According to Norbert Elias, our modern concept of time is the result of a long, beginningless learning process in which each individual builds on existing, traditional knowledge. In the course of this process, the culturally acquired and individually appropriated knowledge, for example in the form of socially standardized clocks or calendars, has become an unquestioned and at the same time inevitable fact of individual and social life.

Elias starting point is the question of the function of time, which he accepts as neither a subjective nor an objective given. From the perspective of the sociology of knowledge and the history of science, he characterizes time as an activity of determining time, which essentially consists of symbolically recording constellations of events. In modern, industrial societies, time is what the clock shows: a relation of hand positions that recur cyclically in standardized proportional relations by means of a regular mechanism.

In other words, temporal forms of expression denote relationships between individual events from different sequences of events and represent this relationship conceptually as a linguistic symbol. They set orientation points in the network of relationships of natural and social processes in which people are integrated as a community. The linguistic expression presents a general form without concrete content. For example, the expression “yesterday” formally asserts a real, continuous connection between any current event and sequences of events remembered or deduced from documents. In communicative use, it is usually made more concrete in terms of content with a specific present and references to certain non-present sequences of events.

E. sees a main key to the problems of time and determining time in the memory function, which allows people to see together what does not happen together. He speaks of a synthesis through which something that is not present in reality now and here becomes present in the imagination and is linked to something that is happening in reality now and here. Elias: “Terms like “earlier” and “later” are manifestations of the human ability to imagine together what does not happen together, and what is also experienced by people as not happening together.”

A symbolic temporal language expression is used either to describe absent, jointly occurring events as an ensemble, usually in relation to present events, or to create a connection between events that do not occur together. Elias identifies three action-related, socially institutionalized functions of symbolic temporal language expressions: orientation, communication and regulation. In the course of various social developments, these functions have changed in specific ways.

Elias creates a step-by-step concept of the historical development of determining time, in which he highlights the connection between time and power as well as the role of monopolies in determining time, motivation through references relevant to the reality of life, as well as the increasing “object adequacy” and the balance of impulsivity and impulse (self-)control. Already at an early stage of social development, there is a “passive”, not yet explicit, determination of time, which is expressed in “if, then” constellations: you eat if you are hungry. At a later stage, these „if, then“ constellations become regulated and structured as „when, then“ constellations according to a more nuanced social organization that, up to a certain point, forces people to align their physiological clock with a social clock, and so to discipline oneself.

The use of temporal (pronounceable) language expressions is taught and learned during socialization. In differentiated societies, this acquired competence functions as a social institution for communicative coordination and regulation of social coexistence. Every adolescent must develop a “self-coercive apparatus” when dealing with this institution so that they are able to find their way in society as an adult. Elias speaks of a “conscience of the times”, which as a “social habitus” is an integral part of every individual personality structure. For him, time refers to both the acquired competence of experiencing time (time sensitivity) and the inextricably linked social institution of a standardized time order, which is so strongly incorporated (time discipline) that it seems like an inescapable given.

The concept of time itself has a history. It emerged from ideas that can only be understood temporally from the perspective of hindsight. In the self-image of archaic people, it develops from triggers for certain behaviors that are linked to individual events. This backward-looking argument, which uses the concept of time to represent its own history of origin, is justified insofar as time is not given a substantive status, but only a symbolic one. The idea of time and the perception of time do not arise in time, but rather in a process that – from today’s perspective – is described using temporal-symbolic language expressions.

In the course of their development, humans have developed the constant scale as a static symbol in the sense of a standardized unit of measurement for the direct or indirect comparison of spatial relationships. For the direct or indirect comparison of processes, he developed an independent, relatively evenly repeating sequence of events as a dynamic symbol in the sense of a standardized time unit. Elias: “The extent to which human groups can experience events in “times”, i.e. in the dimension of “time”, depends entirely on the extent to which they are faced with problems in their social practice that make it necessary to determine time, and to what extent their social organization and their knowledge enables them to use a series of changes as a frame of reference and yardstick for others.”

Literature:

Elias Norbert, Über die Zeit, Vorwort (1984, zitiert nach 12. TB Auflg. 2017)

Further Reading:

Link: Titel (Kategorie)

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