In his doctoral dissertation Kritik und Krise, Reinhart Koselleck thematizes the origin of the « Public Opinion » tracing it back to the conflict between State and civil society. The struggle of the Enlightenment against the State leads to the extension of the moral critique from the individual consciousness to the public sphere. In this way the Public Opinion assumes a political role and becomes a weapon for the Enlightenment’s critique. The global condition of world history until the Second World War was marked, in Koselleck’s opinion, by a permanent state of crisis, which arose from this conflict between moral critique and State, that is, from the dualism inherent in the Enlightenment’s critique. The author conceives historiographical criticism as a possible instrument for the limitation of this ideological critique and for the neutralization of the permanent state of crisis.