Historical Parallels and Pre-Figurations: About Closing the Gap between Past and Future

Reinhart Koselleck, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Hans Blumenberg belong to a number of scholars deeply influenced by Carl Schmitt’s rather general – as he called it – “occasional” thoughts on the connection between the political and history. Although Schmitt might be well known as a theoretician of the political; history and society played a pivotal role for all of his theoretical concepts. In recent years the relationship between Reinhart Koselleck and Carl Schmitt was an important topic of several publications. But, what is still missing is a concise discussion of Koselleck’s theory of history (“Historik”) in the light of Schmitt’s social definition of the political. This contribution argues that Koselleck’s conceptual history, iconology and general understanding of history – as a bridge between the space of experiences and horizon of expectations – were strongly influenced by elements of Schmitt’s theory that are mostly overseen. Additionally, it will deal with concepts related to Schmitt’s and Koselleck’s theory such as Rosenstock-Huessy’s “cross of reality” and Blumenberg’s critique of Schmitt’s mythology and concept of “pre-figurations”. The goal of this analyzes is not just to contribute to a better understanding of these theories, but in particular to look through the lens of these theories on the historical context they were embedded in and represent themselves.