ABSTRACT
After 2010, there have appeared lots of programmatic works about theory and philosophy of history, with historians such as Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Scott, Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, David Armitage, and Jo Guldi proposing their own visions for the future of history, trying to keep the balance between the past and the present. During the last decade, theorists of history have sought a middle ground between preserving a minimum of scientific objectivity in their representations of the past, but taking at the same moment into consideration the serious political and moral implications that their results might have. This difficult balance between the so-called “practical past” and the “historical past”, addressed by Hayden White in 2014, proved to be the next big theoretical challenge in theory and philosophy of history. Theorists of history ever since, carrying the legacy of postmodernism and trying to make sense of the world situation as it develops through the unfolding global crises, have tried to create innovative epistemologies, open the field to new perspectives, and find practical uses for historical knowledge. The example of the Holocaust has been a constant challenge for postmodernism and remains a guide for the directions historiography should take.
