Abstract

Figures of historical time and instances of the method. The paper highlights the interaction between the representations of historical time and the epistemological approaches to history, with particular emphasis on the process of discretization of time. This outcome, precondition for the building of the modern historical consciousness, is pursued through different pathways, such as the history of the philological method, the Querelle des Anciens et des Moderns, and the acknowledgement of the secular transformation of the earth. Notwithstanding the paradigmatic relevance of the great philosophies of history by Herder and Hegel, it is argued that the shift to an open-ended representation of historical time was established only in the scientific historicism of Ranke and Droysen. Droysen’s pathbreaking epistemological innovations are compared to the major tenets of the Annales School in France and it is further argued that the epistemological endevour to restore the intelligibility of history in a global, albeit pluralized, perspective brings Braudel close to the systemic approaches of the biology of his time.