THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY (1915)

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The historical object is, as historical, always paststrictly speaking, it no longer exists. Between it and the historian stands a temporal distance. The past always has meaning only when seen from a present. What is past is not only no longer when viewed by usit was also something other than us and our context of life today in the present. So much is already clear: time has an utterly original meaning in history. Only where this qualitative otherness of past times presses forth into the consciousness of the present does a historical sense awaken. Insofar as the historical past is always an otherness of objectifications of human life, and we ourselves always live in such an objectification and create such objectifications, the possibility is always in advance given for us to understand the past, since it cannot be something incomparably other. However, the temporal gulf remains between the historian and his object. If he wishes to depict this gulf, he must in some way have the object before him. It is necessary to overcome timeby crossing over the temporal gulf, to move from the present into the past, immerse oneself in it, and live in it. The requirement of overcoming time and depicting a pasta requirement necessarily co-given in the goal and object of the science of historywill for its part be possible only insofar as time itself begins to function here in some manner. John Bodin, already in 1607, included a separate chapter on time in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem. We find there the sentence: Those who think they can understand histories [the plural case is noteworthy] without chronology are as much in error as those who wish to escape the windings of a labyrinth without a guide.9 We can most reliably study the function of time involved in the overcoming of time necessary for the science of history if we direct our attention to the methodology of the science of history with which it gains access to the past and depicts it historically. It would take us too far afield to investigate all of the details of the function of time within the methodology of the science of history, uncovering the relations of its basic concepts to the main concept guiding it. Rather, we only need to characterize a few especially noticeable concepts and procedures of the method of the science of history that illustrate the function of the concept of time here. Thus a moment will be provided that is at least adequate for analyzing the structure of the concept of time. The initial foundational task of the science of history is that it must first of all guarantee the factuality of the events it is to depict. Perhaps the greatest service of the critical school in our science, at least the one most important with respect to its method, writes Droysen, is to have achieved the insight that the foundation of our studies is the testingc of the sources from which we draw. It is in this way that historys relation to the past is brought to its scientifically definitive stage.10 Thus the source makes possible scientific access to historical reality. It is from it that this reality is in the first place built up. But this is possible only if the source is secured in its value as a source, i.e., if its authenticity is demonstrated. And that happens through criticism. Let us suppose, for example, that the