ABSTRACT

I have tried to argue that historians have a great deal to gain by thinking more carefully about time. The first part of this book set out the current state of play in discussions of time in both history and a series of other disciplines. It became clear that, in spite of the fact that time lies at the heart of the historical enterprise, theoretical literatures on time in historiography and the philosophy of history are much less well developed than discussions that we find in disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, philosophy and theology. Using debates from some of these subject areas – as well as considering interdisciplinary scholars such as Ricœur and Deeds Ermarth – I tried to show that the discipline of history needs to confront time in a more open fashion.