Ethan Kleinberg and Hayden White on the Practical Past, Part 1

In their first filmed conversation for History and Theory's Conversations in Theory series, Ethan Kleinberg and Hayden White discuss The Practical Past, ways and forms of studying the past, and the state of disciplinary history today.
Music by: Intended Force Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons

[@enriqueperez6064]

White's Practical Past recall Kant's Practical Reason. Undoubtedly Professor White is one of the greatest contemporary historians.

[@mutroom9914]

Interesting. Thanks for the upload!

[@meghkalyanasundaram8720]

~4:39 "History used to be practical in the sense that it belonged to moral philosophy. Moral philosophy is about how do you act in such a way as to realise ethical goals or interests. But when you become, or aspire to become, scientific, you have to give up that kind of thing, I believe that, in principle, in becoming scientific, historians ought to have, or committed to, a non-evaluative way of thinking about the data they are dealing with" (almost verbatim)

[@kjetilsenNOWAY]

Wow, Ethan! Great moves, keep it up, proud of you!

[@meghkalyanasundaram8720]

~3:05 "And of course, by practical, I mean--in a philosophical sense--what Kant meant by it, namely, action, rather than theoretical way of contemplating the past. For many centuries, history was regarded as a practical discipline. But when it decided to become scientific, when historians decided to become scientists, shift over from a [not clearly audible] idea of what historical writing was, to a scientific notion--modern scientific notion--of investigation and research, they had to, in order to gain some kind of acceptance by other scientists, they had to eschew any claim to having practical relevance." (almost verbatim)

[@Sandy-ge6wo]

Legend.

[@kjetilsenNOWAY]

a quick game for a quick overview?

[@HistoricalPerspectiveRBr]

07:30 It is depressing how dated White's understanding of historical practice is. When he first published Metahistory and assume his discussion of 19th century historians applied to mid-twentieth century historians he was already badly out of date, here he is so hopelessly detached from actual practice that it makes his reflections on it largely pointless.