Return to Premodern Times?—: Contemporary Security Studies, the Early Modern Holy Roman Empire, and Coping with Achronies

To express the way that our world is changing, contemporary Security Studies often betray neocyclical forms of argument: the postmodern international system would return to a premodern situation concerning the ways that states are formed, how wars are fought, which actors are active in international politics. This is compared to how three hundred years earlier the copresence of older and newer institutional settings were perceived and expressed. Both are taken as examples to develop a concept of “achronies” and achronic perceptions which differ for premodern, modern, and late modern times, producing cyclical, progressivist, and neocyclical forms of achronic perception.