Wesleyan University

Imagination as a Category of History: An Essay concerning Koselleck's Concepts of Erfahrungsraum and Erwartungshorizont Author(s): Anders Schinkel Source: History and Theory, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Feb., 2005), pp. 42-54 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590781 . Accessed: 04/07/2011 11:05
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History and Theory44 (February2005), 42-54

? Wesleyan University 2005 ISSN: 0018-2656

IMAGINATION AS A CATEGORY OF HISTORY: AN ESSAY CONCERNINGKOSELLECK'SCONCEPTSOF ERFAHR UNGSRA UMAND ERWARTUNGSHORIZONT

ANDERS SCHINKEL

ABSTRACT

ReinhartKoselleck is an importantthinkerin partfor his attemptto interpretthe cultural changes resulting in our modem cultural outlook in terms of the (meta)historicalcategories of experienceand expectation.In so doing he triedto pay equal attentionto the static and the changingin history.This articlearguesthatKoselleck's use of "experience" and confuses theirmetahistoricaland historicalmeaning, with the result thathis "expectation" accountfails to do justice to the static, to continuityin history, and mischaracterizes what is distinctiveof the modernera.As well as reconfiguringthe categories of experience and expectation,this essay also introducesa third category,namely, imagination,in between experience and expectation. This is done to render intelligible what is obscure in Koselleck's account,and as a stimulusto a study of history thatdivides its attentionequally between the static and the changing. In fact, it is arguedthat the category of imagination is pre-eminently the category of history, on the concrete historical as well as the metahistoricallevel.
I. INTRODUCTION

Much historical writing is about change, and understandably so, because it would not make sense to speak of history if there were no change; it would not even make sense to speak of time, as time does not exist independently of events, things happening-change. Yet we are aware of continuity in many ways. Some things (economic structures, climate) change very slowly, perhaps even so slowly that they can hardly be perceived by one individual in his or her own lifetime. Indeed, some changes presuppose something enduring that undergoes these changes. Where it makes sense to speak of history, it makes sense (and it may even be necessary) to speak of these things as well as of change. Reinhart Koselleck is especially noteworthy among philosophers of history for the way that he has drawn attention to both these aspects of history: the changing and the static. He has drawn attention to the relatively stable and static "prelinguistic conditions of human history," and the static nature of concepts in comparison to the reality they are supposed to conceptualize.' He has also given a highly interesting interpretation of the difference between the period before and
1. ReinhartKoselleck, "LinguisticChange and the Historyof Events,"Journalof ModernHistory 61 (December 1989), 649-666.

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that after the Sattelzeit(saddle time; 1750-1850), in terms of a changed conception of time, indicatedby the use of Bewegungsbegriffe(concepts of movement) but also "republicanism," like "progress"and "emancipation," "socialism,"and other -isms.2 Two key terms in Koselleck's work, both with regard to the static and to the changing,are Erfahrungsraum (space of experience) and Erwartungsthe With of horizont (horizon expectation). help of these categories, the categories of experience and expectation as Koselleck also simply calls them, he is able to interpretthe change occurringin the Sattelzeit. Experience and expectation are both transcendentalcategories of history (or metahistoricalcategories) and historical categories, of use on a more empirical level of historicalresearch.They are metahistoricalcategories because they offer the historian a pair of tools with which to "thematize historical time," and because they form the anthropologicalsubstratumfor more concrete categories like "war and peace" or "work and leisure."3 They are historical categories because they provide a key to the concrete course of history: the difference in characterbetween historicalperiods can be elucidatedin terms of a difference in the relation between experience and expectation. Moreover, experience(s) and expectation(s)are concrete elements in history. My concern in this article lies with (the space of) experience and (the horizon of) expectationas historicalcategories.More specifically, it lies with Koselleck's thesis that, from the Sattelzeiton, the difference between experience and expectation has become increasingly bigger: "genauer,daB sich die Neuzeit erst als eine neue Zeit begreifen liBt, seitdem sich die Erwartungenimmer mehr von entfernthaben."4 In my view, Koselleck allen bis dahin gemachtenErfahrungen makes an importantmistakehere. Experience and expectation did not drift apart at all, because they cannot drift apart. Despite his efforts to the contrary, Koselleck here turnsinto an advocate of change and modernity-of which there already are so many. Insteadof gaining true insight into how we have become what we are, he turns (involuntarilyand unconsciously, perhaps) to explaining once again that and how and why we are so differentfrom our ancestorsof two centuries ago. While I insist on the essential connection between experience and expectation, and on the impossibilityof their driftingapart,I do think that their relationmay change. This change dependson that which forms the connection between experience and expectation,that is, the imagination. So not only will I argue against Koselleck's thesis of the drifting apartof experience and expectation, I will also complementthis pair of categories with a third, which is the middle category of the changes imagination.Adding this thirdcategory will allow me to reinterpret
2. See ReinhartKoselleck, "Neuzeit:Zur SemantikmodernerBewegungsbegriffe,"in Koselleck, GeschichtlicherZeiten (Frankfurtam Main: SuhrkampVerlag, VergangeneZukunft:Zur Senmantik 1979), 300-348. in Kound 'Erwartungshorizont'-zwei historischeKategorien," 3. Koselleck, "'Erfahrungsraum' 352-353. selleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 4. Ibid., 359: "moreprecisely, that the modernperiod lets itself be understoodas a modern period, only since expectations have drifted furtherand furtherapartfrom all experiences gained until then."(All translationsare my own.)

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Koselleck tried to interpretusing only the categories of experience and expectaof them is gained. tion; I hope that in doing so a deeper understanding
AND ERWARTUNGSHORIZONT II. ERFAHRUNGSRAUM

Koselleck defines Erfahrung(experience)as "gegenwdirtige deren Vergangenheit, Ereignisse einverleibt worden sind und erinnert werden kinnen."5 Erwartung at the same time, and (expectation),like experience,is personaland interpersonal occurs in the present,while aiming at the future,at what is not yet. It is "vergegenwdirtigteZukunft" (future made present-"presented" future).6 Koselleck speaks of the space of experience and the horizonof expectation, not the other way around,becausein our experiencethe past is gatheredtogetherand madeinto a whole. Expectationis associatedwith a horizon, as this is the line behindwhich lies a new space of experience,as yet unseen. Koselleck emphasizes that experience and expectation are unlike conceptual pairslike war and peace or inside and outside, in thatthey are not opposites;they do not exclude each other.Experienceis not an alternativeto expectationas war is an alternativeto peace. Indeed, thereis no expectationwithoutexperience,and no experience without expectation. Although in a sense this goes for war and peace too-war and peace are defined in opposition to the other, and therefore conceptually need each other-they do exclude each other in practice. pair of concepts, the Experience and expectation are also not a "symmetrical" one completingthe other,experience showing us the past on one side of the present, and expectation presenting the future on the other side. Experience and expectation, according to Koselleck, have different Seinsweisen (modes of being).7 Experiencerelates to the actual or, in the case of rememberedexperience, to accomplishedfact. Expectationrelates to the possible, which means that though expectationis a kind of experience,it never has the fullness of experience of (past or present)actuality. Though it is clear that experience and expectationare of a differentcharacter, I doubt whetherthese different"modesof being" can remainseparatedwhen we speak of the space of experience and the horizon of expectation. With the term Koselleck refers to what has been actually experienced so far, Erfahrungsraum, gatheredtogetheras a whole, but also, I believe, to what it is possible for someone in a certainday and age to experience-that is, to a person'sframe of referin the ence. A medieval Christianframe of referencehad no room for "progress" modern sense, which means that nothing would or could be recognized as such. A premature invention of the loom led to the destructionof invention and inventor alike, not to a recognition of a step forwardin the field of clothing production. So the space of experience is also (and if Koselleck did not intend it this way, I will include this meaning myself) the space within which experiencesmay occur; it sets the limits of possible experience.
5. Koselleck, "Neuzeit,"354: "Experienceis present past, the events of which have been incorporatedand can be remembered." 6. Ibid., 355. 7. Idem.

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This is not the same as setting the limits of possible expectation.According to Koselleck, Erfahrungsraumdid determine Erwartungshorizontin premodern times. Part of the space of experiencein the Middle Ages consisted of Christian doctrine and biblical revelation, and these helped to determine what people expected of the future. At the same time, these eschatological expectations helped to determinewhich events were experienced. Koselleck states that every time the apocalypse was expected but did not come, the expectationof the apocalypse was strengthened.Non-fulfillment of a prophecy led to greatercertainty with regardto futurefulfillment. Experience and expectation never collided. No experience could ever shake people's expectations, colored as the experiences were by expectations that were themselves determinedby a space of experience, a frame of reference constituted by revelation and church doctrine. and Erwartungshorizont mutually influenced each other; their Erfahrungsraum of modes being interpenetrated. respective Koselleck's thesis is that this mutual determinationof Erfahrungsraumand ended in modernity,in the Sattelzeit. It is "daBsich in der Erwartungshorizont Neuzeit die Differenz zwischen Erfahrung und Erwartung zunehmend verdie Erwartung" desto grB13er He states that "je geringerdie Erfahrung, grdBert."8 of is a formula for the temporalstructure modernity.9 Past experiences and the expectations based on them are less and less fit as a help in interpretingnew experiences. Expectationshave risen so high that they have removed themselves more and more from any experiences people have had so far. That, at least, is what Koselleck maintains;it is this thesis I will challenge in the next section.
III. THE ESSENTIALCONNECTIONOF EXPERIENCEAND EXPECTATION

In opposition to Koselleck, I would like to argue that in moderntimes, as in premoderntimes, expectationis firmly groundedin experience. In thatrespect nothing has changed. I imagine a typical example of the premodernsituation as Koselleck views it would be that of the farmer whose father and grandfatherwere farmers and whose sons expect to be farmersas well. Nothing in the past suggests that the future will be different,and the farmerdoes not expect it to be so. Clearly, it is much harderto find such a farmerin Westernsociety today, and if there still are by people whose lives are very differany they will be completely outnumbered ent from their parents'lives, and whose children's lives will be very different from their own. Even though today utopian political visions are not widely shared,there are probablystill many people who expect the futureto be very different from the present and from what they have experienced so far. All of this seems unarguably true and to fit with Koselleck's account; so where does Koselleck go wrong? A quotationfrom Ludwig Btichnerin Koselleck's own text provides the clue. In 1884 Btichner,as Koselleck himself explains, was not at all surprisedany8. Ibid., 359. "that in the modern period the difference between experience and expectation becomes increasingly larger".See also the introductionand note 4. 9. Ibid., 374: "the smaller the (amountof) experience, the bigger the expectation."

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more, "wenn heutzutage der Fortschritt eines Jahrhunderts dem von in friihererZeit gleichkommt,denn gegenwdrtig bringefast jeder Jahrtausenden Tagneues hervor."'0 Bfichnerwas not surprisedaboutprogress,aboutall the new things that came into existence, because he expected such progress. And he expected such progress,becauseprogress was what he experiencedall the time." His expectationthat the futurewould bring new things was based on his previous experience that it did so. He lived in a time of rapiddevelopment,of technical inventions swiftly supersedingone another.He could not butexpect the same to occur in the future.The connection between experience and expectationwas not lost, but was as strong as ever! An old postcardI bought some time ago will also illustratethe point. It shows a statue symbolizing peace-the card was issued on the occasion of the First International Peace Conferencein The Hague, 1899, the result of an initiative of the Russian Czar.The card itself is interestingenough, but the reason I boughtit the picture:"Het was that the woman who sent it wrote on the front, underneath Beeld der Toekomst,"meaning "theimage/vision of the future."'2 Now it might be argued that here, just as Koselleck would claim, the author's expectations were removed from any experience she might have had. Europe (and not just Europe)had been in turmoil duringthe whole century.The French-Germanwar lay not twenty years behind, and Europeancountries were armingthemselves. The knowledge thattwo WorldWarswere yet to come completes the picturewith a bittertouch of irony.Yet, althoughthe comment writtenon the card may have been somewhatnaive, it is certainlynot the example of expectationson the loose that it appearsto be to those with hindsight.The woman's hope was groundedin certain experiences related to the Conference. She may have been ratherselective in her focus, ignoring perhaps the pragmatic background of the Czar's appeal,with Russia being unableto keep up with otherEuropeancountriesin the arms race. Yet she witnessed 108 delegates from twenty-six countriesgathering in The Hague, peace societies urginghesitantgovernmentson, hundredsof thousands of signaturesbeing gatheredfrom the Low Countries alone. In the years before the Conference, governmentleaders met and spoke about general peace and disarmament.In a private conversation with the Russian ambassadorin 1894, the English prime ministerRosebery stated (and not for the first time) that he considered CzarAlexander III to be "the most powerful guarantyof general Though many delegates themselves did not really believe in it peacefulness."'13 at first, their skepticism diminished duringthe Conference.A peace conference on this scale was a very new development.All in all, it does not seem strangeto
10. Ibid., 368. Koselleck cites Ludwig Biichner, Der Fortschritt in Natur und Geschichte im Lichte der Darwin'schenTheorie (Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart,1884), 34: "when today the progress of a centuryequals that of a millennium in formerdays, because at present almost every day brings forth somethingnew." 11. "Progress" is used in a very general sense here, without any evaluationintended. 12. "Beeld"may also mean "statue"-so there was some wordplayin the phraseas well. 13. Thomas K. Ford, "The Genesis of the First Hague Peace Conference," Political Science Quarterly51 (September 1936), 355. CzarAlexanderdied in 1894, and was succeededby Nicholas II. Ford'sarticlefocuses on the question of who was/were behind the Russian appealfor a peace conference presentedin 1898.

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me that these experiences gave rise to an apparentlysomewhat utopian hope or expectation. The point is that expectations that on superficialexaminationseem to be far removed from experience and inexplicable on its basis, will in effect always have a clear basis in it (except in cases of severe mental illness, in which it is not clear that we can meaningfully speak of expectations). But, someone might object, is not the expectation of change, based on the experience of change, very different in kind from the expectation of the farmer thathis son will be a farmertoo? Clearly it is. In the lattercase, the concrete content of the expectationreflects the concrete content of experience, whereas in the former case it does not. But this does not mean that in the former case expectation and experiencehave become separated;it just means that in the formercase, the similaritybetween experience and expectation lies on a more abstractlevel. To think thatin the modem age expectationhas become disconnectedfrom experience means that a confusion has occurredbetween the levels of the concrete and the abstract-a confusion, I must add, that lies with Koselleck. In an interview with Wolf-DieterNarrand Kari Palonen, Koselleck says: "Ich glaube, daB die KategorienGegenwart,Vergangenheitund Zukunft,-bzw. Erfahrungsraum und Erwartungshorizont als der Vergangenheitoder der Zukunft zuzuordneninhaltsleer zu definieren sind. Was jeweils in der Gegenwart und der Zukunft oder in der Vergangenheitder Fall war oder sein wird, ldiBtsich aus den Strukturender Zeit nicht ableiten."l'4 When one compares this to his remarks about experience and expectation that I quoted in section II, it seems that Koselleck switches back and forth between a use of the terms "experience"and "expectation"as formal categories (without content), and an everyday "filled" use of these terms that allows for plural "experiences"and "expectations."His thesis would be correctif he claimed that the content of experiences and the content of expectations diverged in the modernperiod, but this does not mean that thereby expectation and experience are now disconnected. On a more abstract level, expectations still reflect experiences. (Indeed, as categories they cannot diverge.) Koselleck does not clearly distinguish between the two, and it is clear that he speaks of categories when he says that "die Grenzen des und der Horizontder Erwartungtratenauseinander."'5 Erfahrungsraumes But what I have said so far is merely that experience and expectation are always connected, not how they are. Nor is it yet clear how their relation can change. The next two sections are meantto deal with these questions.I will introduce imagination as a third category of history, a category that lies between experience and expectation. Expectations are necessarily grounded in experience, yet they may diverge for some people to some extent, depending on the strengthof their imagination.Though with most people in moderntimes experi14. Zeit, Geschichte und Politik. (Timne, History and Politics). Zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Reinhart Koselleck, ed. Jussi Kurunmiki and Kari Palonen (Jyviskyld: University of Jyviskyll, 2003), 17: "I believe that the categories present,past, and future-space of experience and horizon of expectationrespectivelyto be assigned to the past or the future-can be defined contentless.What was or will be the state of affairs at a given time in the present and the future or in the past, cannot be deducedfrom the structures of time." 15. Koselleck, "Neuzeit,"364: "the limits of the space of experience and the horizon of expectation diverged."

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ence and expectationhave been relatedas they were for Ludwig Btichnerin the example above, the modem perioddoes distinguishitself from the premodern by the number of creative thinkers it produced-or, one could say, that creative thinkersproducedthe modem period,instead of the otherway around;this is just in as sensible. Yet it is doubtfulwhetherit makes sense to speak of "expectation" their case; when they combine their experience of the past with a creativeimagination, they do not simply expect the future to be different,they make it different. But before discussing the distinctive natureand role of imaginationin the modernperiod it is necessary to outline the function of imaginationas an intermediarybetween expectation and experience in history.
IV. IMAGINATION AS A CATEGORY BETWEENEXPERIENCEAND EXPECTATION

In a sense, it is ratherobvious thatexperience and expectationare related.What, otherthanexperience,could providethe rough materialfor one's expectations?16 I have arguedthat the connection between the two is essential, that it does not make sense to say that in some period people's expectationsare so far removed from theirpast experiences that the latterprovide no clues for understanding the former.It is imaginationthat nestles itself between experienceand expectation.It may be a small nest or it may be a largeone, but experience always shapesexpectation throughthe mediation of imagination.It takes imaginationto have expectationsat all-to be able to distinguishthe futurefrom the past, and to have some sense of what this futuremight be and to have an attitudetowardit. This imagination can be strongeror weaker,and it can be more or less creative. In the premodem period imagination,with respect to the shaping of expectations,is relatively weak and relatively uncreative:the expectationsof its membersdiverged only minimally from their experience.The modernperiod, on the other hand, is characterizedby a stronger,more creative imagination in this respect. It takes such an imaginationto think that, althoughmy fatherand my father'sfatherand his fatherwere all farmers,I could be something else-that is, if such a change is virtuallywithoutprecedent.Similarly,when this is without precedent,it takes an active imaginationto pictureone's children'slives as very differentfrom one's own. But even when it has become normalfor people to choose theirown careers, irrespectiveof the profession of theirforefathers,the modem period will require a more active imagination.Although a modem person's social environmentwill suggest certaincareersratherthanothers, therebylimiting the choice this person has, he or she will still be requiredto imagine his life afteropting for eitherof the alternativespresentedto him. The fact that people imagine how their life might be and how it might be differentfrom that of the previous generationmay have become normal,but this does not diminishthe imaginative effortin itself. Even in cases of very strong and creative imaginationthere will always be a connection to some experience that makes highly divergent expectations com16. With regardto this section, compareKoselleck, "Neuzeit,"357-358: "Werseine Erwartung zur Gainzeaus seiner Erfahrungableiten zu kinnen glaubt, der irrt.... Wer aber seine Erwartung nicht auf Erfahrung griindet,der irrtebenfalls."("Whobelieves he is able to deduce the whole of his expectation from his experience, is mistaken..... But who does not groundhis expectationin experience, is mistakenas well.")

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prehensible.Imaginationdeals with possibilities, but not every abstractpossibility is a possibility now, in this concrete situation. Also, an infinite number of states of affairsis possible, but it is unlikely that anyone will thinkof them if they do not bear any connection to actuality'7.With any original thinkerof the past that history credits for having invented something new and important,it is possible to point out precursors,influences, inspirers.Imaginationdoes not operate in a vacuum any more than expectations arise in one; experience, imagination, and expectation are always and everywhere linked-though the character of these links differs from age to age. Some people's imaginationis so strong and as creative geniuses. When KarlMarx so creative thatthey may be characterized envisioned a classless society, he used his imaginationin a particularlycreative way. There was no historicalprecedent:heretofore,all history was the history of class struggle. It is easy to laugh at his seemingly naive vision of a proletarian paradise on earth. Alan Brown calls Marx a "romanticabout human desire," because Marx thought that in a communist system there would be no greed as there is in the capitalist system.'8No doubt he was a romanticin many respects. A highly creative imaginationis very much a romanticthing. And yet a connection between Marx's expectation and experience remains. If we put under the heading of experience, as Koselleck does, everything people have been taught and everything they have read, as well as their more concrete life experiences, then in Marx's case we must recognize that he lived under the influence of Romanticismas well as the Enlightenment.He was influenced by Hegel and by the work of Rousseau. He lived in a time of revolutions, turmoil, industrialization, of change in every aspectof society. These things take us some way towards an understanding of where Marx'sexpectationscame from. And then there is the fact-which I touched upon before-that we are not just dealing with the expectation of change, but also with bringing it about. Marx's adage that heretofore the world in various ways; the point is to "the philosophershave only interpreted is famous it," enough. change Most people are not as creatively imaginative as Karl Marx was, or Sir Isaac Newton, or JamesWatt,to name a few others. The creative imaginationoccupies a relatively large space between experience and expectation in the case of these illustriousthinkers(but never so greata space that the connection between experience and expectationis brokenor renderedunintelligible);it plays a much more modest role with John and JaneDoe. A period in history may be characterized by the especially creative characterof (some of) its members'imaginations,or the number of creative geniuses it produces, or the level of encouragement and recognition it gives to creative geniuses, but that does not make everyone living in that perioda creative genius. Marx'sfollowers were not all visionaries,people
17. Daniel Dennett's example of a bare opportunitygoes some way toward illustratingthis: "If I walk by a row of trashcans, and one of them happensto contain a pursefull of diamonds,then I pass up a bare opportunityto become wealthy.It makes no difference that I had no reasonto suspect there were any jewels there for the taking, or that my normal behavior has never included checking out trash cans for valuables." (Daniel C. Dennett, Elbow Room [Cambridge,Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996], 116-117.) 18. Alan Brown, Modern Political Philosophy: Theories of the Just Society (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1990), 115.

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of greatimagination,andif they expectedthings to change it was mainly because change is what they experienced.If they expectedthings to be betterin the future, it is because this is what they were taughtand they wanted to believe it. Koselleck quotes an Englishman from the middle of the nineteenth century: "The world moves faster and faster;and the difference will probablybe considerably greater.The temper of each new generationis a continual surprise."19It may be that the temper of each new generationis a surprise,or in other words that the content of the future is a surprise,but it will not at all be surprisingto this man that this will be so, for it is what he experiences already.He merely extends the line of contemporarydevelopment into the future, including the increasingacceleration.So again, as in Btichner'scase, expectationarises out of experience.This man's imaginationis not strikinglyactive-it would have been, had he predicted that in the near future all change would come to a halt and things would startmoving at a much slower pace. But this man merely assumed relative continuitybetween past, present,and future. This is not to deny that there isn't an importantbreakbetween the premodern and the modernperiod. One might describethis break in terms of the difference between a backward-lookingand a forward-lookingconsciousness. The backward-lookingconsciousness is dominatedby past experiences, meaning thatit is not bent on forming expectations of a futurethat will be very differentfrom the past. The forward-lookingconsciousness does not ignore past experiences-it cannot shape expectations out of thin air-but it uses its experience in orderto transform it. To accomplish this, it uses imagination creatively. In general, modernityis a more forward-lookingperiod, and our collective experience does not determineour expectations in the same way as five or more centuriesago. The appearanceof particularconcepts of imagination and the increasing use of these concepts is indicative of this change. Let us look at these changes before trying to characterizethe modem period.
V. CONCEPTSOF IMAGINATION

Analogously to Koselleck's exposition of Bewegungsbegriffe(concepts of movement), I would like to point out a number of "concepts of imagination" to put it in Germanfor the sake of analogy) that are indi(Einbildungsbegriffe, the cators of change from the premodernto the modem. The English word itself, in the sense of a creativefaculty "in its highest aspect,"was "imagination" used from around 1500 onwards. Originally,the term referredto the act of presentingto one's mind images of things not actuallypresentat that time and place in the external world. To speak of imagination as a creative faculty is a fairly was not used in its modernidiom. A second concept of imagination,"invention," until around sense inveniendi" 1600. "Ars is a term art of (the invention) modern coined by Cicero, but appliedto a certainpartof rhetoric.Only from around1600 onwards was the term applied to all fields of science.20Another relatedterm is
19. Koselleck, "Neuzeit,"369. He quotes J. A. Froude,fromAsa Briggs, TheAge of Improvement (London:Longmans, Green, 1959), 3. 20. See C. A. Van Peursen,Ars Inveniendi:Filosofie van de inventiviteitvan Francis Bacon tot ImmanuelKant (Kampen:Kok Agora, 1993).

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"genius." Originally, the Latin word "genius" referredto "the tutelary god or attendantspirit allotted to every person at his birth, to govern his fortunes and The term determinehis character,and finally to conduct him out of the world.""21 could also be appliedto places or institutions,to refer to the spiritconnected with that place. It may have been used especially in connection with more talented persons, but as a word referringto a person's naturalabilities and capacities it was not used until the seventeenth century.The sense of a "native intellectual capacity for imagipower of an exalted type," an "instinctiveand extraordinary native creation, original thought, invention, or discovery" is even more recent; accordingto the OED it "appearsto have been developed in the eighteenthcenin the sense in which it is used above, is itself an eighteenthtury.""Original," centuryterm.We still speak of "anoriginal"in the sense that it is not a copy, and we say things like: "the originalplan was ... but something came up," referring to the plan formed at the beginning;but these are old uses of the term "original." To speak of a book or a piece of music as "highly original"is a completely different thing. It refers to an individual's creative power, to someone's ability to create something altogether new and unprecedented."Creativity,"to continue with the next concept of imagination,is a nineteenth-century noun; "creative"a is again from the nineteenthcentury. adverb;"creativeness" seventeenth-century Terms like "discovery,""design,""devise,"and "device"are all, in the sense in to which we use them most now, (early) moderncreations.The term "phantasy," conclude with a notion that is ratherintimatelyrelated in meaning to "imagination," also has an interestinghistory. Originally,a "phantasy"(Gr. Pavrafofa) was an illusory appearance,somethinga person was hauntedby, a hallucination. Its "active"sense of someone's phantasy,a person's creative power, has its roots The word changed in meaning from passive to active, or in early moderntimes.22 at least the passive sense got company of an active one. These briefly sketchedexamples are evidence of a vocabularyof "conceptsof imagination"that is indicative of modernity.They are dynamic notions, active, individualized and interiorized.Whereas genius was once something external accompanyingeach person in life, the moderngenius is the creative inventorher or himself. The modern phantasyis not an illusory image troubling a person's mind, but a spring of novelty and creativity within the mind. Only in modern times did humans dare apply the label "creative"to themselves. In general, a change occurredfrom passive notions to active ones, from "thingshappening(to you)" to "makingthings happen."This is not a new insight of course, but by it in this way, pointing out the etymological evidence for this shift demonstrating in consciousness, I merely wish to show that (linguistic) history can provide some supportfor introducingimaginationas a categoryof history besides (or in fact, between) experience and expectation.

21. This etymology and those following are all from the OxfordEnglish Dictionary. 22. The OED notes that "in modernuse fantasy andphantasy ... tend to be apprehendedas separate words, the predominantsense of the former being "caprice,whim, fanciful invention," while that of the latteris "imagination,visionary notion."

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ANDERS SCHINKEL VI. MODERNITY'S HISTORICALCONSCIOUSNESS

We might say (a bit pompously) that modernity began when imagination took flight. Exaggeratedas this may sound, there is good reason for assigning such a centralplace to the changing characterof imaginationembodied in its changing semantics that I have described.Historiansare correctin assigning to Romanticism an importantrole in the developmentof historicalconsciousness and of history as a science; the way philosophersof history have distinguished "history" and the appearanceof (the modem senses of) terms like imaginafrom "nature," tion and creativityin the RomanticEra,capturecrucialdevelopmentsin the modern period. Two of the most influential modern philosophers of history, R. G. Collingwood and W. Dilthey, saw events of history as distinct from events of nature in that the former not merely had an outside, but also an inside.23The meaning of a historical event could not be explained or understoodin terms of causality,but had to do with the experienceof those typicallyhistoricalcreatures: human beings. As Collingwood put it succinctly: "all history is the history of thought."To locate the difference between historical and unhistoricalcreatures in the former's mental powers is merely a modem way of putting the difference between freedom and causality.Humans are (to a certainextent) free, thanksto their mental powers that make it possible for them to escape the bonds of merely naturalcausality. In this quality lies the major condition of the possibility of history (of the possibility not only thatthe futurewill differ from the past andthe present, but that its agents will make this difference occur on the basis of their imagination).The freedom of humanslies in their ability to evaluate the possible as well as the real, and to realize these possibilities by bringingnovelty into the world.24 Modem historical consciousness is a self-conscious expression of the awarenessof these capacities and an instantiationof this awarenessin a particular form of being. The Romantic concepts of imagination,creativity,and genius are the linguistic expressionof and evidence for this. In the modem period imagination assumes a more creative and active role in its linking of experience and expectation,renderingthe consciousness of its membersmore forward-looking, and their behavior more active in seeking to make the futuredifferent from the present.
VII. CONCLUDINGREMARKS

It is not easy to give equal attentionto the static and to the changing in history. kind of change at least, seems to domLiving in a time when change, a particular inate, and stability appearsto be somethingfrom the past, one tends to slide into a certain discourse on history: a discourse that centers aroundstatementsthat, and explanationswhy, we are so differentfrom people a few centuriesago. This discourse of explainingmodernityis itself a modernphenomenonand in a sense
23. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History [1946] (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1986) and W. Dilthey, Der Aufbauder geschichtlichen Weltin den Geisteswissenschaften [1910] (Frankfurt am Main: SuhrkampVerlag, 1981). 24. This is not an exclusively humanquality (non-humannatureproducesnovelty as well), but it is ratherpronouncedin our species.

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makes itself true. Postmodernphilosophy of history tends to bring the modern discourseto its extreme,completely separatingthe presentfrom the past, waving away all possible explanationsof how we became what we are, insisting on difference and discontinuity: "if the present generation needs anything at all," HaydenWhite writes, "it is a willingness to confrontheroically the dynamic and disruptiveforces in contemporarylife. The historianserves no one well by constructing a specious continuity between the present world and that which preceded it. On the contrary,we requirea history that will educate us to discontinuity more than ever before; for discontinuity,disruption,and chaos is our lot."25 Koselleck set out to try to understandthe difference between the modern and the premodernmentality,using as tools the categories of experience and expectation. The fact that he used these tools is evidence of his concern with the preconditionsof history-that is: with the static. However, the thesis he formulated to state the differencebetween the modern and the premodernmentality (that in the modernperiod expectationis severed from experience) failed to do justice to the static, to the fact that in all periods expectation and experience are always linked, and are so by imagination. Koselleck unwillingly ended up siding with those philosophers of history who overemphasize the difference between the present and the past. Indeed, in the end, Koselleck's thesis rendersthe connection between past and presentunintelligible. If we want to understand how we came to be what we are, even how we came to think of ourselves as so very different from the past, we have to divide our attention equally between the static and the changing. Insofar as we focus on change, it really has to be to change, which implies continuityand development, not just to difference, that we direct our attention.The focal points of the static and the changing are not mutuallyexclusive: though only one at a time can be in focus, one can switch back and forth between the two, the static forming the backgroundof change, and vice-versa. They are complementaryaspects of reality. It seems to me thatin this respect, the modernoutlook is unjustlyall too often by a linear opposed to the classical outlook: the modernone being characterized the classical of and and idea of the time by by a conception history progress; cyclical conception of history as illustratinga recurringpattern.These perspectives are not really in opposition;the one does not have to replace the other.It is a difficult question how deeply ingrainedin our being are the changes that have occurred in our culture. To what extent does the modern, linear conception of time influence the way individualsreflect on theirown life-span?Though we live in a "computerized" era, does it really feel radically differentto live a "normal" life now than it did a millennium ago? There is always "normality," though its
25. Hayden White, "The Burdenof History,"in White, Tropicsof Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism(Baltimore:John Hopkins University Press, 1978), 50 (originallypublishedin History and Theory5 [1966], 111-134). It is unclearto me how White is able to comparepast and present, as this of the past that is (in White's own view) unattainabledue to the suppresupposesan understanding posed radicaldifference between past and presentitself. White stated elsewhere that the only possiis to do this on moral or aesthetic ble way of choosing between different historical interpretations grounds, not on the ground of greater plausibility or closer approximationof truth. See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-CenturyEurope (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).

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shape differs. And even more basic than this culturallydeterminednormalityis a biological normality:the kind of animal species we are. White was not wrong to insist on the importanceof language in shaping our (perspective on) reality, but Koselleck was certainlyrightin pointing out some prelinguisticconditionsof humanhistory,conditions thathumansshare with other animals:"Man,as a linguistic being, simply cannot avoid transformingthe metahistoricalgivens linguistically in order to regulate and direct them, so far as he can. Nevertheless, these elementary,naturalgivens remain, however much language may seek to In the case at issue in this essay, this means that experience, efface them."26 and expectation, imagination are transcendental categories that pick out certain universalfeaturesof human life, and that necessarily figure in historical studies of it. But it also means that the contentof these categoriescan and will vary from one historicalepoch to another.Thus, in the modernperiod the character of experience (it typically became more forward-looking), expectation (it typically diverged more from experience), and imagination(it typically became stronger, more creative, and underwrotemore active ways of being) all changed. In this way the modem period is both like earlierperiods-as it, too, involves the interrelation of experience, imagination, and expectation-and unlike them, in that the characterof this interrelationchanges markedly.27 Free Universityof Amsterdam The Netherlands

26. Koselleck, "LinguisticChange and the History of Events,"652. 27. I would like to thank the editor,Brian Fay for his work on this paper,as well as the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions. Thanks are also due to Willem Schinkel for his useful comments on an earlierversion of this article.