Time and crisis in Reinhart Koselleck's theory of modernity

Abstract

This article explores two inherent aspects of the theory of modernity proposed by the German historian Reinhart Koselleck. The first one corresponds to his interpretation of the emergence of the notion of “historical time”; and the second one, to his argument on the sociopolitical crisis set off by the modern tendency to use philosophies of history as support for programs of political action. It will be shown that Koselleck, while saluting the discovery/invention by the 18^th century philosophies of history of a “human history”, condemns the political instrumentalization of those philosophies as the vector of a crisis that extends itself from the French Revolution up to the Cold War. As a conclusion, a few points of contact between Koselleck’s vision of modernity and that of the philosopher Hannah Arendt are suggested.