Chronos - (European Perspectives: A Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) by François Hartog

About the Book

In Chronos, a leading French historian ranges from Western antiquity to the Anthropocene, pinpointing the crucial turning points in our relationship to time. François Hartog considers the genealogy of Western temporalities, examining the order of times and the divisions of time into epochs.

Book Synopsis

As omnipresent as it is ungraspable, time has always inspired and eluded attempts to comprehend it. For the early Christians, for the twenty-first-century world, how have past and future been woven into the present? In Chronos, a leading French historian ranges from Western antiquity to the Anthropocene, pinpointing the crucial turning points in our relationship to time.

François Hartog considers the genealogy of Western temporalities, examining the orders of time and their divisions into epochs. Beginning with how the ancient Greeks understood time, Chronos explores the fashioning of a Christian time in the early centuries of the Catholic Church. Christianity's hegemony over time reigned over Europe and beyond, only to ebb as modern time--presided over by the notion of relentless progress--set out on its march toward the future. Hartog emphasizes the deep uncertainties the world now faces as we reckon with the arrival and significance of the Anthropocene age. Humanity has become capable of altering the climate, triggering in mere life spans changes that once took place across geological epochs. In this threatening new age, which has challenged all existing temporal constructions, what will become of the old ways of understanding time?

Intertwining reflections on intellectual history and historiography with critiques of contemporary presentism and apocalypticism, Chronos brings depth and erudition to debates over the nature of the era we are living through and offers keen insight into the experience of historical time.

Review Quotes

Magisterial yet accessible, Chronos can make the rare claim to encompass all of recorded time in a relatively slim [book].-- "New York Sun"

For those seeking insight into past conceptions of time or questioning how we arrived at our current presentist temporality, Chronos serves as a clear and concise starting point.-- "H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews"

Hartog is a superbly gifted writer who wears his learning lightly and without recourse to jargon, and translator S .R. Gilbert has served his author's conversational style well in rendering it into eloquent English. . . . An enjoyable tour and a welcome synthesis of current thought on the human experience of temporality.-- "The Philosopher"

Hartog's book offers necessary elucidation of how Westerners' relationships with time brought us to this current moment.-- "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"

Chronos is a magisterial book, breathtaking in scope and precision. I cannot think of another historian who could have written this book in this way. François Hartog uniquely possesses the intellectual expertise and range to lead the reader through a sweeping history of the concept of time in the "West," beginning with the Greeks in antiquity and ending with our current periodization of the Anthropocene. It is an important work on one of the most pressing topics of our day.--Ethan Kleinberg, author of Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past

In this brilliant, original, and profound book, François Hartog takes further his critical analyses of the sources and legacies of modern Western assumptions about time. He brings to light their urgent relevance to us today as we face challenges such as climate change, the Anthropocene, and potential global geopolitical catastrophe.--Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, University of Cambridge

This book, masterfully translated by S. R. Gilbert, will undoubtedly become a classic. A Christian "revolution in time" led from Greek Chronos, to Augustine's self, to modern change, and to the Anthropocene. Beautifully written, this is a book for everyone who wants to know why our time is what it is.--Nitzan Lebovic, Apter Chair of Holocaust Studies and Ethical Values, Lehigh University

With characteristic elegance, wit, and erudition, Hartog, the master thinker of historical time, offers a panoramic view of the past to show how a temporal order (re)fashioned by Christianity endures to this day and shapes our crisis-ridden sense of the present. This is a longue-durée perspective on the Anthropocene that only someone with Hartog's learning and brilliance could have provided. An indispensable guide to the present.--Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference

About the Author

François Hartog is a professor emeritus at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. His books in English include Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (Columbia, 2015) and The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (1988).

S. R. Gilbert is a translator living in San Francisco.