The Spectre of the Present: Time, Presentism and the Writing of Contemporary History

In: Contemporary European history, Band 30, Heft 1, S. 124-135

Abstract

Presentism used to be so simple. In the old vernacular it referred to a tendency to view the past from the perspective of the present (or, at its most extreme, maybe even use the past to illuminate the present). Historians disagreed furiously on the intellectual virtues of orienting their views of the past to the needs of the current day. But the content of the term itself was rarely disputed.