Abstract

This article raises the question: to what extent does future itself have a history? In reviewing the theories of Niklas Luhmann and Michel Foucault, modal time (past, present, future) will be deontologized and attributed to the operations of an observer. Luhmann's discussion of Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness and Michel Foucault's critical appraisal of Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Idealism provide arguments for a temporalization of time. Hence the historical semantics and political technologies involved in the construction of future horizons become of major interest.