Chris Lorenz. It Takes Three to Tango. History between the ‘Practical’ and the ‘Historical’ Past

In this article I argue that the present ‘burdensome’ condition of important parts of the past is overstretching the ‘normal’, professional concept of history. I interpret White’s recent introduction of the ‘practical’ past next to the ‘historical’ past as his way of addressing the same problem. I reconstruct his conceptual work and come to the conclusion that opposing the ‘historical’ and the ’practical’ past is not enough, because this opposition leaves unquestioned the positivistic presuppositions upon which the distinction itself rests. I develop my argument in four steps. First, I signal some ambiguities in White’s formulation of the distinction and trace them back to Michael Oakeshott who first theorized it. Second, I identify two problems shared by Oakeshott and White concerning the unity of ‘the past’ and ‘the present’ and the ‘break’ between them. Third, I argue that the pluralisation of pasts and presents formulated by Preston King represents a convincing conceptual solution to the first problem, and John Searle’s speech acts theory provides a solution to the second problem. Lastly, I conclude that the very distinction between the ‘historical’ and the ‘practical’ past is rooted in empiricist and positivist assumptions long discredited by the work of W. V. Quine and T. H. Kuhn, and thereby suggest that the present state of the philosophical debate should have consequences for our thinking about the distinction between the historical and the practical past.