Practical past. White H.

The outstanding American theoretician Hayden White (1928–2018) in his last lifetime book declares the incompatibility of the two main approaches to the past.

The first is the historical past created by historians in order to know and exist only in their books and articles, not containing "indications of how to act in the present or foresee the future." The second is a practical past associated with the needs of people in the present and their vision of the future, useful not only in the broad everyday sense, but also in the ethical, Kantian sense, since it offers its help in the answer to the question: “What should I do?”

What literary forms and genres are able to satisfy our need for the practical past today? Can a story, as it was in the days of antiquity and the Middle Ages, again fulfill the function of Magistra Vitae? H. White proposes to discuss these issues in a book that has become his intellectual testament.