-ing from the birth of Chrisr. Only since the sevemeenth century has it counred rhe years before Christ backward; ante Chrirtum natum. This be-carne indispensable, first, because rhe discovered world also induded Chi-nese calendars extending even before the cbte of the world's creation, which required coordination; second, hecause geology was slowly openiog up pe-riods of time in the face of which biblical chronology dwindled. The roughly five thousand years of biblical world rime became a phase in rhe hisrory of our cultural deveiopmem. Finally, once the infiniry of space in rhe universe was hypostasized, time became expandable ro infiniry, imo rhe pasr and into the future. But apart from rhe comext of the history of this change in scholarship during the Enlighrenment, there remains the prerequisite rhar, for purposes of chronology, our time measuremems are ried ro the recur-rence of natural time. Every historically relative chronology is based in a time rhar is pregiven by nature.

This finding is a tacit yer fundamental prerequisite for our research. Because history itself remains embedded in time periods rhat are pregiven by narure, hisroriography is likewise unable ro dispense with dtem. To make meaningful statements, we need to tie each of our relative chronologies hack to a chronology that is as "absolute M as possble and independem of history. For prehisrory befare writi_ng or for early history, obviously pale-onrologicalfindings become meaningful only when they can be geologi-cally dassified, which today is made easier by the carbon r4 test. But exacr, objectifiable dating is also required for rhe kind ofhistory that is based. on written sources and human monumenrs. Only in chis way can a before and after be ascerrained, widtout which no event can be ihought and inrerpreted. Any succession thar provides a history with me~ing islinear, but ir can only be da red on rhe basis of the cydical rerurn of namral time. Let me give you an example.

Iris cerrainly of world-hisrorical importance that at the Dier of Speyer in t529 the Protestant Esrates carne together in a protestation that gave them rheir name and that ser the course, within imperiallaw, for modero Protestanrism. The protesration was directed againsr a Diet proposal that

Time and Hisrory 107 1

Charles V had issued. The emperor himself was in Madrid at the time. It would be wrong to suppose that Charles, rhrough his proposal to post pone che Reforma~ion until a general council, drove rhe Protestant Estates to their protesti that is, drove them ro refer ro rhdr free moral decision. The emperor wanted ro be accommodating, because he was still at war "With France and wished to damp down conflicts within the empire. The Diet proposal that, was actually presented carne from his brother Ferdinand, how-ever, rhe emperor's viceroy in Germany. He presented the harsh regulations, issued as imperial regularions, that evoked. the pro test. The reason for th.ese wrongly attribured harsh proposals can now be determined in a chronolog-ically definite form-something that was only discovered in rhe rwentieth century. Because of the war with France, the emperor's accommodating propositionsihad to be sent by sea, across the Mediterranean and then to Vienna. They arrived roo late to be presented on time ro the Diet of Speyer. Therefore Ferdinand acred on bis own authoriry, and he d.id so with conse-quences rhat hada world-historical elfect. He passed bis own, uncompro-mising proposals off as che emperor's.

Only an exact chronology of "earlier than" and "la ter than" informs us-ex post facto-abour rrue occurrences and allows us ro give an inter-pretati:on that is adequate to real evenrs.

Admittedly, no historian will reduce his inrerpretation of Protes-tantism to t~e events of the Diet of Speyer in 1529, at which the Protestant minority assembled for che first time according ro imperiallaw. But already the questio~ of how the protest carne about in actu and concrerely, the question ab~ut what role Charles V piayed. in it and what role his brother Ferdinand played, can only be answered if the exact chronology, in this case that of tbe path that che documenrs took, is reconstructed and safeguarded. The evaluatipn of statesmen's actions depends on such procedures.

A hisrJrian will, of course, stop at such evaluations, which involve the motives of agems and rhe ways in which these motives influenced the net-work of acrions, so as final! y to issue in a chain of evenrs. He will, for exam-ple, ask about the general conditions that made it possible for such actions as rhe one at the Diet ofSpeyer to happen at all. He might surmise that gen-eral conditiofs during the time of the Reformation would have given rise to a protest of the Protestant Estates, if not in 1519, then perhaps one or rwo years later. The conflict that had erupted abour the church constitution of rhe German empire had longer-term causes than those that led, in a single

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108 Chapter 6

act at a Diet, to the protest that made the schism ir11parable. E ven an inter-pretation of rhe Reformation in rerms of social or religious hisrory will al-ready give less weight to this, or perhaps not even mention ir ar all.

But our mema! operations, which are familiar ro every historian, make clear rhe fOIIowing: rhey lead further and furrher away from the hisrory of evems that take place along a chronological arder. This procedure is neces-sary, but it cannot be infinitely cominued.

Each individual event is embedded in a chronological series of dates that s to be narurally presupposed, and irs uniqueness remains unparal-leled. No matter how I research and represent the hisrory of rhe Reforma-ran-in economic terms, in rhose of the sociology of religion, of consti-tutional history, of rhe hisrory of ideas, or of politics alone-no general sratemem can get past the fact of an unalrerable befare and after of events that are actually past. What happened once cannot be undone, ir can only be forgotten. Individual dates are pregiven; they have to be presupposed and are often no longer known. In their unalterable succession, they form a chronological grid, and any interpretaran that goes beyond this rnust be capable ofbeing brought imo accord with it.

To stay with our example ofhow Protestantism is explained and com-prehended historically-as a movement of religious internaliz.ation, as bour-geois emanciparion, as rhe revolution of the rulers, as a superstructure of early capitalism, as the severance of the German people from Reman rule, as a German uprising, just ro name a few familiar interprerations frorn the !ase one hundred years-no interprerarion is able to bypass the irrevocable acr of a solemn protesration at Speyer in 1529.

I just stated thar, chronologically, generali2ations cannot be extended to infinity. Let us cominue to pursue this thought for a moment. Even longer-term statements about the Reformarion as a unir of evems remain tied ro milestone dates, befare and after- which ir does nor make any sense to speak of the Reformation as a historical period at all. Among these are, on rhe one hand, backdating the beginning to the late Middle Ages with its popuJar religious movemems, or preconditions pertaining ro the history of ideas, which one can find in the entire history of the Christian Ch urch; and on the other, continuadons of the Reformarion a.~ a f:Ktor with effeci:s right into the modern age. Any such procedures-which are completely legitimate iJJ historical rerms~remain, finally, tied toa unique succ:ession of eveJJts.

Time and Htory

We can take our histodographical thought experiment one step fur-ther and bring into play seemingly extratemporal factors. Thus one might srart out from.human narure and interpret rhe Reformation in psychologi-cal or even psychoanalytical terms: as a case of the detachment from exter-na! authority rhat allegedly led to the establishment of an interna! author-ity (namely, conscience), which then could be engaged in differentways. In purely theoretical terms, it is also possible to use an anthropological model of enduring applicability that is intended to rise above any historically unique siruation. We wouid then be on a levd of proof of supertemporal achronic permanence, as it were, this being the condition for any possible hisrory. Such explanarory patterns ha ve occurred again and again, in differ-ent attire. T~us it is possible to quote a proverb for any history-many dogs are the de'\th of the hare, or pride goes befare a ~~~~in arder r~ _re-duce a lost war to general human and, as ir were, antehlsroncal regulant1es.

I do not want to underestimate or downplay the inlluence of such pieces of wisdom, which can also be translared into the statements of an an-thropologically based academic discipline. But on closer view, even these ex-planations always contain the inescapable indicator of a before and an after, without whic:h a piece of epigrammatic wisdom ora psychological or socio-logical model of explanation become meaningless. Neither rhe reorienta-don of a need for authoriry nor the pride thar goes befare a fa!! can do with-out temporal indicacions. When they are applied to history, even seemingly general patte~ns of explanation inevitably refer to chronological succession, wirhout which every history would be not only meaningless bur impossible.

Chronology borrowed from natural time is thus indispensable for a historical reality that is to be redeemed empirically, whether approximation

~o the absolute exactness of data esrablishes meaning, or whether the co-gency of the. relacive befare and after, which is unalterable in itself, is the prerequisite for a meaningflll ceconstruction ofhistor.ical events.

We rhus arrive ata result that appears to be banal but is :ally funda-mental: natural time, with iu recurrence and irs time limits, is a perrnanent premise both of history and of irs interpretation as an academic discipline.

. Everytping we have dealt with so far can be defined as the objectifi-able coreo~ rhe calculation and determination of rime. ~ow that it has been discovered and recognized, rhere can be no mo.re dtspute about the chronological order of che file thar did not reach the Diet of Speyer on time. No matter which imerpretation of the Reformarion one subscribes ro, che

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above-mentioned milenone date widn thc chronology rcma.im; within ra~ tional conrrol and generally acceptable. But do we sufficiendy understand what can, as a result, be ralled h.storical time or historical times? Cenainly not. 1 thus. a.rrive at the second p;an of my lecture.

The singular farm of a single hisrorical time, which j~ supposed to di~tingui~h irsdf from measurable natural time, i~ alre;ady open to doubt.

~~storic~l rime, i~ the cerm is to have , in which past tbings are present or can be rememl)ered, and, on the ocher, one always acts with reference to spe-cific horizohs of expectation. l propase invesrigating this relationship be-rween pase and future or, more precisely, che relationship of specific ex-periences and expectarions, so as ro get a grasp on historical time. That hlswrical time occuu wirhin the difference between these tWO temporal dimensions can airead y be shown by che fact rhat rhe differcnce between experic:";nce and apectarion irsdf changes-that is, it is specifically histor-ical. Lc:";t m~ explain.

Until'che early modern period, it was a general principie derived from expericnce ~hat che furure could bng nothing fundamentally new. Untl che expecred rnd of the world, snrul human beings (as seen from a Chris-rian perspecrive) would noc change; unril then, the nature of man (as seen from a humanisr perspective) would remain the same. Por that reason it was