ABSTRACT

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the introduction of the three historicist times takes place in different ways in France, the Anglo-Saxon World and Germany. The first two ways will be discussed in this chapter; the German way will be elaborated on in the next one. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, I perceive in all three “countries” a regime of a “time out of joint”, consisting of the three times of historicism.

In France the Rankean tradition of a historicist temporality continues until approximately 1940. Since then, Braudel becomes the famous representative of a heterogeneous synchronicity of the non-synchronous. LeRoy Ladurie displays a kairotic time in his work. In the 1980s of the twentieth century, however, Ricoeur goes back to the homogeneous time of rise and fall.

In the Anglo-Saxon world the Whig-interpretation of history, with its time of progress, continues until the First World War. Then the synchronicity of the non-synchronous develops. For Chakrabarty this goes together with a kairotic time.