Eine andere Geschichte der Zeit

Abstract

Rather than being the subject of history, time is commonly assumed to be a condition for history. Even if it is the subject of historical studies, time is primarily associated either with philosophy or with chronology. This might give rise to the illusion of a meta-historical time: a time that can only be intellectually recognised or technically measured. Yet if history claims to differ from common sense, it has also to determine its own epistemological premises. The notion of »meaning« might be considered as crucial in the study of time. The traditional and still predominant concept, going back to Max Weber, regards meaning as grounded in the subject. Accordingly, meaning is identified with subjective intentionality, being a function of the relation between aims and means. The dichotomy of subject/object, which underlies this point of view, is also responsible for the attribution of time either to the subjective or to the objective sphere. However, this may be a function of historical self-descriptions which provide plausibility by reducing the complexity of the social world. The article tries to offer an alternative that rejects ontology and replaces the commonplace concept of rationality by that of self-reference. It thus enables us to conceive time in operative terms as a dimension of the social world, in which the production of temporal differences produces historically variable forms of time.

Keywords

• MPIeR