TIME GARDENS, TIME FIGURES, AND TIME REGIMES

Harry Jansen

History and Theory 61, no. 3 (2022)

Review of Zeitgärten: Zeitfiguren in der Geschichte der Neuzeit. By Lucian Hölscher. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020. Pp. 325.

In Zeitgärten: Zeitfiguren in der Geschichte der Neuzeit, Lucian Hölscher distinguishes between an embodied time and an empty time. Simply put, an embodied time includes histories, while its counterpart includes only dates and chronologies. He prefers the latter, for it offers an alternative to Reinhart Koselleck's idea of different layers of time. According to Hölscher, historians can achieve more unity in history through his empty temporality than through Koselleck's time of various speeds. Hölscher connects time with space to form a framework that, in addition to eras, chronologies, years, dates, and so on, especially includes time patterns, which he calls Zeitfiguren. These time figures form the infrastructure of all kinds of historiography, as Hölscher shows through his analysis of the studies of twenty German and four non-German authors. He exposes patterns such as progress, acceleration, and discontinuity, which form the building blocks of a philosophy of history based on the aforementioned empty time. Despite his criticism of Koselleck's ideas about time layers, Hölscher continues to follow in his footsteps, especially concerning his time of two levels, his future-oriented time, and his analytical, nonlinguistic method, which neglects absolute presuppositions. That's a pity, but what is positive is Hölscher's invention and thorough explanation of time figures.