philosophy of history – Samir Chopra

Oakeshott, the ‘Practical Past’, Ancestors, and Psychoanalysis

For Michael Oakeshott ( ‘Present, Future, and Past’, from ‘Three Essays on History’ in On History, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1999), the ‘practical past’ is: [A]n accumulation of symbolic persons, actions, utterances, situations and artefacts, the products of practical imagination, and their only significant relationship to past is not to the past to which they ambiguouslyContinue reading “Oakeshott, the ‘Practical Past’, Ancestors, and Psychoanalysis”