Sediments of Time features the most important essays by renowned German historian Reinhart Koselleck not previously available in English, several of them essential to his theory of history. The volume sheds new light on Koselleck's crucial concerns, including his theory of sediments of time; his theory of historical repetition, duration, and acceleration; his encounters with philosophical hermeneutics and political and legal thought; his concern with the limits of historical meaning; and his views on historical commemoration, including that of the Second World War and the Holocaust. A critical introduction addresses some of the challenges and potentials of Koselleck's reception in the Anglophone world.
Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) was one of the most influential European intellectual historians of the twentieth century. Sean Franzel is Associate Professor of German at the University of Missouri. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
Table of Contents
1. Sediments of Time 2. Fiction and Historical Reality 3. Space and History 4. Historik and Hermeneutics 5. Goethe's Untimely History 6. Does History Accelerate? 7. Constancy and Change of All Contemporary Histories 8. History, Law, and Justice 9. Linguistic Change and the History of Events 10. Structures of Repetition in Language and History 11. On the Meaning and Absurdity in History 12. Concepts of the Enemy 13. Sluices of Memory and Sediments of Experiences 14. Behind the Deadly Line: The Age of Totality 15. Some Forms and Traditions of Negative Memory 16. Histories in the Plural and the Theory of History. An Interview with Carsten Dutt
