The starting point for Koselleck’s conception of historical time is experience and expectation, which he understands as the most general, anthropologically predetermined, formal cognitive categories (conditions) for the possibility of historical conceptions. These concepts do not stand alone, but are necessarily intertwined in a way that can be experienced as historical time. „They constitute history and its knowledge simultaneously, […] by demonstrating and establishing the inner connection between past and future […].“ (Futures Past, p. 353)

Experience is the past made present and, as such, unconsciously or consciously processed, saturated with reality, which is incorporated and can be remembered. One’s own experience always also encompasses the experience of others, mediated by generations or institutions. Koselleck speaks of the space of experience in which the past is bundled into a whole and in which many layers of earlier times are simultaneously present, without providing information about their before or after. Experience cannot be measured chronologically but can only be dated based on specific events. It does not establish chronological continuity, but rather provides a fragmented collection of episodes.

Expectation is a future made present; it aims at the not-yet, at the unexperienced, at the only inferable, which is overshadowed by hope and fear, desire and will, concern, but also by rational analysis, receptive observation, or curiosity. Koselleck speaks of the horizon of expectation, an apparent boundary line that recedes as one approaches, because the consequences of unfulfilled expectations bring new experiences that provoke new expectations.

The two forms of presenting exist in an asymmetrical relationship. The presence of the past is different from the presence of the future. There is no mirror-image correlation. Expectation can never be fully derived from experience. Experience is complete, expectation is open-ended and therefore incomplete.

Furthermore, experience and expectation have a temporal structure and are changeable. Experiences can be corrected or reinterpreted from a different perspective and can be retroactively influenced by expectations. „To make a prognosis is already to change the situation from which it arises.“ (Futures Past, p. 358) Expectations are based on experience. If they come true, they can no longer surprise. Only that which was not expected can surprise. This breach of the horizon of expectation creates new experience.

The changing difference between experience and expectation creates a tension „that provokes new solutions in different ways and, in this way, drives historical time forth from within itself.“ (Futures Past, p. 358) Beyond mere chronology, concrete history „comes of age“ in statu nascendi through specific experiences and expectations, which points to the temporality of both human beings and history itself.

Schematically speaking, according to Koselleck, experience and expectation in the Christian Middle Ages were, by and large, closely related, in a relationship stabilized by the prevailing power relations. In many areas of life, the expectations of descendants corresponded almost seamlessly to the experiences of their ancestors. There were no concepts of history as the development of human society, but only concepts of stories as exemplary episodes.

This changed with the beginning of the modern era, which only came into view as a new era through the divergence of experience and expectation. The changes in political and economic conditions, as well as the discovery and conquest of previously unknown regions of the world, invalidated the then-prevailing apocalyptic prophecy of the end of the world, which offered no alternative and was final, concluding the future and limiting all expectations. They revealed unexpected possibilities, brought new experiences, and fueled new expectations. „The future became a realm of finite possibilities, which was internally graded according to degrees of greater or lesser probability.“ (Futures Past, p. 29)

In the context of apocalyptic prophecy, events were merely symbols for the well-known. Prophecy aimed to preserve the status quo and demanded a position on existing good or evil in the face of the inevitable Last Judgment. With prognosis, the always constant, eschatological expectation was replaced by the expectation of something ever new. It aimed at predictable change based on experience and attempted to avoid evil and bring about better things.

With the discovery and articulation of progress, the diverging relationship between experience and expectation gained additional effectiveness in accelerating and unsettling the experience of time. The space of experience was enriched ever more rapidly with ever more new experiences, and the horizon of expectation was increasingly disrupted by surprises. The experience of time condenses, which is perceived as acceleration, and loses its continuity, which is understood as openness to the unknown. The consequence is a loss of the sense of presence in favor of a perpetual not-yet and ought-to-be.

Progress was the first genuinely historical category of time, acceleration a specific variant that emerged when „turnover rates increased in geometric and no longer in arithmetic progression“ (Time and Historical Time, p. 163). The formerly continuous repetition of learning and the continuous application of what had been learned were interrupted for the learning of the new. Measured against the previous learning experience, the time rhythms of relearning become shorter and shorter. While in earlier times, experience and expectations barely changed from generation to generation, in modern times, three generations live side by side, having grown up with completely divergent experiences and, on this basis, harboring very different expectations.

For Koselleck, repeatability is the hallmark of anthropological forms of behavior. All areas of human life and action contain repetitive structures (rites, dogmas, customs, laws, norms or constitutions, institutions and organizations, or even arts) that, in contrast to the eternal recurrence of natural phenomena, are intentionally and deliberately implemented in each individual case. Repeatability is the prerequisite for each individual case. Every wedding is an individual and unique act for those involved, but rituals, customs, traditions, and even laws ensure a continuity of their own kind.

These recurring behavioral patterns enable, condition, and limit opportunities for action. They change at different speeds over the course of historical times. The continuity of behavioral patterns forms the basis of historically effective time layers that shape historical periods on different time scales. Time layers of varying duration can occur and be effective simultaneously. Koselleck speaks of the multi-layered nature of historical times and the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous.

Historians are also particularly faced with the problem of having to first articulate their subject matter linguistically before they can analyze it. They can only do this with the linguistic means that their respective underlying history historically provides them with.

On the one hand, the language used for articulation precedes a depicted event. When language changes, the possibilities for conceptually reflecting contemporary events also change. On the other hand, historical events provoke changing possibilities for linguistic forms of expression, with which they can be represented in a different way in retrospect.

Language and history are dynamically interwoven and mutually refer to one another. Linguistic change shapes the understanding of history, and historical change shapes linguistic forms of expression. However, prospective or retrospective conceptual articulation can never fully reflect social change with its limited, currently available forms of expression. From an analytical perspective, a difference remains due to the mutability of language and events, creating a tension characteristic of historical time.

Language provides or contains arguments derived from experience, enabling the formulation of expectations whose prognostic potential influences current events—history in statu nascendi. New experiences from unfulfilled expectations, or confirmed experiences from realized expectations, are linguistically transformed into arguments in the course of current events and thus become linguistically available for future events.

Just as speech and action are always interwoven, synchronic and diachronic aspects are also always intertwined in the unfolding of events. „[…] the ever-unique time of events [contains] repeatable structures […] whose rates of change differ from those of the events themselves“ (History of Concepts , p. 30). All current events occur synchronously with a specific temporality, but at the same time they draw on or refer back to experiences or anticipate expectations that change diachronically in the course of the event and beyond, each with its own temporality.

Language has a deep temporal structure, which finds expression in Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole: As langue, it has become; in parole, it is iteratively reproduced and updated. Koselleck emphasizes that speech synchronously connected with current events is always simultaneously amalgamated with the diachronically referring language. „Every synchrony is eo ipso simultaneously diachronic. In actu, all temporal dimensions are always intertwined […]“ (History of Concepts, p. 21)

Literature:

Koselleck, Reinhard, Futures Past (1989)
Koselleck, Reinhard, Time and Historical Time (2000)
Koselleck, Reinhard, The History of Concepts (2006)

Reinhard Koselleck (1923-2006):

Historian, Chair of Historical Theory at Bielefeld University

Keywords:

space of experience, horizont of expectation, history of concepts

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