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Article

A secular acceleration:

Theological foundationsof the sociologicalconcept ‘‘socialacceleration’’

Felipe TorresInstituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego

Portales—Santiago of Chile, Santiago, Chile

Abstract

The term ‘‘shortening of time’’ is related to the Judeo-Christian tradition thatannounces the end of time as the moment when God, for the sake of the elect,

shortens the duration of days and hours, because without this shortening noone would survive (This means that only a God’s will could ended Time. The

Christian perspective believes that the last days will be chaotic, and God will

preclude History, ending time, to save a few men of goodwill.). While in thissense salvation is associated with divine intervention, the thesis of acceleration

would reverse the above formula, making human beings responsible for thenarrowing of time. But if the shortening of time in the Apocalypse is aimed atthe salvation of the World: Where does acceleration, a secular idea of the

shortening of time, aim? What is it that justifies the increase in the speed of completing tasks that previously took considerable time, which are today per-

formed in just a few hours? How can we justify the frenzy to obtain what we

want in the shortest time possible? In this paper we propose to address this and

other questions, in order to show the relationship between a sociologicalunderstanding of acceleration with a theological-Christian view of time. Inother words, the main claim exposes the transfer of teleology from a religiousconception to a historical-worldly conception of time.

Keywords

Time, acceleration, shortening, modernity

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DOI: 10.1177/0961463X15622395tas.sagepub.com

Corresponding author:Felipe Torres, Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego Portales—Santiago of Chile, Manuel

Rodrıguez Sur 415, Santiago, Chile.

Email: [email protected]

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‘‘If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, But for the sake

of the elect those days will be shortened’’ (Matthew, 24: 22–24)

‘‘If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved, but for the

sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, He has shortened those days’’ (Mark,

13: 20)

Introduction

‘‘Et minuentur anni sicut menses et menses sicut septimana et septimana

sicut diez et diez sicut horae’’.1 (‘‘And the years will be shortened to months,

and the months to weeks, and the weeks to days, and the days to hours’’).

The German historian Reinhart Koselleck begins his work Zeitverku ¨ rzung

und Beschleunigung: Eine Studie zur Sa ¨ kularisation2 by proposing the com-

parison of the meaning of the preceding sentence from the Sibyla Triburtina,

with the tale of a nineteenth century electrical engineer. In relation to the

steady progress of technique, in which the development of productive meth-

ods was becoming increasingly more efficient, the engineer and entrepreneur

Werner von Siemens intuited a law that captured such progress: ‘‘This law

clearly recognizable, is that of the constant acceleration of the current devel-

opment of our civilization’’ (Koselleck, 2003: 39). With this phrase von

Siemens would unwittingly account for one of the hallmarks of post-eighteenth century time, namely the emergence of a situation of continuing

acceleration.3

Following the comparison proposed by Koselleck, we face two distinct but

related ways of establishing a relationship with time: whereas in the apoca-

lyptic text time is shortened as a divine work in honor of salvation, the

modern engineer claims time is accelerated by the succession of innovations

and improvements within equal time periods with the aim of progress.

In both cases abbreviated time intervals are evoked, although in different

contexts and with different contents.In relation to the Christian view of time, one of the elements most pre-

sent in this conception is its eschatological character, within which the idea

of the finality of time experienced as a time of waiting is highlighted. In this

period, the output that could be thought of as the consideration of Sibyla’s

book about the configuration of time as the horizon of earthly ordering is

subject to the consideration of divine will as the rector of the worldly order.

The next section will delve into this situation in order to show the explana-

tory output in the configuration of the ‘‘shortening of time,’’ in Christian

doctrine, for a theory of ‘‘social acceleration’’, in sociology. In what followswe will try, therefore, to give an account for this link, using the work of

Reinhart Koselleck as a compass, particularly the compilation of texts

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available in Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik. Complementing Koselleck’s

exposition about the existing link between shortening and acceleration are

other initial fluctuations by 1) Norbert Elias’s the sociology of time, which

aims to clarify the manner in which time is defined in terms of modern

societies; 2) later we will attend to several central aspects of the sense of time in Christianity through certain passages from French historian

Francois Hartog’s Regimes of Historicity; 3) this last point will be con-

nected with the rise of historic time noted in the works of Karl Lo ¨ with

and Hans Blumenberg in which they make explicit a connection between

the idea of salvation in Christian terms with the shaping of a secular con-

ception of progress in order to, finally, hoping to having a panoramic view

of the secularized tradition of certain Christian concepts as fundamental

elements of structural aspects of the Modern Age; 4) addressing certain

arguments that give life to the current thesis relating to a social acceleration

in the work of German sociologist Harmut Rosa, culminating with some

general remarks.

Denominalized time

‘‘Time is a problem for us, a trembling and demanding problem, perhaps the

most vital of metaphysics.’’ (JL Borges, History of Eternity)

Although the use of the reference to St. Augustine is nothing new,

to paraphrase the sentence with which Husserl begins the introduction

to his Vorlesungen zur Pha ¨ enomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,

any serious reflection about time requires a close reading of Chapters

14–28 Book XI of Confessions (Husserl, 1985: 3). Rather than deal with

the infinite possible answers to question posed by Augustine of

Hippo—What is Time?— we suggest addressing here a question that is

less demanding and, at the same time, much closer to contemporaneity,i.e. our time.

Following the German sociologist Norbert Elias, one of the elements

crossing reflection on time in the modern world refers to the project of

denominalization that any question for this should to achieve:

‘‘Reflecting on the problem of time, it is not difficult for us to mistake the

nominalized form of the concept [. . .] This language convention is somewhat

reminiscent of the old trend, not yet completely disappeared, to personify

abstractions. Work with justice became the goddess Justice [. . .

] Think

of phrases like ‘‘the wind blows’’ or ‘‘the river flows,’’ as if the wind was

something other than blowing and the river was distinct from its flowing.

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Is there perhaps a wind that does not blow and a river that does not flow?

These linguistic habits, therefore, deceive reflection, reinforcing once again the

myth of time as something that, in a sense, is found there, exists, and that, as

something present, can be determined or measured by men, even if it is impos-

sible to perceive with the senses.’’ (Elias, 1989: 53–54)

Thus, a more mature way of addressing time, if we follow Elias, would be to

leave behind a model of ‘‘the time’’ as an entity encasable in fixed manner

with personification in mind: ‘‘the temporary’’ would become ‘‘the Time.’’

The form ‘‘time’’ should be better understood as the emergence of a sophis-

ticated mechanism of social coordination. In this way, they would recognize

that the conception of time as an entity would be associated with the bad

habit from earlier times of humanity directly identified certain experiences

with deified representations. The current concept of time would have the

double difficulty of, on the one hand, having to purify the nominalization

(deification, personification, and determination) and, on the other hand,

needing to recognize the status of the concept as a result of processes of

social complexity that would have required a higher level of abstraction in

observing temporal phenomena.

‘‘If we go back to a remote enough past, we see that there are stages where

men still do not have the ability to relate the many complex movements of thestars to create a relatively well-integrated schema. They survived a large quan-

tity of singular events that did not have a clear nexus or in any case, just

presented a fantastic relationship that was quite labile. Those who do not

have a firm standard for determining the time of events do not possess a

concept of time similar to ours.’’ (1989: 51).

This composition of the concept of time involved in social phenomena,

however, deserves a detailed observation of the structural processes that

are omitted in the analysis of Elias in his work. One way to generate anotion of ‘‘time’’ is to focus on the emergence and analysis of the concept

regarding its, shall we say, functional character in social processes. In this

sense time as an abstraction can well be understood as an epiphenomenon

of the evolution of society or, in other words, a consequence of processes

within society and not outside it (Tabboni, 2001: 9).

However, based on this type of approach, it confirms the accompanying

explanatory relative to the characteristics of the temporal experience that

the modern world experiences. Thus the monitoring of certain processes

belonging to the west and, in particular, Christianity, shines an importantlight on the origin of the modern perspective of time and its configuration.

We will try to explain this perspective.









From a Christian vision of time to an historic vision

of time

Giorgio Agamben once wrote that God is the concept in which men

conceive their deciding problems (Agamben, 2009). The fact that in theo-logical concepts ‘‘deciding’’ problems are at play means pausing to consider

these concepts and rethinking our questions in the light of their horizon.

Because while it is true that theology today is seen by some as ‘‘small and

ugly’’ (Benjamin, 1985: 177), this seems to offer an echo to the present.

Being ‘‘small and ugly’’ does not mean that it does not have output.

Being ‘‘small and ugly’’ does not mean that it has nothing to say

(Benjamin, 2007).

To delve into a relationship between the Christian conception of time

and the secularized idea of time in modernity, it is appropriate to note what

would be the characteristics of speculation about the shortening of time in

Christian doctrine.

According to the French historian Francois Hartog the characteristic of

Christine time is the tension and relief of waiting. However, this conception

is not an invention of Christianity itself, but rather a Hebraic formula that

has been present since Yahweh’s command to the chosen people and their

escape from Egypt

‘‘from the departure from Egypt till the long-delayed entrance to the country

of Canaan, with Yahweh walking in front, a wait is created which is a

resource itself of the story. There begins this interweaving of time and the

story that Paul Ricoeur has come up with, being a reader of Augustine and

Aristotle. In this strain, to retake the vocabulary of Augustine, Moses is

commissioned to create a history, while some of the people, unable to keep

waiting, continue to spread to nearby regions. Twice, in Numbers and

Deuteronomy, they summarize the moments and stages and the succession

of events of the Exodus from Egypt to the shores of Jordan that constitute thehistory of those forty years that should mold Israel to make it ‘a dynasty of

priests and a holy nation’’’ (Hartog, 2007: 85–86)

In that context, what provides the view belonging to Christianity is the

division of time in two, thanks to the decisive event of the Incarnation:

the birth, death and resurrection of the Son of God makes time itself and

its design appear altered. This opens a ‘‘New Time’’ that will come to a close

at a second and final event: the return of Christ and the Last Judgment.

This time/interval is a time of waiting: a present that inhabits the hope of the End and the Salvation. This tension installed between present and

future is what is expressed in the Gospel of Matthew through the revelation

Torres 5








of the shortening of times, because in the End, no man on earth would be

saved if God did not shorten time. This event has a unique interdependence

at the time when Christianity ascends as the official religion of the

Roman Empire under the rule of Theodosius in the fourth century A.D.

In this context, there comes a time when the political and spiritual heritageof Rome passes to the Church (Arendt, 1968: 197–226) and when the

tension cedes from the ‘‘already’’ and ‘‘not yet’’ constitutive of the present

or the intermediate time. This is, for example, what Augustine testifies as

‘‘spreading time’’ that would suppose the institutionalization of the Church:

if the Kingdom can be made on earth, the end times may be delayed.

Between the two—the ‘‘already’’ of the Kingdom of God on earth and

the ‘‘not yet’’ of the waiting—the ‘‘already’’ taken in a tradition that has

been nourished by it, and contains it, it will tend to be heavier each time.

They will ask, since then, to look less towards the future and more towards

the past, to Christ in whom all begins and who is also the insuperable living

model. ‘‘He is the lighthouse, whose shining beam sheds light on the former

(on Adam and Eve) and the posterior (on Him towards the end of times).’’

(Hartog, 2007: 87)

‘‘Thanks to the fact that the foundation of the city of Rome was repeated in

the founding of the Catholic Church—though, of course, with a radically

different content—the Roman trinity of religion, authority and traditionwas taken up by Christian era.’’ (Arendt, 1968: 166)

At this point we ignore what would be a question for the discussion

about the true meaning of a culmination of time and what would be sup-

posed along with it by the variants of messianism in the Judeo-Christian

tradition with the figure of the parousia (Borovinsky, 2009). One note

about the debate on the place of man in a story told from multiple possi-

bilities within open theology. ‘‘If, as Cohen points out, the time of the

Messiah is the result of the life of peoples understood as history ‘‘end of days’’ or as ‘‘the future of humanity,’’ then the idea is not so ‘‘near or far’’,

but the converted will be understood as history or as ‘‘the idea of the moral

world history’’ (Taub, 2011). The figure of the end of days, therefore,

is beyond the scope adopted in this work and its exposure exceeds the

purposes of this.

It is worth noting that the debate about the ways in which one can

understand man’s place in a history told from a theological perspective

opens many possibilities.

Returning to the turning point of the Christian order of time in thedirection of the ‘‘already,’’ to a past continually reactivated by ritual,

the Church manages to rediscover, restart and inhabit the old models of









the mos majorum and the historia magistra vitae making them work for their

benefit, but without ever fully identifying with them; by becoming a

temporal power another time order will always be proclaimed. In short,

what endures is a certain plasticity in the Christian order of time in which

the past, present and future are articulated in Eternity. Although this is notto be confused or reduced to a single mode of historicity: not even to one

that has had such influence that of the historia magistra vitae.4 Later

Christian time and the time in the world dissociates through many crises,

until the division. This does not imply in any way that the orders switched

to the extent that the opening of Progress was gaining an advantage over

the hope of salvation: a tension towards the former and a fervor of I hope

turned to the future (Lo ¨ with, 1949: 18).

The chance that future is formed in the present, and, along with it,

the relativity itself of any ontologization of time in a past–present–

future structure (each one demarcated definitively with respect to the

other layers) cannot be understood clearly without an understanding

based in common sense. That is why the projection into the future in

Christian doctrine is one of the fundamental ways of breaking the quiet

distinction of layers of time in pursuit of a greater articulation thereof. This

is something that will be corroborated in certain philosophical thought:

Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are in favor of a more problematic concept

of time.For both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty time is not a substance to which

the world ‘‘sticks.’’ They do not talk about the entrance of the world ‘‘in

time,’’ but instead discuss the constitution of time in consciousness. In the

words of Heidegger: ‘‘Soweit in den heutigen Zeitanalysen u ¨ berhaupt u ¨ ber

Aristoteles und Kant hinaus etwas Wesentliches gewonnen wird, betrifft es

mehr die Zeiterfassung und das ‘Zeitbewußtsein.’’’ (Heidegger, 2002: 433)5

In same line Merleau-Ponty adds: ‘‘Le passe ´ n’est done pas passe ´ , ni le

future futur. Il n’existe que lorsqu’une subjectivite ´ vient brisser la ple ´ nitude

de l’etre en soi, y dessiner une perspective, y introduire le non-etre.’’(Merleau-Ponty, 1945: 428).6 Seen this way, time borrows its existence

from consciousness, since this is what is really able to designate something

as ‘‘time,’’ to the extent that time is configured by the consciousness’s own

distinctions. In this context, the projection into the future is what constitutes

all experience of time. Returning to Merleau-Ponty, what is surprising is the

connection between an order of time that will come and the ‘‘presentifi-

cation of the future’’ in consciousness, not only as a question about what

‘‘is not yet,’’ but as a condition of the elaboration of time itself: time, in one

of its aspects, is configured in the coming of the future to the present, inboth Heidegger’s ‘‘Die Zeitigung bedeutet kein ‘Nacheinander’ der

Ekstasen. Die Zukunft ist nicht spa ¨ ter als die Gewesenheit und diese

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nicht fru ¨ her als die Gegenwart. Zeitlichkeit zeitigt sich als gewesende-

gegenwa ¨ rtigende Zukunft’’ (2002: 350)7 and in Merleau-Ponty:

‘‘Si la prospection est une re ´ trospection, ce ´ st en tout cas une re ´ trospection

anticipe ´ e et comment pourrait-on anticiper si l’on n’avait pas le sens de l’ave-

nir? Nous devinons, diton, «par analogie», que ce pre ´ sent incomparable,

comme tous les autres, passera. Mais pour qu’il y ait analogie entre les

presents re ´ volus et le pre ´ sent effectif, il faut que celui-ci ne se donne pas

seulement comme present, qu’il s’annonce de ja ` comme un passe ´ pour bientot,

que nous sentions sur lui la pression d’un avenir qui cherche a ` le destituer, et

qu’en un mot le cours du temps soit a ` titre originaire non seulement le passage

du present au passe ´ , mais encore celui du future au present.’’ (Merleau-Ponty,

1945: 473)8

This is precisely what the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg identified

in the case of the affinity between Christian eschatology and—behold the

novelty—modern progress: both, in their differences, update the constitu-

tive structure of time pointing to the completion of future in the present:

‘‘This is a formal distinction, but precisely because of this more manifest, and

has to do with the fact that eschatology speaks of an event that breaks into

history and that is heterogeneous with respect to it and beyond, while the ideaprogress makes the extrapolation of a structure that is characteristic of all

present at a future immanent history. The idea of progress would not have

generated naturally concrete progress has always been both the private lives of

individuals and in a generation or group of generations, in the realm of

experience, the will or the general practice; progress would be the highest

degree of generalization, a projection to the whole story, which obviously

has not always been done. We must ask what has made possible the idea of

progress’’ (Blumenberg, 2008: 39).

Blumenberg’s response is based on the conviction that Christian thought

invests to the history of the projection to a final time to which it is necessary

to promote. If Heidegger and Merleau Ponty’s consideration of the future

responds to a structure in the genesis of time itself, Blumenberg translates

this formulation to the scenario that interests us, namely an eschatology of

the shortening of the time linked to a secularization of such projection of

the future into the present, in terms of accelerated progress. Such a situation

is positioned as an item of interest for theology to the extent that this

affinity is the transfer of an overhead key—the will of God save thechosen ones—an inside history: the human possibility of influencing the

progress. The transfer—a divine order to an earthly one—under the concept









of ‘‘historical time’’ in which Karl Lo ¨ with works with, as the engine of

modernity. Then we delve into this.

The time of historySince the emergence of the ‘‘historical time’’ (Lo ¨ with, 2008) the world is

no longer experienced as something immutable, invariant. Since the 18th

century, world time is essentially a stable reality. With the emergence of

the historical consciousness during the 18th and 19th centuries, time is con-

ceived as the place of change, the variant, and the event: stability is abnormal,

change is normal. This permanence of change would be mainly supported by

the periodic advances of technique, and would also be explained by the

philosopher Karl Marx, who came to the conclusion that ‘the solid melts

into air’ from, primarily, the specificities of the modes of production

expressed in technical progress. In addition to a mechanism that reproduces

material conditions of existence, the technique is essentially a storage medium

(Stiegler, 2002), i.e. a mechanism that makes up the relationship between the

past, and the extent that it condenses an accumulation of knowledge. Time as

a category of consciousness begins to be problematic: a dimension often so

obvious, ‘‘internalized’’, even ‘‘self-evident’’ due to the fact that the notion of

time deserves further investigation, whereas the organization of societies is

based on a defined and measurable concept of time. This, in turn, makessocial coordination possible, as it is usually taken as a ‘‘natural’’ category

without regard to important elements of its Constitution.

‘‘If there is, in fact, an inmanent experience of time into the world and his-

toric, differentiated from the temporal rhythms linked to nature, there is

no doubt that is the experience of acceleration, under which it describes the

historical period of time specifically produced for men. Only through this

awareness of acceleration—or correlative slowdown—the time experience,

always already given course, can be defined as an specific historic time experi-ence.’’ (Koselleck, 2000: 46–47)

The transfer of teleology from a religious conception of time to a historical-

worldly conception of time becomes clear only with the introduction of historical

time as reality and question. Thus, the doctrine of the two worlds—the earthly

and the divine—as ultimate proof of social order, is replaced. According to

Koselleck, it is replaced by the notions of history and historical time with the

burden that it places on the human condition: to characterize the historical time

by being defined as a time produced specifically by men. It is in this sense thatBlumenberg’s position regarding the situation that would characterize the

modern time should be considered the historical process leading to the

Torres 9








Modern Era: the opening of the scissors of the time, referred to in Weltzeit

und Lebenzeit (1986b), Blumenberg notes the end of a time in relation to

the future, without something new to bring to the modern age of the world

exposes an infinite range of possibilities to the future, which can only be

determined at the same time that the future turns into the present. Timeperiods correspond with what they had specifically in respect to what is

expected of each of them in a pre-figurative world plan. The foundation of

modernity would therefore be based on the emergence that no longer

posed a threat to the inset of time periods in an orientation that would

be carried out at end of the story. Moreover, over time, passage of time

would have a ‘‘time period correlation’’ with life: what had been lived in

the past and time itself is not a concept of time that you could differentiate

epochally. For this reason, lifetime and world time are correlated.

What is emphasized here is the notion time has an open nature, to the

extent that already lacks an established direction of history toward which it

would tend to get its consummation.

The quote from Koselleck above fits inside a greater thematic, referring

to a pre-modern Western consideration of a time that is carried out at the

‘‘end of time’’. Each historical arrangement would be a prelude of what the

union with God would signify, beyond this world and its time.

Modern change would mean to defend the belief of time identification in

the peak of their current potential, and the connection with God would befigurative: ‘‘all time relates immediately to God’’. History is not repeated,

nor is there a predefined purpose, and there is no determinism or teleology.

Variations, even though they are not pure entropy, and even to a lesser

extent, are not a part of a circular route in which one direction of the story

takes place. Historicism is nothing more than the epiphenomenon of the

radical experience that represents the decrease of time in the most varied

stages of modern life: in this radical experience, ‘‘everything was unique and

incomparable’’. Here, we find a root cause of the event9 that has been suc-

cessful in contemporary thought.Considering the argument above, it is possible to now delve into the way

that modernity translates the narrowing of the time.

The modern translation of the ‘‘Christianization’’

of time

The Apocalypse, or the end of time in Christian terms, is a telos worthy of

being reached because it represents the culmination of a world and the

arrival of the Kingdom of God. Under the terms of a secular idea of shortening of the time, acceleration tends to the realization of history in a

constant reduction of waiting. One of the translations of this is primarily









premised on the proliferation of technical mechanisms that facilitate the

decrease of intervals of time spent waiting in order to secure goods. The

facilitation of human activity also signifies the support of the effort invol-

ving the production of sustenance, as well as the possibility of who is

released from certain tasks who may be functional in others. In thisregard, it includes both the completion of the work as forces for leisure,

which, as we know from studies of cultural consumption of the Frankfurt

School and Birmingham, is an important part of the consummation10 of

products would be impossible without this sphere of thinking. Thus, it creates

a transposition from a transhistoric goal to an intrahistorical one. The sense

of a world destined to be exhumed by a beyond history force—God—is now

understood as a necessity that must be assumed by human capabilities.

The relationship with the eschatological expectation is thus transformed: if

this Christian key is taken as a value and principle of the earthly order, in the

secularized version, attempts to overcome acceleration.

The increasing technical progress for the reduction of routes served as a

base to Christian interpretations with the formulation of a draft increas-

ingly closer to the project of the consummation of the times. In respect to

connectivity after the emergence of a railroad in Europe, Koselleck stresses:

The Christian heritage of the concept of acceleration must be, however,

considered as a spectrum of different intelligibility. The secularization of the

concept of shortening under the heading of acceleration must be some wayautonomized, as Koselleck says, ‘‘From XVIII century the experience of

acceleration thesis it’s, to say it this way, autonomized. It could be argued

regardless of Christian derivations’’ (2000: 63)

For Hans Blumenberg, the reduction of time that pursues modernity

responds to an interest in the recovery of ‘‘lost time’’, in that each time

you invest more time, ‘‘gained time’’ responds to a claim for access to the

realization of wasted potential. The acceleration would be a consequence of

this situation. Like Koselleck, Blumenberg raises the question of the frenzy

to increase the force with which passes the time, but in somewhat differentterms. For Koselleck, acceleration is a secular phenomenon of shortening of

the times in the Christian language, however, this acceleration has no

objective or explicit target as in the case of shortening. In the Time of the

world and the Time of life, on the other hand, Blumenberg states that both

world time and time relative to the subject are dichotomies that come in

connection with a different complexity. The thesis of the acceleration cre-

ates a hypothesis of a ‘‘life time’’ trying to achieve more time in the world.

Prior to the modern world, life time assumed the irresolvable distance

between the temporality, inconceivable and uncontrollable nature of theworld. The technical progress and the confidence in the domain of nature

would be a turning point in this attitude—by surrendering to the time lived

Torres 11








a certain belief in the possibility to intensify their activities toward the

consummation of the time in the world. In sum, it is recovering ‘‘lost

time’’, one in which the powers with which human beings could consum-

mate their capabilities had not been developed. Therefore, there is a need to

obtain the set of possibilities that the world delivers, which were alwaysthere and can now only be updated. Hence, the frenzy to make ‘‘enter’’ the

world time in the life time.

Koselleck, meanwhile, thinks that acceleration could be related to

the ability to anticipate events. Koselleck uses the concept of prognosis to

refer to this phenomenon, under which many of the causes of the turmoil

are said to reach ‘‘somewhere.’’ Here, the question of what the future

may allocate in regard to the past is integrated. Usually, it is understood

that it is the past that allows us to interpret the future as the future is the

result of what precedes, while the future revels in the art to provide what’s

possible once the past is done. But can the future ‘‘determine’’ the inter-

pretations of this? Can something that is not the source of intelligibility

of what is going on in the present? How is it possible to even conceive that

it still ‘‘does not’’ interfere in the conditions of the present? In purely

logical terms, such a possibility does not exist. What ‘‘not’’ cannot iden-

tify with what ‘is’. The recognized principle of non-contradiction exerted

all his strength to interpret what disproportionately seeks to derive this,

including the past, of what is yet to come. The point, however, can bedefended. It is certainly not the same future that assumes what the vector

would explain what happens in the present moment. What is at stake is

rather thinking what are the chances that this is the same function of the

past—projected into a future that, so to speak, makes predictions that con-

clude to this, then operate depending on the projection itself. In these terms

is how you can make clear metaphor: it is not the present state of things, nor

the last, which results fully in the present, but the projection arrives in

future. These are part of a past–present relationship, such as memory,

that sets the possibility of prognosis, not defining the plan itself thatgives meaning to the present but to the extent that this projection ‘returns’

is performed. This complex game of rough and tumble of meaning

is reduced to the finding, or simply the very constitution of the human

conception of time:

‘‘The man who is open to the World, sentenced to lead his life, is referred

to a future condition to be able to exist. In order to be capable of acting he

must consider the inability to experience his future, the empirical disability

of experiencing it’’11 [if done he would already be in the present which leads

to huge problems of a theory of time that must face the prophecies’challenges]









Blumenberg supports the previous thesis turning to Koselleck’s argu-

ment: ‘‘The future would become consequence of current actions, the real-

ization of points of view available in the present. Only then the progress

rotates to a progress in a cluster of future determinations through the pre-

sent and its past.’’ (Blumenberg, 2008: 42). Even more when it’s not only aprogress metanarrative but the indetermination of the form in which a telos

of indetermination or contingency ‘‘is installed through an evolution hori-

zon centrality put in technic-scientific force and nothing beyond that’’

(Sutherland, 2014: 59).

In a certain sense, Blumenberg’s argument highlights the link between

a Christian tradition that indicates the existence of a ‘‘Last-Time’’, and

a Modern claim who it perceives to Modernity itself as a ‘‘culmination

of Times’’. The secularization of the eschatology becomes in a birth of pro-

gress. ‘‘The discovery and awareness of the phenomenon of secularization

retain continuity among present and past. . . There is a continuity of the

historic, even in a negative relationship of the past with the present.’’

(Delekat, 1958: 58)

It is true that a different vision exists about the link between moderniza-

tion and secularization in Hans Joas’s work. For this German sociologist

there does not exist a direct involvement between modern and secularized

World, which would lead us to reconsider all the above arguments.

Inasmuch as it is a topic in itself, exceeding the objectives of this paper,we don’t introduce in modernity–secularization discussion and the con-

sequent relationship among acceleration and secularization. However,

it should be recalled that according to Joas secularization is not only

one state, but a cluster of ‘‘waves of secularization’’ each one with own

specificities (Beitı ´a, 2012; Joas, 2004). It is not a secular state of society in

the sense a quality of the modern world, but a heterogeneity of seculariza-

tions that would be shared between they an option that it increase into the

Modern World through an secular option (Joas, 2009; Taylor, 2007). Joas,

therefore, is right when he identified the diversity of secularizations withgradualness and levels of presence differing by region, social space, tradition,

etc. but he doesn’t work with such intensity that secularization is, perman-

ently, a comparative horizon not for contemporary societies between them-

selves, but among these and those that preceding the world in which the

center of explication isn‘t a religious point of view, more remaining in places

where that does not happen as Joas says (2009). Thus, the secularization

theory proposed an acceleration notion could be thought in accordance with

Joas argument to the extent that is not put into question the secular nature

(or not) of Modernity, but tracing of a concept who is vinculated first with areligious point of view and laic after, without denying the existence of

dynamics of a non-secular coexistence in Modernity.

Torres 13








The modernity of time or how to make

an accelerated society

‘‘Paradise had been able to be such because there was no shortage of time.’’

(Blumenberg, 2007: 64)

As we saw, according to Reinhart Koselleck ‘‘since the eighteenth century,

the thesis of the experience of acceleration has been, so to speak, autono-

mized. It can stand independently from Christian diversions’’ (Koselleck,

2000: 63). From this perspective the acceleration achieved conceals the

origin of its relationship with time, which initially would have been a

clear Christian motivation in the pursuit of salvation, becomes a secular

argument of orientation towards progress. ‘‘Salvation’’ and ‘‘Progress’’ rep-

resent structural affinities: salvation for Christianity becomes progress for

modernity.

This is when one takes into account that the notion of ‘‘acceleration’’

may have more to do with a sociological concept which alludes to the

speed with which modern society unfolds in its various structural frame-

works. This is not exactly the same meaning as the term ‘‘shortening’’.

The sociological concept to which the acceleration refers to means

an increase in the speed of the lifestyles made possible by the struc-tural conditions of society—individualization, secularization, functional

differentiation, exploitation—and, in this sense, a mundane impulse in the

way of living through time. The notion of shortening in theological terms

means the divine will to give a space of redemption to those who are chosen,

which would be possible if the narrowing of time was a result of divine will

(Blumenberg, 1986a).

This process of autonomization of the idea of acceleration can be seen

from at least two points of view: on one hand the force that takes on the

thesis of acceleration after the French Revolution, which is supported byverification subject to empirical correlation, without turning to a divine

time plan. The transmission of news was accelerated thanks to mail and

the press, the horse carriages speed increased thanks to the improvements in

infrastructure, the channels of the waterways registered a change in volume

of activity per unit of transport and space of time, etc. On the other hand,

the second view finds the mechanization and social capitalist organization,

thanks to which the theory of acceleration acquires universal confirmation

in the everyday experience (Koselleck, 2000: 66).

‘‘. . . from the two million years of documentable human history, the thirty

thousand years of autonomous and distinct artistic productions represent, in a









retrospective calculation, a comparatively very small temporary margin.

From the point of view of the history of civilization, the intervals are shor-

tened further: the introduction of agriculture and livestock makes approxi-

mately twelve thousand years and the subsequent display of the great cultures

some six thousand years ago, compared with prehistorical spaces increasingly

narrow time, within which the new occurs in, so to speak, an accelerated

way.’’ (2000: 70)

Acceleration or increased speed implies the acceptance of loss of control to

a certain degree of injection. It would be naı ¨ve not to see that any increase

of speed leads to reduced control that can be exercised over it. In this

context, acceleration could not be understood from a univocal point of

view. The plurality of social world events cannot be reduced to the same

phenomenon of acceleration. Thus, Hartmut Rosa distinguishes three

spheres of acceleration in modernity: technology, social change and

rhythms of life. To further support the concept of acceleration, Rosa pro-

posed a ‘‘society of acceleration’’ to those in which the increase or deploy-

ment of technological power from tending to slowdown the modes of

life—left time spent in work places—proliferate new changes that experi-

ence a shortage of time, which would manifest in the acceleration of life

(Rosa, 2011c: 20–21).

‘‘The acceleration serves as a strategy to erase the difference between thetime in the world and our lifetime . . . However, due to the dynamics of self-

propelled ‘acceleration cycle’, the promise of acceleration never completed,

since the same techniques, methods, and inventions that allow a rapid real-

ization of options at the same time increase the number of options (the ‘time

in the world’ or ‘the world’s resources’, so to put it) at an exponential

rate. . . As a consequence, our part of the world, the proportion of the

world options made with respect to the potentially achievable, decreases

(contrary to the original purpose of acceleration) no matter how much we

increase the ‘lifestyle’. This is the cultural explanation for the paradoxicalphenomenon of simultaneous technological advances and the increase of

the shortage of time’’ (2011c: 25).

This comes to even being an organizing factor in the allocation of time in

the daily modern life: ‘‘In strange contrast to the idea that individuals in

Western societies are free to do whatever they want, the rhetoric of obliga-

tion is abundant: ‘‘really I have to read the newspaper, exercise, call and

visit my friends regularly, learn a second language, inspect the job market in

search of better opportunities, have hobbies, travel abroad, keep abreast

with the advances in computer technology, etc.’’ (2011c: 31–32).At this point it is important to mention that there are two big sources in

Rosa’s approach. On one hand, there is Koselleck’s thesis about decreasing

Torres 15








time working every day, and, on the other, lies Blumenberg’s argument

about the split between separate individual life time and World time, par-

ticularly through society.

Also, it is possible to see a connection between Rosa’ thesis about

deployment of technological power from tending to slow down themodes of life and James Gleicl’s theory of acceleration. Indeed, due

to the influence of technology in rhythms of life, Gleick argues that

time-saving measures are not transferred to increased leisure. New time-

saving technologies render old technology obsolete. Then we must take

the time to learn new skills (Gleick, 1999). The latter serves to show how

the proposition of Hartmut Rosa meets and connects with several studies

on acceleration (Rosa, 2012; 2013; Scheuermann and Rosa, 2009).

Even in the Enlightenment, the future of a quasi-religious promised

was stained as, if he positioned Reason as the element that should

bring freedom from all dominations, and both would have to be achieved

in an accelerated manner by human action. But all these determinations

of accelerations were founded purely to describe. We are here facing a type

of secularizations that, according to certain analytical criteria, moves away

from Christianity. However, we cannot doubt that the Christian heritage

is still present, insofar as the globalization of the eschatological goals

allowed in general define the future of Jerusalem as an immanent his-

toric goal. In other words, the outside history budget of the shorteningof time changes at the beginning of the Modern Age in an inside historical

axiom of acceleration. The subject is moving from God to man, which

must impose precisely this acceleration through a transformation of

nature and society.

Final thoughts

Through the previous paragraphs, two major conclusions can be drawn that

answer the questions that guides this work. Is secularization of Christianapocalyptic expectations of the end of time the origin of the theory of

acceleration? Is the setting of modern acceleration time as the treatment

of a Christian heritage? In short, Are they related to the shortening of time,

acceleration, and secularization?—as follows:

On one hand, the representation that is possible to shorten time comes

from the apocalyptic texts of Judeo-Christian tradition. The idea of the

shortening of time is a concept of the religious experience, particularly

the hope for salvation. It is a concept that involves the passing of a

time interval that, structurally, is understood as a super historic quality,









on which the man himself cannot influence. This situation is precisely the

change in the Modern Age:

‘‘The systematic nature of contemporary art that not only disrupts the rela-

tionship with time but with the understandings or what we ‘‘believe’’ about

our own organic bodies (including man and understanding of their own

bodies) representing a history of the technique that differs, although it inter-

sects with the history of man. Or, if you want a history of man where this is

exceeded infinitely as man as nature, and then denatured from the technician

that he is, it is unnatural to be created again, to make up time. This opens the

possibility of split time between a world, potentially unlimited, and a life time,

limited temporality by death.’’ (Torres, 2015: 10)

This, in conjunction with the previous, is the shortening of the time intervals

preserved as an argument to reach a future salvation, but with an appeal to

the apocalypse that lost ground. This loses political resonance, although

still practiced in certain types of Christian sects—millenarian, pietistic,

theologian of the alliance. The core of the experience of the growing

momentum was constituted by the discoveries and inventions of the emer-

ging natural sciences. This brings as a consequence the differences of the

arguments: what is the shortening of time difference in the eschatological

horizon of universal judgment accelerating progress on the horizon? On onehand, God is no longer the Lord of action, but is the man who causes

progress. It is a slow change of the subject of the action. On the other

hand, the same time is no longer which is deprived of its natural regularity,

and therefore shortened, but is rather the man who avails himself always

uniform natural time to chronologically measure driven progress, sup-

posedly, for him.

In short, the shortening of time before ending prematurely from the out-

side to history now becomes an acceleration that is recorded in history itself

and which men have. The novelty would reside in that the representationthat the end does not come quickly, but compared with the slow progress of

centuries past, current developments occurring at an ever faster pace. Both

positions are nurtured in setting a goal of determining teleology, a reasoning

must be reached quickly. The goal of accelerated progress was the domain of

nature and, increasingly, also the self-organization of society politically

constituted. Since salvation is no longer looked at the end of the story,

but in the development and execution of the same history, an issue that,

in turn, would cause significant challenges to the dialogue and articulation

of sociological and theological formulations.

Torres 17








Another important thing is noted in that the theory of acceleration does

not imply the existence of a de-facto acceleration: in the first instance the

hypothesis of acceleration of modern societies is rather the conceptual for-

mulation in the field of self-description. In other words, whether both social

acceleration are effective phenomena, searched and reproduced, but how apresumption of acceleration regulates important practices, and next

becomes an explanatory category. When Hartmut Rosa raises the falsity

of the promise of acceleration, referring precisely to the point at which the

de-facto acceleration does not occur because in the same proportion tech-

nical results are accomplished that reduce time invested, new conditions

requiring new devotions of time are created at the same time. The form,

adopting the acceleration is therefore eminently teleological: to the extent

that it cannot be resolved in the speed increase itself, it requires deferred

always present or, more precisely, in a horizon of possibility. Always aspir-

ing for more, never being fully present, the promise of accelerating struc-

turally shares the form of eschatology. The promise of the presence in

eschatology (reaching a final stage) is translated by the signing of acceler-

ation of a fundamental impact on the destinies of the time. Thus finally

under some theory of secularization, there are sufficient reasons to believe in

a religious origin about how accelerating lifestyles is brewing, without

assuming, necessarily, the existence of a type of eminently secular acceler-

ation. Secularization and acceleration are not equivalent, although possiblybranches of the same tree.

Acknowledgment

The author appreciates greatly the comments of Meghan Greene from Johns

Hopkins University.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or

publication of this article.

Notes

1. Sibyla Triburtina (explanatio somnii), in Sibyllinische Weissagungen. Urtext

und U ¨ bersetzung (1951: 276). According to Sackur (1898: 162) and Kurfess

(1951: 346) this text was originated about 360 A.C. The corresponding passage

of Lactancio, whose text, according Hans Lietzmann, has known by









Constantino, says: ‘‘tunc et annus et mensis et dies breviabitur: et hanc ese

mundi senectutem ac defectionem Trismegistus elocutus est; quae cum evener-

int, adesse tempus sciendum est, quo deus ad commutandum saeculum reverta-

tur’’ (Firmiani Lactantii Epitome divinarum institutionum 66,6, ed. S. Brandt ¼

CSEL, vol. IX, p. 756 s., reproduced in Kurfess (1951: 246).2. Koselleck (2000) Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, pp.

177—202.

3. See Andre ´ et al. (2010); Delacroix et al. (2009); Virilio (1977).

4. Koselleck shows how past leaves a crucial role in historic education from a

modernity that tries to break with its tradition and, along with it, conceived

obsolete any attempt to find answers to the challenges of today in a historic

resource as historia magistra vitae. See Koselleck (2003: 73–96).

5. Eng. Trans.‘‘If in the contemporary analyses of time any essential thing beyond

Aristotle and Kant is achieved, it is rather about the apprehension of time and

the ‘‘consciousness of time.’’ Needless to say, this note is the Note about a Notereferred to by Jacques Derrida in Ousia et Gramme `, which leads to a thorough

reflection on the metaphysical concept—is there any other in Western

thought?—of time.’’

6. Eng. Trans. (Merleau-Ponty, 1957: 428). ‘‘The past is not, therefore, past nor

the future, future. The only thing that exists is when subjectivity comes to break

the fullness of being itself, and draw a perspective, introducing non-being’’

7. Eng. Trans. ‘‘The temporalization does not mean a ‘succession’ of ecstasies. The

future is not after having been, nor is the latter prior to the present. Temporality

is timed as future that is-being-been and presenting.’’8. Eng. Trans. (1957: 422): ‘‘If the survey is a retrospection and is, if anything, an

anticipated retrospection then how would we anticipate it if we had no sense of

the future? We guess, it is said, ‘by analogy,’ that this incomparable present, like

everyone else, will pass. But to give an analogy between the present past and the

actual present, it is necessary that the latter not only be given as a present, that

will already very soon become the past, that we feel pushing on it the pressure of

the future that it wants to dismiss and, in a word, the time course is, to an

primary degree, not just passing from present to past, but also from future to

present.’’

9. The ‘‘event’’, particularly as it has been understood by the French philosophy.For information on this, see Badiou (2006).

10. At least in ‘‘the times’’ so far known, since there is also expressed openness to a

new time once this is completed.

11. In this regard the Book of Revelations in the New Testament delivers deep Lights:

John observes the future in a trance, but upon being revealed and it becomes—in

the presence now—a statute where the future comes to meet present but not full

evidence. See ‘‘The unknown future. . .’’ in (Koselleck, 2000: 82).

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