One of the main topics of John R. Hall’s writings has always been the problem of (social) time. In a well-known article already published in 1980 (“The Time of History and the History of Times”, in History and Theory, 19 (2), pp. 113-131), Hall analyzed different theories of time that, due to the influence of the Annales school and French structuralism in these years, were beginning to shape social science discourse. Although he emphasized that scholars might greatly profit from (objectivist) reflections on time by authors like Braudel and Althusser, he also argued that only a phenomenological perspective is able to deal with the problem in an adequate way since it is the subjective understanding of time that decides how actors conceive and change the world. Elaborating his argument and thereby using empirical insights from his former research on utopian communities, Hall in this essay distinguished between four subjective temporal orientations: synchronic and diachronic ways of interpreting the world must not be misunderstood in an objectivist manner since it is not physical (objective) time that decides whether events happen at the same time or not but culturally impregnated forms of perception. In addition to these two types, Hall also mentioned two other possible time-frames – those particularly relevant for the book under review here: as he argued, people sometimes act in the context of “strategic time” which is “totally goal-directed” and exclusively focused on the future; and sometimes they act under the premise of “eternal time” that “derives its meaning from a ‘mythical’ past, from a past which precedes any frame of diachrony and thus attains an abstract character of timeless re-creation ‘now and forever more’” (ibid. p. 128). Hall, convinced that he had offered his readers a rather exhaustive typology of temporal orientations, concluded his essay with the remark that all these four frames are to be taken into account if one wants to understand the variety of human action. This also means that – from a macro-sociological point of view – social change has to be theorized as a “‘history’ of times” (ibid. p. 131).

This, in fact, is the starting point of Hall’s new book Apocalypse. From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity where he also focuses quite explicitly on social time. Without going into detail, it is important to point out that the former category of “eternal time” is reformulated and thus the whole typology of different time-orientations somewhat modified. Hall, like many others who have become increasingly skeptical towards the plausibility of secularization theory (p. 126), has learnt that the religious or at least quasi-religious ways of perceiving time was and still is of utmost importance and that therefore the former category of “eternal time”, which obviously had the task of covering the temporal universe of religious actors, is not specific enough. “Eternity”, to be sure, is related to religious phenomena. But there are completely different ways of thinking about eternity and eternal time – and apocalyptic thinking is one of them and, moreover, a particularly influential one. Therefore Hall – and this, of course, makes his book not only a treatise on historical sociology but also one on the features of our contemporary (i.e. modern) age – aims to present an analysis of apocalyptic visions and time-orientations which should also be regarded as a most important key in understanding past and current cultural and political processes. As he makes clear, expectations concerning the emergence of a completely different world, and beliefs about the near end of our time have often influenced actions, not the least because they justified the use of violence against those who were seen as a hindrance to the coming of god. Hall thus puts apocalyptic visions into the centre of his study thereby arguing that apocalyptic reasoning has a (long) history, that there were always attempts to suppress and revive apocalyptic ideas, and that these ups and downs have very much shaped the contours of the social world. Analyzing apocalypse per se in a sociologically meaningful way is too great a task, however. Therefore Hall tries to restrict his focus to the West (p. 5) and its history, hoping at the same time that this kind of analysis would also lead to new insights into the features of (Western) modernity.

As becomes clear at the beginning of the book, sociological research on apocalypse – and this is basically the content of chapters 2 to 4 – requires an ambitious analysis of theological developments within monotheistic religions. Using ideas from the work of Mircea Eliade, Hall argues that in primordial cultures, but also in ancient China and India, there was no dominant conception of time as history. Time was primarily interpreted as always being the same (i.e. as synchronic) which made it impossible to understand it as a diachronic succession of events and processes. It was not before the rise of monotheistic religions in the “Hellenist and then Roman cultural milieux” that “post-synchronic constructions of temporality” (p. 17) could emerge. This is of utmost importance because only a diachronic time-frame enabled one to think of a complete rupture within history, of the coming of a completely new (and holy) age which is the very definition of apocalypse: “Rather than the actual end of the world, the apocalypse is typically ‘the end of the world as we know it’, an extreme social and cultural disjuncture in which dramatic events reshape the relations of many individuals at once to history” (p. 3). According to Hall, one has to look to Ancient Israel in order to detect apocalyptic thinking for the very first time since it was here that Yahweh “connected with his chosen people in a series of events reaching from the past, through the present, and into the future” (pp. 20-21). As a response to the political fate of the Israelites, processes of sectarian differentiation took place that gave rise to the belief – and here the Book of Daniel seems to have played an important role – that “those who maintained faith might find salvation in life after death” (p. 22). This also made plausible the urgent necessity of social reconstruction: the more urgent this necessity came to be perceived, the more plausible it became to believe in the appropriateness of martyrdom which itself gave rise to the idea “that resurrection could follow death” (p. 23).

Hall argues that these apocalyptic possibilities, created in Ancient Israel for the first time, were preserved in those religions that inherited central ideas from Judaism. However, there was no clear-cut path towards apocalyptic thinking. For example, due to the “polysemic openness of the Christian religion” (p. 25) apocalyptic tendencies could always be either weakened or revived by different interpretations of holy texts. This could be seen with respect to the deeds and writings of the immediate followers of Jesus: whereas some regarded Jesus’ crucifixion as the starting point of his imminent return, others like Apostle Paul tried to push all apocalyptic ideas into the background by placing the Christian believer “in an eternal present that does not really participate in history in this world” (p. 28). Following Paul, it was Augustine who in the early 5^th century seemed to be able to end all apocalyptic tendencies within Christianity, suggesting that history has to be understood as a slow and continuous enfolding and development of God’s ideas so that there was no longer any need to await a sudden coming of the day of judgment.

Due to Augustine’s great influence – so Hall’s argument goes – apocalypse’s Christian history could have ended (p. 35). But, in fact, this was not the case. It was due to the emergence and the geographical spread of Islam that apocalyptic tendencies were revived – tendencies which have always been a kind of potentiality of all monotheistic religions. And the rise of apocalyptic visions within Islam, the idea of the holy war, inspired apocalyptic reactions in the Christian world – not the least in the context of the Crusades when the violent attempt to push back Islam brought up a new understanding of apocalypse:

It is the strength of Hall’s book that he avoids one-dimensional descriptions and evaluations. Although he certainly points to the apocalyptic potential of early Islam and medieval Christianity, he also emphasizes how the institution of the Roman Church again and again tried to contain apocalyptic tendencies by suppressing certain sectarian movements. These ups and downs are also sketched in Hall’s description of the European Reformation: although some of the main figures of the Reformation (like Thomas Müntzer) were clearly influenced by apocalyptic ideas, others (like Johannes Calvin) were much more ambivalent in this respect. Calvin showed “an almost Augustinian indifference to exactly when the apocalypse might come, welded to an always immediate yet enduring struggle against the forces of evil. This ongoing battle to defeat the Devil on earth ultimately would yield a gradualistic pursuit of God’s plan in this world” (p. 89). In addition, according to my reading of Hall, one has to understand that the Protestant Reformation itself was a major step towards modernity insofar as a sacralization of everyday life took place which strengthened the weight and importance of diachronic time; building upon Max Weber’s main arguments in the “Protestant Ethic”, Hall claims that the required asceticism of lay persons diminished even further the influence of apocalyptic thinking.

Yet Hall does not suggest a linear process of modernization and a one-dimensional temporal picture of modernity. Modernity must not be interpreted as the victory of one single temporal orientation. On the contrary, as he argues, it was all too easy to reinterpret Calvin’s theology, for example, in a secular way which led to the idea of progress and to new possibilities of interpreting time. Religious and secular visions could be merged, as can be seen in the rise of nationalism and the emphatic idea of revolution. The revolutionary upheaval in 1789 France clearly shows that – and here Hall joins Shmuel Eisenstadt’s interpretation concerning the tendencies of Jacobinism within modernity – apocalypse is a “hydra” (p. 118) since the struggle for a unified nation or for a post-feudal or post-capitalist world could always be fought with apocalyptic visions in the background could always be interpreted as the last struggle that has to be won by any means necessary.

After this impressive tour de force through Western history, the next two chapters (chapters 5 and 6) are to be interpreted as theoretical treatises with some remarks on apocalyptic phenomena in our contemporary world such as militant Islam. Hall claims that modernity has to be understood as an overlapping of different time-frames; he speaks of modernity “as a complex marked by multiple and hybrid temporalities” (pp. 120-121) which can be justified by the empirical fact that at the end of the 20^th and at the beginning of the 21^st century – see al-Qaida, for example – a strange fusion of religiously and secularly interpreted forms of apocalyptic thinking can be observed that counters the rationalizing tendencies of modernity. Modernity in Hall’s view is certainly a rationalized age because the central axis of modernity’s temporality is in fact diachronic time (p. 127), a time-orientation based on daily activities and routines. Thus, in comparison with former periods, the increased importance of this diachronic time cannot be put into doubt. But Hall also makes the point that other time frames will not disappear: using a term from his 1980 essay, he claims that “strategic time” will also be of some importance. In some kind of contrast to the definition of the term used about 30 years earlier, Hall’s understanding of “strategic time” is now closely linked to the use of violence. The reason why that is the case is not quite clear. It could be argued that the use of violence interrupts daily routines and thus is based on a peculiar conception of time. In any case, Hall argues that violence is and will be an important part of modernity so that diachronic and strategic, apocalyptic and other forms of temporal orientations will always be linked. Modernity is not routine alone but also (apocalyptic) violence and imperialism. That is why he uses an expression that is already contained in the title of the book – “Empire of Modernity”.

The term “Empire of Modernity” – to be sure – is an expression of Hall’s attempt to give a fully-fledged account or interpretation of modernity. However, this move seems to be the weakest part of the whole book. Not only that it is sometimes unclear how all the important features of modernity are linked to social time. By pointing to these very features, Hall also uses the insights of thinkers as different as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Hardt/Negri (these are probably the authors from whom Hall obtained the idea of creating the expression “Empire of Modernity”) and Carl Schmitt. One can understand why he chose such an eclecticist strategy: he simply wanted to avoid a reification of modernity (p. 126) in order to be open towards contradictory processes of social change. This, indeed, is a most welcome aim. But it does not really help to bring together such a variety of thinkers whose basic premises are completely different even if – at least at first sight – their diagnoses could supplement each other. This is probably the reason why the book ends in a somewhat disappointing manner. The last chapter (chapter 7) is simply a repetition of the arguments already developed in the preceding parts of the book. The inspired reader waits in vain for Hall’s effort to offer a fully-fledged theory of “social time” that is able to provide a better picture of modernity than those approaches that do not use such a theory. Since that is missing, however, and since Hall’s diagnosis of our time is not so different from the interpretations of other theorists, one gets the (perhaps unjustified) impression that a theory of “social time” is not as great a theoretical advance as is promised at the beginning of the book. These criticisms aside, however, it should be emphasized at the end of this review that the reader is always inspired by Hall’s arguments and indeed hopes that this is not Hall’s last word in the development of a theory of “social time”.