CUisis AuthoU(s): ReinhaUt Koselleck and Michaela W ... - iSites

Koselleck + Crisis
spectives, a crisis either reveals a situation that may be unique but could
also-as in the process of an illness-continue to recur. Or, analogous to
the Last Judgment, a crisis is interpreted as involving a decision which,
while unique, is above all final. Thereafter, everything will be different.
Between these two extremes there may be a cornucopia of variants which,
although logically exclusive, can influence the characterization of crisis
both as entailing a possible structural recurrence and as absolutely unique.
In this way, the concept of crisis can generalize the modern experience
to such an extent that "crisis" becomes a permanent concept of "history."
This appears for the first time with Schiller's dictum: "Die Weltgeschichte
ist das Weltgericht" ("World History is the Last Judgment"),ss the impact
of which cannot be overestimated. Without actually taking over the term
"Last Judgment," Schiller nonetheless interprets all of human history as a
single crisis that is constantly and permanently taking place. The final judg-
ment will not be pronounced from without, either by God or by historians
in ex post facto pronouncements about history. Rather, it will be executed
through all the actions and omissions of mankind. What was left undone
in one minute, eternity will not retrieve. The concept of crisis has become
the fundamental mode of interpreting historical time.
Another variant lies in the repeated application of a crisis concept that
represents at the same time-like the ascending line of progress-a histori-
cally unique transition phase. It then coagulates into an epochal concept in
that it indicates a critical transition period after which-if not everything,
then much-will be different. The use of "crisis" as an epochal concept
pointing to an exceptionally rare, if not unique, transition period, has ex-
panded most dramatically since the last third of the eighteenth century,
irrespective of the partisan camp using it.
As it pertains to historical time, then, the semantics of the crisis concept
contains four interpretative possibilities. 1) Following the medical-political-
military use, "crisis" can mean that chain of events leading to a culminat-
ing, decisive point at which action is required. 2) In line with the theological
promise of a future Last Day, "crisis" may be defined as a unique and final
point, after which the quality of history will be changed forever. 3) Some-
-" Friedrich Schiller, "Resignation. Eine Phantasie" (178/84), Simtliche Werke (Stuttgart
and Berlin, 1904), vol.1, 199; also Schiller, Geschichte, Sdmtliche Werke, vol. 2, 667ff.
For an early evidence of "crisis" as a permanent category of history, albeit with progressive
overtones, see Justus Moser, "Patriotische Phantasien" (1778), Simtliche Werke, vol.
6 (1943), 81; to make a people great, it must be kept active and "kept in such permanent
crisis . . . as will make it necessary to draw on all its powers and through the use of the
same to increase the sum of the good of the world."
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