Saddle Time as Transitional Order

Abstract This article contributes to the special issue on transitional order. The editors identify transitional orders along four dimensions: uncertainty, time, strategic ambiguity, and intentionality. This contribution argues that these four dimensions also have a conceptual dimension and that an inquiry into concepts and conceptual change can be fruitful to explore current and past transitions. This contribution suggests that the distinction of “change within the system” and “change of the system” can be recast in terms of Koselleck’s notion of Saddle Time. To show the promise of Saddle Time, it uses the recent “End of Liberal Order” debate as a vantage point to suggest that if the liberal order comes to an end, we should expect also a reconfiguration of the spatial and temporal configurations that made up and stabilized that liberal order. Changes in the spatial and temporal configurations show in conceptual changes and inquiries into concepts can thus shed a light onto whether indeed we find ourselves in the midst of a new “Saddle Time” in the making. This is traced by taking recent debates within the EU on Strategic Autonomy as an “exploratory inquiry”.