Telling a story can explain how an event came about. It can thereby also change how we grasp temporality. In this article, I will discuss Paul Ricœur’s notion of ‘narrative time’ in the context of International Relations. Viewed from this perspective, narratives not only explain, but also mediate two ways of understanding time, phenomenological and cosmological, by weaving experienced time and natural time together. How they do so will be shown considering three tools: calendar, succession of generations, and trace. The calendar and the succession of generations interlink, through narratives, physical and biological elements with experience. This includes the creation of ‘temporal watersheds’ by extraordinary events, periodisations, traditions, and the recasting of preceding academic generations. The trace gestures at the temporal implications of the sources on which IR builds by referring to their time bridging function.

讲故事可以解释事件是如何发生的。因此，它也可以改变我们把握时间性的方式。在这篇文章中，我将在国际关系的背景下讨论保罗·里科尔的“叙事时间”概念。从这个角度来看，叙事不仅解释而且调解了两种理解时间的方式，即现象学和宇宙学，将经验时间和自然时间编织在一起。将考虑三个工具来展示他们如何做到这一点：日历、世代相传和追踪。历法和世代相传，通过叙述，将物理和生物元素与经验联系起来。这包括通过非同寻常的事件、分期、传统和对前几代学术的重新塑造来创造“时间分水岭”。