Zeiten des Teufels

Jan Löhdefink looks into how perception of the devil changed during the early days of the Reformation and how this affected time consciousness. He describes the reformatory remodulation of interpreting the past, understanding the present and future prospects, which because of their strongly polemical contrasts with conflicting concepts reveal their own constitution-requirements of time perception and indicate a fundamental shift of the understanding of time. Perceptions of the devil are generally attributed to the backward-looking aspects of the Reformation. However, with an eye on the inherent new configurations of the contemporary temporal structures specific to reformatory devil-perceptions, the results are reversed: as unmodern as the devil may appear to the Modern Age, he has a key position in its origins.