Zoltán Boldizsár Simon

Concepts and conceptual categories are very theoretical and abstract; they seem to be far removed from reality and are therefore often ignored. But they are inevitably part of our daily reality. Just think of concepts such as love, friendship, good, evil…. These are abstractions which influence our daily lives, consciously or not. So, it is important to take a closer look at them, also when it comes to concepts that are emotionally more distant. Quite a number of these relate to time, or rather to temporality, the way in which we experience time and relate to the past, present and future. Books on the philosophy and theory of history occasionally pay attention to this, but they usually not attract a wide readership, and that is understandable.
Historical theorist Zoltan Boldiszar Simon clearly is a stubborn person who has plunges himself with great determination into this abstract field of temporal categories. But he does so driven by a sense of urgency: his central assessment is that we are at a crucial turning point in our time: through human intervention in all possible domains, the future appears to be drastically different. He refers to climate change, the threat to biodiversity, the problem of artificial intelligence and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. In his previous book, 'History in Times of Unprecedented Change', Simon spoke of an era of "unprecedented change." Addressing this challenge is only possible if we have a set of concepts and categories that adequately cover the new reality. “If there is an appeal to history inherent in the growing awareness that human activity brings forth transformations on a planetary scale and in the context of an entangled human-technological-natural world, it is an appeal to a novel kind of historical thinking we need to explicate in the course of our efforts to meet the challenge.” It is a plea that should certainly not fall on deaf ears in these disruptive times.
In this book he mainly explores the term “epochal event”, in short, an event (in the broad sense of the word) that heralds a new era and connects a number of disruptive phenomena. “The concept reflects the emerging societal experience of time that epochal changes are taking place all around us. Against the backdrop of the technology-driven collision of the human and the natural worlds, it attempts to capture the transformative character of threshold events that trigger previously unimaginable epochal transformations”.
If you think that is the end of it, then you are mistaken. According to Simon, the concept needs a much clearer definition in order to be really useful in the startling period ahead. And that is exactly what he does in this book, probing what the concept of epochal event entails, how it relates to related concepts, or how it differs from them, and so on, in order to arrive at a working definition.
Needless to say, this is not an easy read. Simon moves on a very abstract level and requires quite a bit of cerebral acrobatics. But this book is much more readable and also focussed than his previous one (History in Times of Unprecedented Change), and therefore slightly more digestible. It is especially people involved in the intense discussions surrounding the Anthropocene that will benefit from this booklet.
A more extensive discussion, more on temporal thinking, in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3538190022… (mehr)

This is a very ambitious book. It suggests no less than that we have entered a time of unprecedented change and that this necessitates to change our look at history completely. Simon starts from the hitherto dominant 'modern' history view, which was mainly put in the market by Reinhart Koselleck: in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries we discovered that past, present and future are related in a processual, developmental relationship, which we call 'thé history' and in which the orientation to the future determines everything: all (human) history is a process of ever further completion, and all events can be given a place in it. Cracks have appeared in that model since the middle of the last century; it still is dominant, but according to Simon it no longer holds true given the unseen changes we are facing. He refers above all to the enormous technological and ecological challenges that unambiguously point towards a post-human world, perhaps even the complete annihilation of humanity. The modern history model is not suitable for dealing with this development, because we are faced with something fundamentally new, without precursors, and therefore not the more or less logical continuation of what already was going on. Simon suggests that we should therefore move to a history in which everything that happens is by definition fundamentally new, not part of a developmental process. You may even wonder if you can still call this ‘history’.

I dishonor Simon's train of thought here, because his statements and reasoning are much more nuanced and richer than that. But the least you can say is that it is an exciting viewn that challenges and undermines our certainties. In that sense, this book is absolutely worth it. But ... the author's main goal is to conceptually outline that new historical sensibility (if you can call it historical), or – at least -, to indicate the paths to such a clearance. And with that he has put himself on a particularly abstract and theoretical level. The reader is required to have a fair amount of knowledge on the theory and philosophy of history, and Simon also requires that you follow his very abstract line of reasoning in detail, as he launches one new concept and train of thought after another. I am a firm believer in conceptual approaches, because concepts - no matter how abstract - play a real role in how we view the world, but the big risk is that in a conceptual focus you lose sight of the connection with concrete reality and get stuck in semantic discussions. I am not going to say that this is also the case here, but at a few moments Simon lost me. Nevertheless, I recommend the reading of this book, because it is so rich in points of view, and because the basic problem it poses is so fundamental. I think our world and the challenges it faces are worth it.

For a more elaborate review: see my History-account on Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2835964418.… (mehr)