Abstract

This paper wants to suggest a defininition of the philosophy of history as a determination of historical time, or at the question about what is the present time. I draw on Norbert Elias’ sociological conception of time, which aims at desontologizing time and considering it as an instrument which humans use for organizing their actions. I suggest that historical time, and philosophy of history, is also a conceptual instrument for organizing and understanding the complexity of human interactions in Modernity. This means that there is a double sensitivity for time in modern society: as consciousness of qualitative time and as technically measured time. Finally, I argue that Heidegger’s and Benjamin’s are the most adequate theories in the Xxth century for approaching a definition of historical time.