About the book: 2024 / The outstanding American theorist of history Hayden White (1928–2018), in his last book published during his lifetime, declares the incompatibility of the two main approaches to the past. The first is the historical past, created by historians for the purpose of knowledge and existing only in their books and articles, which does not contain “indications on how to act in the present or foresee the future.” The second is the practical past, connected with the needs of people in the present and their vision of the future, useful not only in a broad everyday sense, but also in an ethical, Kantian sense, since it offers its help in answering the question: “What should I do?” What literary forms and genres can satisfy our need for a practical past today? Can history, as it did in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, once again perform the function of magistra vitae? H. White proposes to discuss these questions in the book, which became his intellectual testament.