By Johannes Lehmann, Professor of Modern German Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Bonn

Politics always operates in the present, even when it engages with the future in terms of planning or the past in terms of preservation. This reflects the general relationship between politics and time. We commonly navigate the concepts of time: past, present, and future. These terms have a history that ties them to the temporalization of time, as articulated by Reinhart Koselleck and Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann described the accomplishment of this reflexive temporalization, often dated to the second half or end of the 18th century, as multi-modalization (Luhmann 1990, p. 126). This development enables the adjectives ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ to be applied not only to events but also to the nouns ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ themselves, allowing for combinations such as ‘the past present’, ‘the future past’, and ‘the present future’. Such “language games” (Wittgenstein) facilitate the reference to different times while simultaneously marking the perspective from which they are considered.

The noun ‘the Present’ (die Gegenwart) as a concept of present time was first used in Germany in the late 18th century. While the noun Gegenwart previously referred solely to the effective presence, especially of persons and powers, it began to predominantly acquire a temporal meaning from that point onward. It makes a difference whether one distinguishes only between earlier and later or speaks abstractly of the present, the past, and the future.

Norbert Elias defined the synthesising power of the noun 'present' as a concept of time (along-side the nouns 'past' and 'future') to the effect that “the human beings to whom they refer and whose experience they represent also constantly change and the connection with them, their experience, is included in the meaning of these terms.” (Elias 1993, p. 76)

In contrast, words such as 'earlier' or 'later', which merely denote differences within a chronology, are "independent of any specific reference group." (Elias 1993, p. 76) From this he concludes:

The concept of the present, by contrast, represents the timing of a living human group sufficiently developed to relate a continuous series of events, whether natural, social or personal, to the change to which it is itself subjected. (Elias 1993, p. 78)

The present does not simply mean the contrast between the present time and an earlier time, or between the modern, contemporary era and the ancient one. Instead, the present is a reflexive concept for a temporally shifting set of current conditions and the production/constitution of those living in the present, who in turn know that these conditions will be different tomorrow. At least, this is what the way we speak of and refer to the present suggests.

The present in the temporal sense no longer refers exclusively to the presence of a person (e.g., in the presence of the king), but to all relationships that exist in the present—those that are current yet also subject to change. With the emergence of the term ‘present’, the multiplicity of contemporary relationships is metonymically or elliptically summarized as ‘the present,’ abstracting the concept into a temporal framework.

In English, the temporal meaning of the noun ‘the present’ also dates back to an 18th-century innovation. The first relevant dictionary entry can be found in Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary, which defines “the Present” as “an elliptical expression for the present time.” (Johnson 1755). As an elliptical expression, ‘the Present’ refers in an abbreviated form to everything that exists simultaneously, i.e., what is present. John Ash’s New Dictionary (1775) defines "Pres'ent (s. from the adj. put absolutely)" as "The present time." (Ash 1775) Here, the noun form derives from the adjective used in an absolute sense, meaning that the attribute stands for the whole.

As Ingrid Oesterle describes, the term “enables a reflexive assumption of simultaneity and homogeneity in the face of the heterogeneity of the historical immediacy of experience.” (Oesterle 2002) While it still concerns presence and its effects, as in older semantics, it now refers to an abstract, synchronous totality of all that is effectively present at a given moment. This is conceptualized as the present — a structurally incomprehensible and inherently transitory-recursive simultaneous context. The present is thus framed as the synchronicity of social, economic, media, and political conditions.

The fact that this usage was new at the end of the 18th century—and addressed a specific need—can be recognized by the concurrent search for alternative expressions for this type of synchronous simultaneity. For example, the journal European Annals declared its goal to be the representation of the "Gleichwelt" (co-world) (European Annals 1795, p. 12). Another source refers not to the ‘past and the present’ but to the “past and the simultaneity” (Gleichzeit). In contrast to these, the term Gegenwart (the present) became established. It does not, therefore, mean the same as ‘the current time’ or ‘the present time,’ terms that were already in use in the 17th century. Rather, the concept of the present functions as a metonymy for everything that constitutes the content of this same current time. One can observe the present, but not the current time, simply because time itself cannot be observed—only states within time can be. To render the present time as a noun (‘the present’) makes it possible to act upon it as if it were a substance. Or spoken with Wittgenstein: “When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change.” (Wittgenstein 1969-75, No 65.)

But where does the need for this new concept of the present originate? To understand the political significance of the term ‘present’ and how and why it has repeatedly become a political catchword since the 19th century, we must first examine the conditions and reasons for its emergence.

Since the latter part of the 18th century, the concept of the present has emerged as an epistemic object—subject to official, scientific, journalistic, and literary scrutiny—within the framework of governmental observation and intervention aimed at improving conditions. According to Heinrich von Justi, a scholar of police science, the main task of the police is to document the current state of the state. Against the backdrop of a power practice that observes contexts and their feedback within its own present to change the “present conditions,” as repeatedly emphasized in contemporary texts, and to free them from inert tradition, the idea becomes normalized that the conditions of one's own time constitute a mutable context that must be constantly monitored in order to be transformed. This is where government actions intersect with the public sphere.

The modern public sphere, as it emerged at the end of the eighteenth century in western Europe as a general public sphere, i.e. extending beyond the republic of scholars and linked to the print market, takes on precisely this task of observing the present and determining what should remain the same and what should change. In his essay "What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant ties the free public use of reason to the right of self-determination of the current generation, as opposed to the dictates of their ancestors. According to Kant, the ability of each present generation to freely determine their own circumstances is a human right of those living at that time. Therefore, every society must be allowed to publicly debate and decide whether the prevailing laws, inherited from previous generations, should be changed. The public sphere, as a discursive sphere for observing and "supervising" (Michael Warner 1990, p. 61) the present, is necessary because times are changing - and because every new living generation has the right to determine its own way of living in the light of new situations:

One age cannot bind itself, and thus conspire, to place the succeeding age in a situation in which it becomes impossible for it to broaden its knowledge (particularly such pressing knowledge), to cleanse itself of errors, and generally to progress in enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, whose original destiny consists in this progress; and posterity would be fully justified to reject these resolutions as concluded in an unauthorized and outrageous manner. (Kant 1784, p. 6)

The right of the current generation to discuss and change its own present has become part of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of June 1793 as Article 28: "A people always has the right to revise, reform and change its constitution. A single generation cannot rely on its laws for future generations."

On the one hand, observing the present, mapping it and seeing it as a context has been a governmental technique since the end of the 18th century, as James Scott, among others, has shown in his book 'Seeing like a State' (Scott 1999). On the other hand, the present becomes an epistemic object of observation for non-governing actors, who publicly share their observations, reflections, and suggestions for improvement. According to the writer and publicist Robert Prutz, who wrotes one of the first books about the history of German journalism (1845) the public sphere is "the soliloquy of time about itself." (Prutz 1845, p. 7)

Paradoxically, this shift involves decoupling the 'present', which is now conceptualized as an abstract temporal context of simultaneity, from any potential total observer. While the presence of a person or an object within the same spatial context can be perceived, the 'present' as the intricate totality of the respective recursive temporal context remains elusive. As a metonymic (or elliptical) term, 'presence' refers to an unobservable, fleeting simultaneity of 'the present' and its infinite feedback, which cannot be entirely comprehended. The present is no longer something that can be observed within a framework of simultaneity; rather, it becomes the unobservable, temporally variable simultaneity itself.

The present represents that which must be observed, recognized, and understood, as the future is contingent upon it—despite its inherent limitations to full observability. Consequently, the means and institutions devoted to observing the present are proliferating. In the wake of the French Revolution, there emerged—and continues to thrive today—a significant expansion of journals and publication initiatives dedicated to analyzing and commenting on the present. The emphasis is explicitly placed on the present as an interdependent context. As noted by the Berlinisches Archiv der Zeit und ihres Geschmacks (Berlin Archive of Time and its Taste, 1795-1800), “no individual can undertake any endeavor, whether great or small, without being guided, attuned, and ultimately shaped by the demands of their time.” All living individuals are justifiably referred to as “comrades of time,” as every element is interconnected through time. Therefore, the present must be understood as a mutually dependent framework:

However, it is not only major state affairs that are interconnected. Scholarship, commerce, the practical and aesthetic arts, language, entertainment, games—in short, every aspect of life, down to even fashion—both influences and is influenced by the prevailing spirit of its time, manifesting in a myriad of forms and nuances. (Berlin Archive 1795)

Diagnoses of the present as an interconnectedness of that kind also imply an epistemological problem. How can one observe and recognize 'the present'? Who is in a position to define what the present is and from what perspective? What phenomena and parameters should be considered constitutive of the present? This problem becomes even more pronounced when we consider that the present is significantly constituted by language, speech, concepts, narratives, and discourses—i.e., by the cognitive tools through which we recognize or 'construct' the present. How, then, can we identify 'the present' within the present itself, how can we observe it from an external standpoint, and how can we discuss the present if we are simultaneously living and speaking in it? This issue of the inescapability of the present as a problem of contemporaneity has been explored by figures such as Schiller, Fichte, Nietzsche (in his Untimely Meditations), and, more recently, Giorgio Agamben, among others. At the end of his discourse The Characteristics of the Present Age Fichte puts the problem as follows: “Should our view of the Present Age prove to have been itself a product of the Age which it has surveyed, then has the Age borne witness to itself, and such testimony must be cast aside.” (Fichte 1804-05/1847) Since the present constitutes a chaotic amalgamation of simultaneous events and realities, a more elevated perspective is necessary to comprehensively assess the state of the nation and guide political action.

Against this backdrop, the present as part of the conceptual triad of past, present and future has developed into a political catchword with positive connotations. In Germany, the term ‘present’ first gained prominence as a catchword in the period leading up to the 1848 revolution. In his book Catchwords of the Young Germany—which examines a group of poets from around 1830—Wulf Wülfing not only developed a theory of catchwords but also identified ‘Gegenwart’ as one of the key catchwords of this group and period. Here, the use of the noun ‘Gegenwart’ (‘the present’) to denote one’s own time and a period of potential action is evaluated positively, as the term serves as a call to focus on the present. (Wülfing 1982, p. 152-159) The present thus becomes a catchword associated with vitality, vigor, and openness to the future. In contrast to the past-oriented perspectives of Romanticism and the Ancien Régime, this period advocates a shift toward the present and the overcoming of outdated aesthetic values and political structures.

The present emerges as a concept of mobilization. Precisely because the present encompasses all those negative aspects of the past—representing what must be overcome, what is obstructive, and what is immovable—we are urged to focus on the present as a call to move beyond the past. As expressed in Heinrich Laube’s novella The warrior, "I don’t want the past; I want the present... I want to be a human being." (Laube 1837) The emphasis on the present and the now, oscillating between aesthetic and political dimensions, has recurred throughout history and constitutes a key element of modern temporality. Hermann Bahr articulates this sentiment programmatically in his text Modernity, stating, "We want to be the present." (Bahr 1890) In this sense, Michel Foucault has suggested that modernity should be understood not merely as an epoch but as an attitude towards the present— “modernity is the attitude that makes it possible to grasp the ‘heroic’ aspect of the present moment.” (Foucault 1984).

The present as an epistemic object and as a challenge and opportunity for action: In this sense, 'the present' is a concept that fundamentally structures modernity. It is therefore not a content-related catchword (like 'Me Too' or 'Trigger Warning'), but a structuring catchword, if you can put it that way, because it enables language games by means of which diagnoses of the present and reflections on contemporaneity can be made plausible in the first place. Capturing political catchwords is a form of mapping the present by observing and measuring contemporary language and its use (and this has its own history of course).

Although the temporal regime of modernity has been theoretically in crisis since the 1960s, as evidenced by postmodernism and its impact on the concept of the present—illustrated, for example, by Gumbrecht's thesis of the "broad present" (Gumbrecht 2011) suggesting the collapse of modernity's chronotope—political discourse on the present remains robust. It continues to serve as a call for self-empowerment in response to the challenges and opportunities that the present offers.

In the corpus of political speeches from 1982 to 2020, which is provided by the DWDS (the digital dictionary of the German language) and contains 15.240 speeches by over 200 important German speaking political figures, no significant shift in semantics or frequency of use can be recognised during this period. The prevailing pattern associates the 'present' with challenges, tasks, and difficulties that must be addressed immediately. The diagnosis of the present as a problem and the mobilization of willpower to overcome it for future benefit form a consistent structure in these examples. The present is referenced in relation to the future twice as often as to the past. For instance, Hans Martin Bury stated on October 17, 2000, "If you want to shape the future, you have to master the challenges of the present." Such examples are numerous. Even with the advent of social media and smartphones, the rhetoric remains unchanged: Angela Merkel, then Chancellor of Germany, asserted, "We need [...] a profound change in the present for a livable and humane future." Similarly, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, on January 10, 2020, spoke of "the goal of solving the problems of the present while simultaneously building a solid foundation for the future of our republic." The theoretically adopted modern chronotope continues to be a functional element in political speeches.

Image insert: Reloj Mundial, Berlín, Alemania, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons