Varieties of Temporalization

Abstract

This article calls attention to the outstanding conceptual work related to time that the historical research and writing imply. The starting point is an overview of the disciplines dedicated to time studies in the recent theory of history: the metaphysics of natural time, the (classical and the new) metaphysics of historical time, the regimes of historicity, and the historiographical regimes. According to these disciplines, four varieties of temporalization, with which historians have been dealing currently, are categorized and discussed: the chronological-historical, the substantive, the quasi-substantive, and the historically experienced temporalization (and its narrative representation). This categorial structure, specially the quasi-substantive temporalization, assigns epistemic unity to the so-called new metaphysics of time and allows the classification of time-based concepts which are instrumentalized by historians. In order to demonstrate the consistency of the categories that this article proposes, some concepts concerning Koselleck’s theory of time (nature-like patterns of repetition, diachronic-synchronic layers of time, contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous) will be studied as cases that illustrate the way a theorist combines different temporalizations to conceive of a theory of historical time that deals with the treatment of the temporal experience and the writing of history which integrate historians’ practice.