Nassehi - No Time For Utopia The Absence of Utopian Contents in Modern Concepts of Time

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No Time for Utopia
The absence of Utopian contents in modern
concepts of time
Armin Nassehi
ABSTRACT. Since the beginning of modernism, time con-
cepts in general have had Utopian contents. Such Utopian
contents were not accidental to time; rather they provided
it with substantial meaning. Contemporary concepts of time,
however, no longer seem to have such a Utopian impetus. On
the contrary, they localize conditions in time and its structure
which exclude Utopian perspectives in the future. This paper
deals with the societal preconditions of early modern semantics
of time and contrasts them with contemporary forms of time
management. In connection with this change in time from a
source of meaning to a merely formal chronos which is neutral
to meaning, philosophical discussions of modern world-time
and time implications of contemporary semantics of risk come
to the fore. KEY WORDS philosophy of time risk
societal theory. time concepts. Utopia
Today, when we trace the historical development of modernity since the
Enlightenment, it is apparent that certain Utopian conceptions of time
have been left behind. By 'Utopian' conceptions of time, I mean to
suggest those aspects of time which place trust in our capacity to construct
a future which is a positive development of our present circumstances.
Old ways of thinking about time, its future and its past, no longer seem
to work once the eschatological hope of creating a more desirable history
for ourselves has been displaced. Instead, I would argue that the future
is already immanent in the present (cf. Blumenberg, 1964: 243), for as I
TIME & SOCIETY 1994 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), VOL.
3(1): 47-78.
48 ARMIN NASSEHI
hope to demonstrate with this paper, modernity is characterized by a
partiCular semantiCs of time. Here I follow Jiirgen Habermas (1985),
who suggests that we need to come to terms with the problem of 'time'
in modernity:
Modernity cannot and will not borrow its principles from a different age.
Instead, modernity must create its own normativity. It is completely depen-
dent on itself without any possibility of escape. This explains its easy
irritation about its self-perception and the dynamic of the continuing
attempts at self-identification.(Habermas, 1985: 16)1
Attempts at finding an identity for modernity need to address the
historical development of time concepts. Such concepts throw light on
the specific Utopian contents of modern self-perceptions: in other words,
our recognition that an imperfect present can be recast so as to create a
perfect future. In this paper, therefore, I am interested in contemporary
modern and postmodern conceptualizations of time, namely because I
consider them to be the immediate expressions of the displacement of
Utopian projects.
This paper will take the following form: first, I will briefly sketch
several of the societal preconditions of early modern time concepts.
Second, I offer some reflections on the management of time in a func-
tionally differentiated society of the 20th century. This will lead me,
in turn, to take a look at postmodern time concepts. There, certain
philosophical approaches to the chronos of modern world-time, and their
implications for the current semantics of risk, will be addressed.
I. Early Modern Time Concepts
Over the course of this section, I would like briefly to sketch a historical
overview, by definition quite provocative, to serve as a backcloth for my
subsequent analysis of a postmodern 'semantics of time'. No attempt is
made here to qualify in detail the nature of the assertions I am making:
rather, it is my intention simply to bring to the fore those specific assump-
tions about time whiCh form the site of postmodernist critique.
While the medieval understanding of time was characterized by the
world-immanent presence of God, which neutralized the transitory
nature of the world, world-immanent time was invested with a meaning
of its own at the beginning of the modern period. God's eternity -
symbolized by a social structure organized to reproduce stability, unity,
hierarchy and centralism - ensured an emphatiCally conservative obser-
vation of the world. Here conservative is not meant politiCally, but liter-
NO TIME FOR UTOPIA 49
ally: God's creation must be conserved. The world should not be culti-
vated by human beings, but left as it is.
During the Renaissance and early Enlightenment, society became
more secularized. The dominant conservative conception of the world
changed radically once politics, economic relations, science, education
and art were no longer dominated and legitimized by religion. The
different functional domains of human activity developed temporal
dynamics which altered the societal management of time. The changes
within these domains resembled a process of emancipation from restric-
tions imposed externally, resulting in a self-referential extension of free-
dom of action and specific goals. During the early Enlightenment future
contingency was considered a threat, but now the future gradually
became the actual aim of all actions. New developments within science,
education, politics and the economy now became an end in themselves,
conceived of as scientific process, the improvement of education and
its conditions, the anticipation and realization of state goals, or the
management of economic processes and present calculation involving
future profits. A new consciousness slowly developed: the world is not
fixed as it is, but is constantly changing. These changes are generally
brought about by human activity in the political, economic, scientific,
educational and artistic fields, and may be understood as a process of
improvement and perfection of humankind: as progress (Nassehi, 1993:
304).
The semantics of progress which emerge during this early period of
understanding can be considered a functional equivalent of the former
presence of eternity during conservative eras. All social activities must
now strive towards improvement and perfection under the banner of
history. The desire to achieve perfection provides a new conceptual
framework for human activity. 'The emerging horizon of expectations
has dynamized history. The concepts "modern age" and progress could
be used synonymously' (Koselleck, 1975b: 391). On the one hand, the
collective term progress, which emerges at the end of the 18th century,
is meant both to describe and normalize the experiences gained in differ-
ent areas of human activity. On the other hand, this term is intended to
satisfy the need to be sure of one's self and find an adequate self-
referential description of the epoch. The medium of this form is time, in
the shape of history as a directed process.
It is evident that the progressive change of social structure from rigid
stratification to an increasing social differentiation according to functional
codes leaves a void: namely, the semantic centre which had integrated
the different functional contexts. This void creates an immense degree
of complexity: connections become increasingly less probable, the coordi-
50 ARMIN NASSEHI
nation of different contexts of activity - for example of the economic
and political fields - becomes ever more precarious and the borders
between functional domains become more tightly closed. Different and
mutually exclusive functional domains emerge. The problem of integra-
tion in early modern society can be phrased as a question: How can the
new and excluded functional domains be reintegrated, each into its own
specific field? In other words, how is social unity conceivable in spite of
differentiation? The answer: It is conceivable as the temporalization of
complexity and universalization of temporality.
Premodern advanced civilizations absorbed their social differences
(social dimension) - caused by a rigid index of social stratification -
with an extensive temporal unity (temporal dimension); that is to say,
time was encompassed by the eternity of God. Early modern society
reacts similarly, coming to terms with its complexity using the concept
of time. The factual difference (factual dimension)2 which results from
the juxtaposition of different functional subsystems is contained within a
uniform temporal dimension. This dimension no longer stands for the
timelessness of the world but for the dynamization of all activity. History
and progress - both used as collective nouns which universalize the
histories of, and progressions in, science, morality, art, law, politics and
the economy - give each specific system history a universal background
which fulfils its need for legitimation and adequate self-perception. Time,
completely historicized and excluded from specific functional domains,
is reintegrated into the functional system as the universal category of the
modern age, progress and world-immanent perfection. Each functional
subsystem is thereby ensured a safe place within society as a whole. This
semantics could be regarded as a common basis for the subsystems, yet
one which leaves the factual differences between them intact.
3
Politics,
law, morality, economy and science may march under different flags,
but they share the common goal of serving progress and the modern age.
Emerging with the epoch-making development of a social structure based
upon functional differentiation was the semantic need to make social
unity at least thinkable, that is, to compensate with semantics for the
loss of social unity: 'The truth is the whole' (das Wahre ist das Ganze;
Hegel, 1970: 24) writes Hegel in the preface to the Phiinomenologie des
Geistes. Does this mean, one could ask, that there is no truth if we have
been deprived of the whole? Obviously, one needs time as a potential
for truth because truth can only emerge in time. Only in history, claims
Hegel, can truth come to terms with itself and the divisions of modernism
be healed. Truth is the progressive motion of the spirit within history.
Time itself contains the Utopian energies whjch resolve the difference
between promise and fulfilment.
These unifying codes react positively to the social change described
above. They are a particular feature of the philosophical semantics, from
Condorcet's or Bacon's concept of progress to Kant's transcendental
subject and Hegel's philosophy of history. The sociological discourse
registers the same phenomena by focusing on the immense costs of
modernization. Max Weber identifies the worldwide absence of fraternity
(Weber, 1972: 571) and the loss of meaning in the modem world (Weber,
1972: 564); Habermas speaks of the fragmentation of consciousness
(Habermas, 1981a: 522) and the shortage of meaning as a resource
(Habermas, 1981a: 212).4 These diagnoses may differ in detail, but they
all focus on the problem of a social structure which is unable to provide
subsystems and people with a definite location in society. One could
speak of a loss of external reference which forces both subsystems and
individuals to define themselves increasingly by self-reflection (Luhmann,
1980: 29). Obviously, forms must be found which can compensate for
the loss of unity and integration in society. As this type of integration
can no longer be a fundamentum in re in the form of one subsystem with
definite claims to leadership, it must be simulated semantically. I would
like to demonstrate briefly that such simulations find their semantic
expression in the social and temporal dimensions, since the factual dimen-
sion cannot be reintegrated due to the functional differentiation of spe-
cific codes.
In the social dimension, semantics emerge which are meant to cushion
the dissolution of traditional life styles. Anthropological semantics, in
contrast, are universally inclusive and deal with human beings per se,
rather than with individuals as members of a particular social class or
group. Simultaneously, a semantics of inclusion and exclusion - peoples
and nations - has developed. Successful inclusion into particular groups
is bought at the price of excluding individuals from other peoples and
nations. These 'semantics of social unity' (Fuchs, 1991: 89) have the
function of compensating for the loss of meaning in the social dimension
and all the resulting crises in the early modem period (Nassehi, 1990:
261). They serve to provide unity where it is no longer inherent in the
structure of society.
The term nation has the same significance in the social dimension as
progress and history have in the temporal dimension. In the early modem
period these terms provide a uniform time for the functional subsystems.
History expresses the world-time itself, which means that the writing of
history itself becomes an historical event. Thus, as Koselleck (1975a)
writes:
Historical perspectivism has changed completely from a category of knowl-
52 ARM IN NASSEHI
edge to a fundamental designation of all experiences and expectations.
The temporal difference between past and future has gained its own histori-
cal quality. Insights into this historical quality are only valid if they remain
conscious of their own temporality. (Kose11eck, 1975a: 701)
If history has the function of expressing a world-time, which is not only
the expression of a series of events but their connection, their meaning,
their telos or at least their logic of development (Koselleck, 1975a: 649),
then the historicization of historiography means the temporalization of
the position from which historical time is described (for example, as
progress). It is a re-entry of history into history (Spencer Brown, 1971:
69).
The early modern historiography had to deal with the paradox of
historicizing itself. This paradox was rendered invisible and acceptable
by a philosophical concept: history itself attained a metaphysical status -
or later: a materialistic one, which means the same in the end. To a
certain extent, history became a 'God-term' (Burke, 1961: 33) of a
completely historicized world. Hegel (1970: 26) even claimed that his-
tory, as the movement of the absolute spirit, was equivalent to God. It
is not really the secularization of the eschatology which is reminiscent of
the theological cosmos of earlier social structures, but rather the tech-
nique of theory used in such concepts.
The early modern semantics of time, which aim to establish univer-
sality, use collectives in order to produce an apparent simultaneity
between functionally differentiated subsystems. This is not a homo-
geneous clock-time, one which produces a technical synchronization of
different systems' histories. Instead, it is a logical, semantic synchroniz-
ation of systems along one abstract, linear, teleological dimension of
time which simulates unity in an ever more functionally differentiated
society.
This form of temporal, meaningful typology of unity did not last for
very long (it would not be replaced by other forms of unity, however,
until the 20th century). In semantics, this change becomes apparent
much sooner, particularly wherever specific cases of non-simultaneity are
found; for example, between the scientific progress of the 17th century,
on the one hand, and political, legal and especially moral developments,
on the other. This simultaneity of the non-simultaneous is the basis of
Hegel's (1971: 236) claim that 'mythology must become philosophical
and people reasonable'. According to this dictum, progress is made when
everything, not just philosophy or the state, takes part in the self-motion
of the spirit. To give one final example: the Marxist teleology almost
thrives on dissonances. The development of the productive forces far
exceeds the circumstances of production (Produktionsverhiiltnisse) and
the two can only be synchronized by a revolutionary movement (Marx
and Engels, 1972: 467).
The fact that a consciousness of non-simultaneity emerges even though
different system processes in society always run simultaneously is not
surprising on closer inspection. Different functional subsystems do not
experience dissonance by mere reciprocal observation. Dissonance
becomes apparent against the background of a standard which is common
yet external to all the functional subsystems. The function of this stan-
dard is established by the central semantics of a progressive concept of
time and the idea of a history which tends towards a better future,
thereby transcending the histories of separate systems. The simultaneity
of the non-simultaneous signifies only the qualitative divergence of simul-
taneous facts. The 'grief' at the dissonance of the development contains
the Utopian horizon of a promise that the world will improve and even
become perfect in due course. Time itself has Utopian energies.
History and progress as metaphors of unity cannot obscure the fact
that the times of different systems - and therefore the simultaneity of
the qualitatively non-simultaneous - are a basic principle of functional
differentiation. But this insight does not become predominant semantic-
ally before the 20th century.
11. Functional Differentiation and the Problem of Synchronization
in the 20th Century
It is no secret that the Utopian energy of time concepts, as discussed
previously, has very little meaning for most people today. Nowadays,
the term 'time' tends to conjure up the idea of a power which can neither
be stopped nor turned back. Modern society is split by radically different
modes of observation which makes unity all but inconceivable. A society
of this kind needs a high degree of differentiation and functional auton-
omy for its subsystems. It renounces a strict regulation of systems
relations, replacing general intersystem relations with the relation
between systems and environments or, in other words, replacing strict
coupling with loose coupling. This makes even the recognition of unity
within society difficult, let alone its representation in sociological theories
(Luhmann, 1987: 35). Whereas it was still possible to simulate such a
representation using the concepts of history, progress, reason or national-
ity in the early modern period, such attempts have become even less
probable today. Nevertheless, noteworthy appeals to such codes are still
being made. The most elaborate example is Jiirgen Habermas's (1988:
185) call for the unity of reason in the multiplicity of its voices, which
54 ARMIN NASSEHI
presents communicative rationality as a fragile boat on an ocean of
contingencies. In view of the insurmountable operative differences, how-
ever, such attempts appear misplaced, for they try to restitute a function
which has long given way to just these differences.
In terms of time, modem society contains the juxtaposition of different
temporalities which each develop their own self-referential time. As
there is no longer any central representation of social unity under the
conditions of functional differentiation, there is no place left for a central
semantics of social time which could inspire a coincidence of temporal
perspectives. In the 20th century, attempts at least to simulate social
unity using anthropological or ethnic universalities (as well as topologies
of history and progress) so that communication could be conditioned
throughout society usually fail. Therefore, contending temporal horizons
emerge in the way time is managed.
Mutually attentive system processes point to the temporal coincidence
of operations which differ radically from each other in the factual dimen-
sion. If one actually defines the experience of simultaneity as the differ-
ence of facts (Luhmann, 1990a: 99), then the organization of time in
modem society is bound to a present which can only be experienced as
the dividing line between past and future. The extended present of
traditional societies was characterized by eternity as a horizon of experi-
ence projecting into the present and giving the world a calculable form
(which actually needed no calculation because decisions were hardly
contingent). This is why the difference between tempus and aeternitas
vanishes, the very difference used in the modem period to cope with the
transitory nature of time. The necessity of a uniform world-time takes
over the function of the older dualisms of time and eternity. The present
is now marked only by the difference between past and future and no
longer by the difference between the temporal and the eternal present
(Luhmann, 1990a: 124). World-time means a temporal technique of
coordination which permits the harmonization of specific system histories
with a common horizon. It is the functional correlate of a society in
which functional subsystems with their own temporal structure of refer-
ence have emerged. In terms of system theory, these functional sub-
systems provide an irreducible environment for each other, but are
nevertheless independent. Functional subsystems cannot simply be syn-
chronized in the factual dimension. Synchronization and simultaneity are
two different dimensions: system and environment operate necessarily
simultaneously because system environments exist only from the perspec-
tive of the system. Still, the problem of temporal coordination of differ-
ent system processes is not affected by this simultaneity. This problem
can only be solved by the synchronization of the factual differences.
This synchronization cannot be achieved by appealing to one's own
system history. From economic sequences of time you cannot, for
example calculate the amount of time needed for political decisions
which, in turn, may have an important effect on investment decisions. It
is impossible to integrate the time horizons of two different functional
subsystems because of the dissimilarity of operative differences of obser-
vation. This is why, in functional terms, abstract forms of mediation
which are not based on the specific time of one system become necessary.
'Abstract' means that those forms of mediation must be abstracted from
the specific system codes so that they can be used everywhere. One must
be able to generalize such an abstract form of mediation, that is, it must
not be bound to a particular time horizon. This type of time is transcen-
dent from the viewpoint of each system, but it is structured chronologi-
cally rather than eternally and cairologically. This transcendent time may
be situated outside social systems. Nevertheless, it signifies immanence
and social self-reference, rather than the transcendence of the world and
the reference to an external godly power which it signified in the Middle
Ages. World-time means the time of world-society as a whole.
World-time is symbolized as clock-time, which must neither be con-
fused with any real structure beyond society nor be comprehended as an
'actual' structure of time. Clock-time is just a specific form of socially
constituted time. Social time must be ahead of communicative events in
order to be able to fulfil its function of coordination. Clock-time uses
mechanical, electromechanical, electronic or even nuclear series of
events
5
in order to win a measure of time by counting the events in time.
The counted processes or, to put it more accurately, the events which
are observed as processes, are strictly homogeneous and can therefore
constitute a uniform measuring unit. Clock-time results as a structure
which is homogeneous, reversible, determinable and transitive. It is
homogeneous because it has uniform units. Consequently, it is reversible:
one can turn back the course of time, define how much has elapsed and
anticipate the future need of time. It can be determined by forming
generalized abstract calculations of time from socially standardized ways
of counting. It is transitive because sequences of time can be measured
at different times and places for different events and actions and be
compared quantitively (Luhmann, 1975: 111).6
This homogeneous, linear and highly abstract structure of time under-
lies almost all communications in world-society. It must be emphasized
once again that it does not serve to produce simultaneity amongst differ-
ent system processes, since this simultaneity is given anyway. World-/
clock-time
7
coordinates the factual dimension. To show that these sys-
tems operate simultaneously, the example of economic calculations
56 ARMIN NASSEHI
anticipating political decisions may be used. Economists note that the
government has not yet released any information, that the problems are
still being discussed by the committees, and that so far nobody knows
what the balance of power is like. One knows all of this simultaneously
which means: right at this moment. However, temporal synchronization
opens up different time horizons. One knows that Parliament will soon
make a decision, or that there will be new tax laws or foreign trade laws
next year. Synchronization here means that one can calculate when
something will happen in the time dimension and adjust one's plans
accordingly. Synchronization occurs not only in the system relations of
social subsystems, but also in the coordination of the social and factual
aspects of interaction and organization.
Numerous incidents in everyday life - arriving punctually for dinner,
trying to catch the next train, submitting a complaint against an official
notice within the time permitted, receiving a reminder because a bill
remains unpaid - reveal that the highly generalized coordination of
time is taken for granted. If this coordination did not take place, social
order would not be possible given the radical factual differences which
are a result of functional differentiation: 'In the modern social order,
clocks are coordinated through uniform time dimensions, linked globally
across space. Without such linkages, which depend essentially on the
formation of standardized social conventions, the modern world simply
could not be ordered as it is' (Giddens, 1987: 142; Zerubavel, 1981: 69).
The function which world-/clock-time performs in synchronizing
system histories and parallelizing a variety of factors temporally may be
very important for the specific processes of functional subsystems, but
its success is not guaranteed. It is unable to coordinate different system
processes in the factual dimension. All it can do is structure the system-
specific planning of times and decisions so that the desired simultaneity
can at least be initiated. The factual differences will not be suspended.
They will, on the contrary, be emphasized greatly by synchronization.
Monastic prayer times were therefore not a mechanism of synchroniz-
ation, as they were only intended to ensure that similar activities were
performed at the same time, that is, to overcome the distinction between
presence and absence (Luhmann, 1990a: 123). In addition to constructing
community in the absence of physical presence, contemporary time-
measuring has to tackle the question of how to do things simultaneously
and still coordinate activities. World-/clock-time is, in a way, the measure
of differences in the factual dimension; it allows a dynamic view of the
world beyond the simple simultaneity of system relations. The economic
observation of political observations (second-order observations) uses
world-/clock-time not only to understand a different system's view of the
world, but also to see how the processes of other systems function within
the temporal dynamics of their own time (Eigenzeit).
Time serves as a reciprocal scheme of observation, but does not
bridge the operative differences between social subsystems. The function
performed by this concept of time differs radically from the function of
synchronization (which was fulfilled by the concepts of progress and
history in the early modern period). The latter attempted a factual
coincidence of perspectives by means of a qualitative world-time. Current
world-time has become quantitative and does not provide an understand-
ing of the world as a whole any more. This means that time no longer
manages to fulfil the function of religion. Early modernism introduced
the world to the glorification of time as the driving force of progress and
historical perfection. Nowadays, time is comprehended as a calculable,
abstract medium. It merely provides the rhythm for multiple system
processes and becomes indifferent to what happens during its course. In
the end, there is nothing one can expect from time any more, except
that it will pass (and therefore remains a limited resource).
Ill. Philosophical Reflections on the Chronos of Modern Time
Time's indifference to what happens may be acknowledged without
regret. However, the history of the modern semantics of time is always
fluctuating between grief at the necessary relinquishment of a 'holy' time,
and obstinate efforts to establish a time which is not simply a means of
synchronizing different time horizons. The paradigm of such beliefs is
clearly presented in Henri Bergsons (1989) separation of time into physi-
cal space-time (according to Newton) and the pure, inner duration of
consciousness. This distinction corresponds to the distinction between
extensive and intensive quantities. The difference here is not that one is
extended and the other is not. Bergson does not want to describe the
specific spheres of existence or the objects which, together, could be said
to represent the world. Instead, he tackles the epistemological problem
of differentiating between various views of the world rather than different
types of being (Bergson, 1989: 57). Bergson defends a type of colon-
ization thesis which describes homogeneous, extensive time as a 'phan-
tom of space' one which captivates reflexive consciousness (Bergson,
1989: 77). This consciousness used to be prereflexive and of a natural
inner duration, keeping itself apart from the external world like a monad.
This phenotypical motif, which reveals discontent within civilization,
is expressed in various ways. Each time a qualitative sphere of inner
temporality is contrasted with external time it tries to oppress conscious-
58 ARMIN NASSEHI
ness and life. In Sein und Zeit (1927) Heidegger qualifies his ethical
motifs of Eigentlichkeit (essentiality) and Entschlossenheit (resolution)
as the active reception of individual temporality.s Even in Husserl's
strictly methodological elimination of objective time, there is an element
of a motif which views quantitative time as an essential feature of mod-
ernism. The initial euphoria of progress has given way to sceptical seman-
tics.
In Nietzsche's (1980) attempt to dehistoricize history, the motif of
inner and external time appears once again. Nietzsche does not intend
to restore eternity as a provider of meaning. In 'Zarathustra', he says:
'Bose heisse ich's und menschenfeindlich: all dies Lehren vom Einen
und Vollen und Unbewegten und Satten und Unvergiinglichen!' ('I call
it evil and misanthropic: all this teaching about the One being complete
and unmoving and replete and eternal!' (Nietzsche, 1980: 110). Nietzsche
praises the transitory nature and discontinuity of time, not its continuous
homogeneity which captivates the modem masses. Discontinuity is, in a
way, both a protest against transitoriness and a symbol of transitoriness.
Nietzsche protests against transitoriness with his expression of the eternal
potential of pleasure:
Oh Mensch! Gieb Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
Ich schlief, ich schlief -
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh -
Lust - tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit -
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!
Oh mortal! beware!
What says the deep midnight?
I slept, I slept -
I have woken from a deep dream:
The world is profound,
More so than the day thought.
It's sorrow is deep -
Pleasure - even deeper than heart-
ache
Sorrow says: Pass by!
But all pleasure wants eternity -
Wants deep, deep eternity!
(Nietzsche, 1980: 404)
Nietzsche does not strive for sorrow (Weh) , which passes by, but
pleasure, which does not represent eternity but desires it. The ecstatic
quality of Dionysian fulfilment opposes the senseless passage of time.
The discontinuity of eternal recurrence symbolizes transitoriness: it con-
trasts the cyclical inexorability of permanent beginnings with the linear
advance of world immanent chiliasms and hopes of redemption.
Ich komme wieder, mit dieser Sonne, mit dieser Erde, mit diesem Adler,
mit dieser Schlange - nicht zu einem neuen Leben oder besseren Leben
oder lihnlichen Leben: - ich komme ewig wieder zu diesem gleichen und
selbigen Leben, im GroBten und auch im Kleinsten, daB ich wieder alle
NO TIME FOR UTOPIA
Dinge ewige Wiederkunft lehre, - (I come again, with this sun, with this
earth, with this eagle, with this snake - not to a new life or a better life
or a similar life: - 1 come again and again to this one same life, in the
greatest as in the smallest of things, so that 1 can teach the eternal recur-
rence of all things). (Nietzsche, 1980: 276)
59
The 'eternal recurrence of the same' in Nietzsche's modern version of
this idea is not simply an attempt to return to mythical origins (which
avoid change by understanding the world as a circle). On the contrary,
Nietzsche seems to both use and unmask the linear character of the
modern period. He uses it by stating that things continually happen in a
pattern of eternal recurrence. However, it is obvious that a variety of
different things happen, that the world changes and is therefore subject
to time. Nietzsche tries to show that the belief in change in the overall
pattern of events is a modern illusion. He unmasks history and modern-
ism as a continuity with a discontinuous course. The conviction that
linear world-time could build upon past events, that barbarism was a
thing of the past and could not return, and that progress in civilization
corresponds to progress in technology, is exposed as an illusion. Nietz-
sche opposes the thesis of an everlasting past with his thesis of eternal
recurrence: we cannot live upon yesterday's success. History is not a
learning process. Each present age must start from the beginning again
because there is no continuity of time.
Despite all their differences, Nietzsche, like Bergson and Heidegger,
criticizes the separation of world-time into qualitative and quantitative
time.
9
Cultural criticism, especially of modernism, is full of similar motifs.
Whether this criticism is directed against formal ethics, which no longer
have a material element (MacIntyre, 1987: 75) or against the constant
compulsion to reflect which burdens the modern way of life with too
much contingency (Schelsky, 1965: 268) or against the dangers of evan-
escent meaning and greater freedom of action which cause the loss of
unquestionable convictions (Simmel, 1983: 35), or against uncertainty as
the signature of modernism (Gehlen, 1957: 100), the object in each case
is to uncover the premodernist synthesis of event and meaning. This
criticism is directed both against generalization and, paradoxically,
against the impossibility of generalization. Morality, reflexion, conviction
and the determination of life styles must be radically formalized and
generalized to make society's plural processes possible. The price which
has been paid for formalization and generalization has, without a doubt,
been regarded as the separation of event and meaning, the loss of clear
social location, and not least as the contingency of social observation.
Not only could things be different from what they are, they can be
observed differently too.
60 ARMIN NASSEHI
The generalization of procedural forms of finding truth, beauty and
morality implies losing the unity of truth, beauty and morality. Pro-
cedural forms do not say what truth, beauty and morality are, but ques-
tion how they can be attained in a scientific, aesthetic or practical
manner. This process is very uncertain because one can fail to achieve
one's aim or arrive at different results in each case, even though these
results are all based on the same abstract principles of reason. This
makes unity conceivable, but does not succeed in eliminating difference.
It is widely accepted that this transformation of reason leaves behind it
only a technical rationality and the descriptions of loss resulting from
this are innumerable. The more abstract the elaborate terms of reason,
rationality and normality used to codify the imagined unity of difference,
the more the differences within the imagined unity become apparent.
It is no accident that critics of time appeal to final terms of unity, or
even to 'God-terms': Bergson's (1989) unity of inner duration suspends
the isolation of present moments; Heidegger (1978) refers to the unity
of Dasein in der Sorge (existence in anxiety) as an original structural
whole; Nietzsche (1980) refers to the unity of inevitable, eternal recur-
rence which does not tolerate a clarifying differentiation between points
in time, such as that provided by the concepts of development, progress
and learning. These critical ideas could be described as the painful seman-
tic aftermath of the ideas they oppose, such as the modern euphoria of
the ages of Enlightenment and social revolutions. Whereas the semantics
of unity used to have the function of expressing modernity as universally
determinable, this function is now performed by the declaration of its
indeterminability. This principle can be applied to the semantics of time:
whereas time used to imply Utopia, providing modernism with the objec-
tive of leading the way to a more perfect world, world-/clock-time is now
a symbol for the loss of meaning and for technical rationality. Heidegger
(1978: 9) calls such a rationality the 'Ge-stell'. Horkheimer (1985) sees
it as a merely instrumental rationality. Time is no longer able to qualify
events and becomes a mere instrument of coordinating system histories
which have lost the overall meaning that held them together. Today,
time no longer symbolizes the knowledge of an appropriate time for
action. Arrangements are made within time, but time itself is indifferent
to what constitutes these arrangements. Temporal, social and factual
dimensions are irrevocably separated. Modern time, being homo-
geneous, linear and without content, is experienced as an objectifying
power. It corresponds to the principle of societal differentiation which
no longer recognizes a definite place for individuals in a well-ordered
world any more. Time becomes anti-Utopian.!O
Linearity and chronos are understood as social powers which are
opposed to the anthropological need of cairo logical moments or the
unity of temporal difference (Schmidt, 1988: 664). According to Peter
Sloterdijk (1990: 121), different experiences of time are necessary to
withstand the nihilism of technocratical chronos: 'Only those who leave
chronical time in order to concentrate on the moment can escape nihil-
ism. This has nothing to do with surmounting nihilism, because it would
only perpetuate the nihilism of surmounting nihilism itself.' This under-
standing intensifies the semantics of time. Not only is the dichotomy of
quantitative and qualitative time at stake in the semantics of time: the
alteration, or even the qualification of time is relinquished too. Whoever
tries to overcome the chronos by plans or political action is still subject
to it and therefore incurs some blame too. The moment, kairos, is
thought to provide an alternative, which can only be experienced outside
of chronological time.
From the turn of the century until today, the semantics of time have
developed from a field in which victories are still possible to an area
in which all the battles have already been fought and lost. Bergson's,
Heidegger's and even Nietzsche's criticisms of time insist upon self-
assertion and upon efforts to attain temporal unity of at least inner
duration. Sloterdijk's dictum of nihilism allows the fleeting moment as a
refuge. Gradually, however, semantics are developing which even propa-
gate the idea of the end of time per se. Gehlen's (1963) thesis of posthis-
toire is an early example of this. His dictum of cultural crystallization
assumes that all potentialities of modernism have already developed, in
principle (Gehlen, 1963: 321). This assumption causes stagnation and
makes development impossible. Gehlen uses the history of ideas as an
example: 'I predict that the history of ideas is finished. We have arrived
at posthistoire' (Gehlen, 1963: 323). This prediction of the early 1960s
was followed by a rather more optimistic phase during which there was
much talk about development and its logic, as well as ontogenetic and
phylogenetic concepts, cognitive abilities and moral judgement.
l1
The
earlier prediction, however, was supported and radicalized by a growing
area of semantics in the 1980s.
This is most clearly expressed in Jean Baudrillard's (1983) thesis of
the death of modernism and the end of history. Whereas Gehlen was
still pondering the stagnation and lack of surprise in modern times,
Baudrillard views the element of surprise as inconceivable. Whilst
Gehlen regarded uncertainty, brought about by contingent historical
development, as the hallmark of modernism, Baudrillard's diagnosis of
the death of modernism becomes a categorical uncertainty. Meaning can
no longer exist because distinctions which generate meaning have become
impossible.
62 ARMIN NASSEHI
I think that everything has happened. The future has arrived, everything
is already here. It is not worthwhile dreaming about or nurturing the idea
of any kind of utopia or revolution. Everything has been revolutionized. I
believe that everything has lost its place, meaning and order. It is not an
exaggeration if we say that everything has happened already. (Baudrillard
in Hesse, 1983: 103)
For Baudrillard, modernism has become so highly complex that no social
borders, differences, selections or hierarchies of meaning can be found
to establish order any longer. If the emergence of time horizons is a
reaction to the fact that not all that can or will happen can happen
simultaneously, and if it is true that the temporalization of complexity
corresponds to a selective and consecutive order of linking elements
(Luhmann, 1984a: 77), then time and history must indeed disappear in
the situation described by Baudrillard. Even more radical is the thought
that 'essentially we cannot speak of posthistoire, because history will not
have time to come to an end. Its effects chase each other, but its meaning
will inevitably wane. It will finally stand still and cease to exist just as
light and time do when they touch infinitely dense matter' (Baudrillard,
1990: 13). If the end of history itself were an historical event, then history
would continue because there would still be differences between events.
The metaphor of infinitely dense matter prevents any difference though,
because all potentialities are realized in it and therefore nothing can be
excluded any more. Only universal simultaneity will remain, which allows
no possibility of, or necessity for, an aim and a meaningful synchroniz-
ation of different things. According to Baudrillard:
The worst scenarios, the final goals of dreams and Utopias were built upon
the metaphysical expUlsion of history. The final point is behind us. We are
in the hypertelia. That means we have gone way beyond the final aim.
(Baudrillard in Hesse, 1983: 104)
Baudrillard's example shows very clearly that even the most radical
diagnosis of indifference and description of an amorphous mass, in which
arbitrariness has become the symbol of the world, is connected directly to
the motif of meaninglessness and equivalently to the loss of a meaningful
generality. The metaphor of the death of modernism signifies, as Thomas
Jung (1991) has aptly remarked, another disenchantment of modernism
now that even the last metaphysical remains of the Enlightenment have
been unmasked as senseless (Jung, 1991: 367). In The Fatal Strategies,
Baudrillard writes:
And the very last question one could ask of a disenchanted world is: Does
this world have a hidden meaning? When everything becomes oversign-
ified, meaning itself cannot be attacked. When all values have been com-
NO TIME FOR UTOPIA
pletely exposed in a sort of ecstasy of indifference, then their credibility is
destroyed. (BaudriIIard, 1985: 75)
63
Baudrillard is less critical of the disenchantment of the world than of the
impossibility of questioning its meaning. This question is the result of a
perspective which, in a modern, differentiated society, looks precisely
for that which is excluded by the social structure: the representation of
unity in society. Baudrillard looks for the elysium, for the magic, which
connects that which has been strictly divided. He cannot find it and
therefore must come to the conclusion that meaning is not possible
because there is too much unity on the one hand and too much difference
on the other hand. Too much unity because no differences, and therefore
no meaning, are possible in an amorphous mass; too much difference
because the unity of multiplexity, the unitas multiplex, cannot be mean-
ingfully expressed.
12
Time has become a prominent battlefield in this context because of
its amazing semantical career in modern times. Whereas in the early
modern period time signified Utopia, chiliastical and millennial promises,
inner-world redemption and the provision of happiness for the majority,
it nowadays signifies the technical management of simultaneity and syn-
chronization of independent factors. If one holds on to the normative
premise that unity is better than difference, or that central meaning or
its functional equivalent are the conditio sine qua non of social order,
then abstract, homogeneous and universal world-time and its correlate,
a secularized history, immediately become an obvious site of conflict.
One has the choice between two alternatives: Sloterdijk's distinction
between cairological moments and chronological nihilism or Baudrillard's
negation of any distinction, and thus the death of modernism along with
the implosion of time.
This semantics of time - admittedly restricted in its popularity to
intellectual mandarins
13
- shows that the cultural semantics of modern
times are obviously more closely orientated towards unity than they may
appear to be at first. At the same time, a certain lack of simultaneity is
expressed which tries to rescue in semantic terms that which has become
impossible in modern society because of functional differentiation. Cul-
tural semantics have certainly taken note of the experience of structural
difference. The wide-ranging discussion about postmodernism, the con-
flicts between contextualism and universalism, difference and unity, small
stories and great narrations have become a field of experimentation for
dealing with undeniable differences.
Jean Lyotard (1983) is one of the most prominent contribu-
tors to this discussion. His main thesis is that each sentence invariably
64 ARMIN NASSEHI
produces conflict (differend) as there is no underlying rule according to
which a sentence is valid for both speaker and recipient. Injustice inevi-
tably results from this (Lyotard, 1983: 9). The same applies to time: in
a sense it is produced by sentences. If one sentence is formulated now,
no other sentence can take its place in time - in terms of conflict this
is unjust (Lyotard, 1983: 11). The manipulation of time and its use in
discourses signifies power. This power is revealed by the possession of
actual time (Lyotard, 1983: 292). Lyotard calls the differend a term of
difference which, by its disposal over the other's time, indicates that
synchronization is necessary. This does not refer to the technical aspect
of temporal coordination but to the irrevocable conflict in which one of
the partners will be violated. Here too, time is understood as a limited
resource. One sentence prevents the other and takes its time away. The
power of chronos flows into the spoken sentence, thereby taking its time
from the other sentences which can no longer be spoken.14 The sentence
which has time at its disposal is powerful. Time in its chronic inexorability
becomes a symbol of conflict. This means that even in Lyotard's work one
can find the implication of a protest against chronos whose inexorability
prevents justice, which in this case would be the suspension of the
differend.
Luhmann and Fuchs (1989) have suggested applying a theory of differ-
ence to Lyotard's differend. They regard it as a difference of system
and environment, establishing a dividing line which cannot be crossed.
However, they have this criticism of Lyotard:
... despite his understanding of the operative inescapability of difference
Lyotard is still tempted to retain the concept of unity in difference.
Although unity may have lost its spiritual connotations, the concept still
occurs in Lyotard's problematization of norms and justice, in his rather
dispirited appeal to politics and in his historical self-characterization as
postmodernist. A stubborn grief at the loss of unity remains - a rhetorical
unity of orgellype (iraltristitia), which at least in emotional terms tries to
hold on to what has been lost. (Luhmann and Fuchs, 1989: 10)
This emotional retention of unity in contemporary cultural semantics
makes time a battlefield in the search for social unity - even if this
search is sublimated, as in Lyotard's concept of justice. Even the post-
modernist plea for plurality, for the untranslatable differences between
languages and ways of life (and for small histories), cannot escape from
the distinction between unity and difference or universalism and particu-
larism (Nassehi 1991: 208). As Welsch (1987: 250) indicates, such posi-
tions are corroded by the enemy's poison.
l5
This is not the place to discuss postmodernism and its semantical
consequences. In my view, it is more interesting to consider the promi-
nent concepts of the postmodernist semantics of time: specifically, the
phenomena of crisis resulting from the formalization of time as a chronos
immune to meaning. This is true not only of Bergson's and Heidegger's
dualist model of inner and outer time, but also of Nietzsche's criticism
of chronical continuity, of Sloterdijk's cairological philosophy of the
moment, of Baudrillard's thesis of hypertelia and even of Lyotard's
conflict theory. Despite all of their differences, all of the above examples
seem to have one thing in common: they consider the crisis of the modern
era to be caused by the loss of time's ability to generate meaning.
Meaning and time have become indifferent to each other. Moreover, they
seem to oppose each other: if there is no meaning to be expected from
time, it can no longer release any Utopian energies.
These semantics reflect the appearance of modern, social time quite
accurately, though only in a very negative fashion. Time is characterized
by the diagnoses of crisis and loss; time is not what it once was. There
are no kairoi, which could generate meaning; there is no continuity,
which could relieve the burden of eternal recurrence; there is no history
which provides identity and offers room to make decisions. This diagnosis
is correct insofar as the culturally dominant time of modern society is
not able to fulfil such functions. The critical and sometimes fatalistic
tenor of such semantics initially appears to result from the theoretical
problem that practical equivalents for these functions cannot be found
in modernism. One is forced to ask how these practical equivalents are
supposed to be found at all, as there is no longer any room for their
conjectured function in the structure of modern society. This means that
the problem is not one of theory, but rather of the question of how
society observes the operations with which it produces irreversibilities
(Luhmann, 1990b: 166) or, indeed, how it produces the chronos to which
it is subject.
The semantics described above observe these operations as a crisis
phenomenon caused by time's immunity to meaning. The examples of
the contemporary semantics of time used here all share the loss of a time
which lent a specific quality to events occurring within its course. In
comparison to early modern euphoria about history and progress, time
has now lost any Utopian content. It even symbolizes the impossibility
of Utopian concepts. As one can see in the work of Bergson, Heidegger,
Nietzsche and Sloterdijk, it places meaning beyond society: inner experi-
ence, the determination of being towards death (Entschlossenheit des
Seins zum Tode), and Dionysian ecstasy are enclaves, as impossible as
extinct volcanoes burning. But burn they do. Whoever turns their back
on these volcanoes risks being burnt themselves.
66 ARMIN NASSEHI
IV. Risk and Time
In recent years quite a successful field of semantics has emerged regard-
ing the risks which result from both actions and the failure to act. By
means of these semantics, modern society observes itself and its temporal
processing of irreversibilities. I should now like to consider some
examples of this. Since the Chernobyl disaster, similar but apparently
less dramatic catastrophes have occurred. It has become quite obvious
that modern society runs great risks. The term risk does not mean that
accidents, failures or unexpected things happen. Risk or, to put it more
accurately, risk communication, involves anticipating now what damages
might be incurred in the future, even though these are uncertain because
one cannot know what they will be (Luhmann, 1990b: 138).
As far as technical damage is concerned, this uncertainty is surprising
as causality permits technical calculations which are meant to anticipate
the scale of damage which might be suffered. To a certain extent these
technical calculations use time and causality to divine future situations
from decisions taken in the present. A sociologist of organization,
Charles Perrow (1989) has made a brilliant study of the risks involved in
technology. He demonstrates that risk calculation works satisfactorily -
but only after an accident has occurred. Commissions can only say after-
wards what mistakes were made in a given situation and what should
have been done instead (Perrow, 1989: 24). When a situation emerges
which could not have been predicted in spite of all the physical, chemical,
electronic and other types of information available, it is tempting to
attribute the accident to human error. Such mistakes might occur whilst
operating machinery, or be due to incorrect assessments of the situation.
However, Perrow shows that such an assumption implies too strong a
degree of linearity, such that causal attributions are made on a homo-
geneous time scale. Cause and effect are definitively linked in this linear
formulation and can sometimes even be anticipated (Perrow, 1989: 125).
This perspective fails to recognize, however, that technical systems
which are likely to malfunction are very seldom linear systems. Perrow's
analysis shows that such systems are mostly complex ones. In such sys-
tems even linear chains of events happen simultaneously. Still, this simul-
taneity does not mean that there is a deterministic relationship between
these chains of events. As soon as the indeterminism of complex systems
becomes apparent, it is obvious that unexpected events will become
more likely as complexity increases. Definite expectations may turn out
to be simplistic reductions. The conjecture of unexpected interactions
has become more common, and now characterizes our social and political
world as well as technology and industry. As complex systems (and the
number of their functions) expand, and as their environments become
more hostile and the systems more closely interlinked, they will be more
liable to malfunction (Perrow, 1989: 107). These systems lack a functional
place from which the future of current operations can be clearly analysed,
calculated and their consequences anticipated. Risk technology itself
involves risk because provisions made for the future grow more uncer-
tain, and the task of calculating system processes becomes more difficult,
as the complexity of the systems themselves and of the simultaneity of
their individual components increases.
It immediately becomes evident that Perrow's analysis of highly com-
plex technical systems can be applied to modem society as well. Society
has also been differentiated into specific subsystems which operate simul-
taneously. It too is highly complex, and this complexity excludes a linear
manipulation of multiple chains of events. There is no place within
society from which this manipulation might be attempted successfully.
The immanence of this problem is quite evident because there are no
transcendent viewpoints which would permit a religious interpretation of
contingency as the wages of sin, as God's punishment or as fate. Modern
society itself produces the emergencies to which it has to react. It can learn
to understand these as the potential risks of its present actions.
Risks are problems of time: time does not contain an inherent regu-
larity, nor are there 'technological' procedures which condition temporal
connections in a linear fashion. The selectivity and reciprocal action of
events cannot be removed from their temporal mode. The future can
only be anticipated within a framework of expectations informed and
limited by current conditions. The concept of temporal connection always
implies that current operations will influence future choices. 'Today,' as
Luhmann (1990b: 142) writes, 'irreversible steps are taken which can
either restrict or extend future possibilities.' However, only observers
who already know the future of the present when it will be past (for
example, an investigative commission) can realize the full consequences
of these steps. At the moment of decision, the future is still a risky
business: one knows that it will come, but the more complex the situation
and the reciprocal links between the systems are, the less one knows
what will actually occur.
The temporal organization of modem society, the simultaneity of its
different processes, the necessity to adjust processes temporally to each
other, the unpredictability of the future: all of these factors make risk
management absolutely essential. The unpredictable nature of the future
and the necessity of taking decisions in the present (a necessity which in
the modem era cannot be avoided by extending the present), exclude
risk avoidance by risk management. The only certainty we have is that
68 ARMIN NASSEHI
there are no certainties. One cannot expect to achieve safety by improv-
ing technical facilities. Of course, nuclear power plants, planes and oil
tankers can be built t@ run more safely. However, even the introduction
of safety devices will produce new risks because one cannot interfere
with complex systems without entailing risks. Perrow (1989: 22, 355)
suggests that risks be compared and that avoidance strategies be used in
an attempt to minimize these risks. Even if one disregards the fact that
not only action but also the failure to act can be risky, the verdict that
the avoidance of risks is impossible in a risk society is thus confirmed
(Beck, 1986).
If one observes modern society, bearing in mind the distinction
between risk and security, one is confronted with a paradox: even efforts
to increase safety may incur risk. The attempt to avoid risks altogether
is bound to fail. Another possibility is presented by the social attribution
of risks, to make those who (potentially or actually) cause damage res-
ponsible for their actions. The public debate about ecological risks fol-
lows exactly this line of thought: the culprit must be found, made respons-
ible for hislher actions and forced to employ risk-avoidance techniques.
This concept is quite reasonable and may be effective in some cases.
However, the inevitable risks of temporal connections in complex social
situations are not reduced, because however practicable such a principle
may be in legal terms, it cannot alter the fact that risks will always arise.
Modern society solves the problem that the future is uncertain and
uncalculable (but affected by current time bonds) by turning from the
temporal to the social dimension. Luhmann (1990b) therefore proposes
to replace the distinction between risk and security, which only deals
with the actual existence of probable damage, with the distinction
between risk and danger. This latter distinction takes into account
second-order observations about the type of potential damage expected,
and who shares these expectations. If one does not simply observe risks
and dangers as they ostensibly are, but also considers how they are
observed, one will identify, first, the attribution of responsibility within
society and, second, the constructs in which responsibility mayor may
not be attributed to those decisions (Luhmann, 1990b: 137). These pro-
cesses of apportioning blame may themselves cause problems. Uncer-
tainty about the future is experienced as risk when people themselves
make (or fail to make) decisions resulting in a chronic irreversibility, the
effects of which will be felt in the future. It is not possible to dispose of
nuclear waste or eradicate political decisions completely.16 Uncertainty
will be experienced as danger when individuals are not involved in the
decision-making process, but suffer as a consequence of incidents arising
from the decisions taken. For the managers of a nuclear power plant, an
accident constitutes a risk. For the surrounding population, an accident
means danger. Risks are the self-referential aspect of damage, whilst
danger refers to others.
Risks are not experienced by society singularly as technical catas-
trophes.
17
Criminal law, for example, may take a risk by prohibiting
abortion and then finding that this does not reduce the number of abor-
tions, but increases the health risks for the women involved. If severe
punishments are inflicted upon drug addicts, this may cause them to
commit even more crimes which the law, in turn, will have to punish
again. Policies which favour certain groups may risk a loss of overall
votes. Investment is always risky because markets are highly dynamic
and prices cannot be predicted. In medicine, the risks involved in an
operation sometimes outweigh the expected benefits. In some cases,
psychotherapy may cause greater problems than those the client com-
plained about originally. School education involves the risk that students
could lose interest in the subjects taught because of the school situation.
Modern society appears to be risking the destruction of its very basis.
This risk refers to more than the natural environment: Luhmann (1988:
169) questions 'whether modern society is producing the mentalities and
particularly the motifs which will enable it to survive, or if historically
unprecedented discrepancies have emerged in this field too'. Maybe
global perspectives will change in the face of such a prediction: will the
risks produced in modern society become a danger? The inevitability of
this problem in the face of modern complexity shows that the mere
attribution of responsibility can appear to establish social positions which
can be located in political, legal and economic terms. However, this does
not affect the problem of risks/dangers in the least. As Luhmann aptly
remarks:
Even global disasters tend to be attributed to particular decisions when
attempts are made to avert them, even though their urgency is constituted by
the impossibility of such attributions. . . . People think they know that the
wrong decisions were made, whether for ecological or economic reasons.
The problem with global disasters however is that one cannot establish
which were the right or the wrong decisions. (Luhmann, 1990b: 168)
These statements initially appear to resemble Baudrillard's thesis of the
end of modernism. One can neither make decisions nor use time. On
closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that the problem has
been moved from the social dimension back into the temporal one.
Modern society deals with its risks in different ways: those who cause
the damage must be found and controlled. The risk inherent in decisions
must be distributed by wider participation in the decision-making pro-
70 ARMIN NASSEHI
cess. Legal, political, economic, educational and medical programmes
are designed to make a risk-free use of functional codes possible. These
measures have evoked a good response in society. I would like to empha-
size again that they are necessary if we are at least to try to switch from
serious to minor risks. This is in spite of the fact that we all know very
well (or perhaps we do not) that risk is inherent in the decision to employ
low-risk strategies too. The anticipation of probable risks does not
change the unpredictability of the future. The qualification of strategies
as low-risk is an event taking place in the present. This present only
knows its future as a present future, not as a future present, and cannot
wait for the effects which may be felt in the future.
The problem of unavoidable risk production in modern societies is,
as a problem of time, caused by the unpredictability of the future. This
unpredictability results from the complex simultaneity of different events
and the multiple, non-linear interdependencies of a highly differentiated
society. My brief outline shows that this problem of temporal connections
(temporal dimension) can be solved neither by redundancies within the
field of technology and linkage of security systems (factual dimension)
nor by attribution and participation (social dimension). The phenomenon
of risk provides an example of how the three dimensions have drifted
apart in the course of modernization and increasing social differentiation.
Time actually becomes an abstract dimension of the world with concrete
effects. On the one hand, the modern chronos, which owes its existence
to the temporal coordination of simultaneous, separate events, upgrades
the immediate present because society is in a state of permanent dynam-
ics. On the other hand, the present loses its creative character: as the
theatre of action, it is always looking towards the future. Nevertheless,
it is unable to form the future because of dynamics, risks and, most of
all, the immense potential of simultaneous events upon which current
actions can have no effect. The aim of the early modern period was to
shape the world and time, and to initiate future progress by historical
legitimacy. At the current stage of development in the modern age, time
itself allows for the formulation and control of events neither in the
factual nor in the social dimension.
It is to be expected that the problem of fundamental risks will not be
solved on the traditional battlefields of the modern age - social justice,
political participation and the legal imposition of norms. Second-order
observation forces one to admit that modern society does not have a
viewpoint from which all participants can perceive risks, let alone one
from which these risks can be controlled and avoided. This verdict does
not help anyone to solve the problem either, yet the irrational desire to
control risks is still prevalent amongst sociologists. Whereas Friedrich
Engels (1962) thought that the Utopian content of socialism could be
managed scientifically if used as potential planning material and Karl
Mannheim (1958: 136) felt that a 'conscious attempt to correct social
injustice on the basis of a thorough knowledge of social mechanisms'
was possible and desirable, the trust placed in the possibility of control-
ling future processes has waned considerably in the meantime.
The epistemological standards of modem social sciences will no longer
tolerate the use of linear models based on definite causal attributions,
even if public opinion continues to urge the political system to correct
mistakes. An understanding of time has emerged which places its trust
in the causal formation of future events because it can no longer trust in
the future itself. The risk society needs constant risk management
because it knows from past experience that the future will not match up
with its expectations. The paradox involved in risk management is its
use of techniques resulting from events which it refuses to accept as
impossible. Therefore, the time in which risk management takes place is
no time for Utopia because the currently anticipated necessity of correct-
ing the future cannot believe in the future. It is not insignificant that our
relation to the future is described as fearful. Fear is nothing more than
the anticipation of the unknown. This management of time is no use to
Utopian concepts. One cannot trust time any more because it necessarily
produces unknown events.
The presentation of risks as a problem of time fits in very well with
the concepts of time mentioned above, but without duplicating them.
Whereas an argument based on these concepts is that time has lost
quality and meaning, the semantics of risk reveal the discontinuity of
imagined temporal continuity. No one point in time can give any guaran-
tees for another point in time because the structure of society itself has
started to become conditional. Stable social structures of older societies
were able to anticipate the future by linking their expectations with a
continuity of traditions. Early modernism generally described itself as
aiming at a better future, if only the right way could be found. Contem-
porary modernism has changed its method of self-perception radically.
Structural expectations are becoming increasingly unpredictable. As far
as time is concerned, this does not mean that one must predict its end:
time no longer has a meaningful, unifying function.
On the contrary, the increasingly dynamic character of the modem
period symbolizes the importance of time as a scheme of observation.
As a chronos, it has become independent because the difference between
'before' and 'afterwards' or 'past' and 'future' is unable to qualify exactly
what time means in the factual and social dimension. By having the risks
of time permanently in view, the modem risk society experiences the
72 ARMIN NASSEHI
paradox that time is only at its disposal within time, that is, it is bound
to a series of presents, which, one after the other, change the appearance
of time again and again. Modern society can no longer be described in
terms which are generally valid or socially acceptable. More importantly,
a temporally universal description has also become impossible. With
each new present, the world changes. This tells us that the future exists
only as a construct of the present. It is inevitably a terra incognita.
Attempts at dissolving paradoxes by treating the future as a future pres-
ent are increasingly less likely to succeed because disappointments are
built into this method. This confirms my thesis that modern concepts of
time reveal the social ineffectuality of Utopian ideas in the risky modern
age.
To call for 'universal nihilism' or 'the end of time', is to render the
risk-generating difference of the present future and the future present
invisible. Luhmann (1990b: 153) stresses that risk communication itself
is potentially risky, because this process shows who makes the decisions.
It may be equally risky for the modern society to do without risk com-
munication and hold on to metaphors of unity, which no longer correlate
with features of the social structure. This must lead to a negation of the
present which categorically excludes a productive theory of society. The
management of the temporal dimension depends upon the question of
how modernism describes its temporal risks in scientific terms and in the
different languages of its functional subsystems. These semantics also
influence the choice of functional equivalents which could be used to
replace the contemporary concepts of risk avoidance, concepts which
retain a traditional understanding of politics, economy and law. Not only
the concepts of time mentioned above, which deny modern time any
specific quality, but also the implications of risk semantics for time
clearly show that in a functionally differentiated and modernized society
meaning and time have drifted apart.
Time does not signify Utopia and the prospect of an ideal and intact
world. The concepts of time considered here symbolize, rather, that it is
no longer possible for Utopian concepts to have social significance. Time
is becoming anti-Utopian. Salvation and all that is good and desirable
seem to have lost both their place (topos) and their time (chronos).
Utopia is now accompanied by uchronia. Semantics which are based on
the distinction between qualitative and quantitative time show us that
the actual location of these objectives is within areas which are excluded
from modern society: inner temporality, Dionysian ecstasy, kairos. These
areas are not contaminated by modern time and, consequently, have no
time in the modern age. One can only expect to find Utopian potential
if modern space and modern time are evaded. A world-immanent reali-
zation of this Utopian potential is not expected in the first place. In the
cultural dimension, the 'New Age', science fiction, fantasy and certain
kinds of therapy appear to serve as the functional equivalents of former
Utopian concepts which had social significance and meaning. Still, they
openly admit: we do not even believe in ourselves. is
In conclusion, therefore, I would argue that Nietzsche's (1980) time
concept is possibly the most modern. What initially appears to be the
restitution of myth cycles turns out to be the eternal recurrence of the
same, that is, the recurrence of a series of presents. Despite these pres-
ents, we are faced with the insoluble dilemma of not being able to use
our past as a potential nor of even knowing our future. From Nietzsche
one can learn that history is not a learning process, and yet because one
has learned this from Nietzsche, one realizes that the possibility of learn-
ing has not been ruled out.
Notes
The author wishes to thank Gerd Nollmann and Caroline Bland for translating
the German text into English.
1. Quotations given in the text will usually be the author's translations.
2. These dimensions are based on the work of Niklas Luhmann. He distin-
guishes between three dimensions of meaning, according to which psychic
and social events can be observed: the factual dimension (Sachdimension)
qualifies what exists in the world, such as things, theories, opinions etc.
The social dimension (Sozialdimension) records who considers these things,
theories, opinions etc. The temporal dimension (Zeitdimension) provides
information about when things happen (Luhmann, 1984a: 112).
3. This is not the place to go into detail about the systems theory of functional
differentiation (Kneer and Nassehi, 1993: 111). Also see newer translations
of Luhmann's works (cp. Luhmann, 1984b, 1989, 1990c, 1993).
4. I do not give any further evidence here because this fact is generally accepted,
and because there are numerous studies on this subject. The motive mutatis
mutandis can be found in studies by Georg Simmel, Max Scheler, Helmut
Schelsky, Peter L. Berger, Friedrich H. Tenbruck, Ulrich Beck and others.
5. See Landes (1983) for the different techniques of time measurement. He
provides a great deal of information about the history of time measurement
by clocks, which, of course, did not start in the 20th century, but became
more and more important functionally as traditional life styles started to
dissolve (compare also Janich, 1980: Schmied, 1985: 66; Wendorff, 1985;
Whitrow, 1991: 157).
6. The genesis of this time structure is paradoxical: the uniformity of world-
time results from the homogeneity of the measuring parameter, a homogen-
eity which can only be found by the use of its derivative, that is: clock-time.
The form of time is found within time. The observation of the homogeneity
74 ARM IN NASSEHI
of time constituting events is made by the transformation into spatial hom-
ogeneity. This is quite obvious for conventional clocks because the hand
runs along a homogeneous scale. An oscillograph works with a homogeneous
abscissa, under or above which the amplitudes of cesium atoms or quartz
disperse one after another. However, the transformation into space serves
to render the temporal paradox invisible, because the spatial homogeneity
can only be derived from the uniform motion of the hand or oscillograph.
This, however, is a derivative of temporal differences, which makes the
paradox visible again. It may be the paradox itself which suggests considering
time as something real, an object which is measured by clocks. This way,
one does not see the self-referentiality of time, which is a measure of itself.
7. I speak of world-/clock-time (Welt-lUhrenzeit) because on the one hand it
symbolizes transcendence of the difference of system and environment as
world-time and, on the other hand, it appears in semantics as numerical
clock-time (compare in detail: Nassehi, 1993: 325).
8. Bergson and Heidegger are the most prominent examples. Similar proof can
be found in the entire philosophy of existence, but also in phenomenology.
9. In contrast to Bergson and Heidegger, Nietzsche of course does not distin-
guish between inner and outer time. The only criticism these authors share
with Nietzsche is that of quantitative, vulgar and historical time, which is
immune to meaning and the alleged continuity of which they unmask.
10. A similar motive can be found in Paul Virilio's theory of speed (dromology),
which focuses on the threat posed to human needs, which are naturally
slow, by the acceleration of processes. 'We can state that the liquidation of
humanity continues and the liquefaction of ports (railway stations, airports)
is accompanied by the extinction of the traveller in transportation. The alter
ego is viewed only according to his more or less steady image; the social
partner is not a partner with full rights any more, but a short term human
being, whose transitory (political or cultural) presence is constantly shrinking'
(Virilio, 1989: 51).
11. The new euphoria is connected mostly with Jiirgen Habermas. His attempts
at parallelizing Piaget's psychology of development with the evolution of
philosophies (Habermas, 1976: 62, 93) are linked to the Enlightenment
tradition of progress and the glorification of secularized historical time. The
project of modernity which is not yet completed tends towards its fulfilment
(Habermas, 1981b: 444). This fulfilment is effected by the logic of history
itself or the faith of the present in the possibility of attaining understanding
in the future if the correct procedures are followed.
12. I do not wish to imply that Baudrillard aims at an Enlightenment perspective
with universalist contents. On the contrary, he complains that all the uni-
versalist Utopias have been fulfilled (Baudrillard, 1985: 85; Welsch 1987:
149). As they have all been fulfilled, there is nothing left to be fulfilled. This
means the end of necessary temporalization of complexity and therefore the
end of time.
13. How could this conceivably be different in a functionally differentiated
society?
14. Quite traditionally, Lyotard uses the 'economic kind of discourse' as proof
of this. This discourse integrates time into economic relations of exchange.
The priority of economy takes the time it needs and withholds it from other
discourses (Lyotard, 1983: 286).
15. Welsch gives a survey of the different concepts which claim to be postmod-
emist or are discussed in postmodemist contexts. In addition to his brilliant
description, Welsch introduces his own concept, which he calls 'transversal
reason' (1987: 295). However, his concept also seems to be at least irritated
by enemy's poison. All he does is to interpret Lyotard's concept of justice
with a different set of terms, and show more faith in the potential of a
sensible and just coordination of language games.
16. The example of nuclear waste is obvious. However, one cannot eliminate
political decisions either, because one cannot undo past events.
17. In actual fact, the social aspect includes the technological one, because
society can perceive large-scale facilities as a risk or danger only if it discusses
them in terms of risk or danger.
18. This may be the reason for their economic success. It is not only time which
is indifferent to what happens in it, but also money which is indifferent to
what it pays for.
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78 ARM IN NASSEHI
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ARMIN NASSEHI, Dr phil., born in 1960 in TUbingen in Germany,
studied sociology, philosophy and educational sciences. Since 1988
he has been a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at the
University of MUnster, Germany. His dissertation was on 'The Time
of Society. On the Way to a Sociological Theory of Time' (Die Zeit
der Gesellschaft. Auf dem Weg zu einer soziologischen Theorie der
Zeit, Opladen, 1993). His current fields in research and teaching are
sociological theory, systems theory, sociology of time, migration,
sociological aspects of death and dying and sociology of biography.
ADDRESS: Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat MUnster, Institut fUr
Soziologie/Sozialpiidagogik, Scharnhorststrasse 121, D-48151 MUns-
ter, Germany. Fax: 49 251 523011.

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