实用的过去由所有那些记忆、错觉、少量不定的信息、态度和价值构成,个人或群体竭尽所能调动起它来,为生命中从事的各类行动辩护、维护尊严、解释、找借口或者坚持下去。政治的、法律的与宗教的过去除非由于意识形态或者某种先入之见,通常很少被触及。从“实用的过去”中,我们可以得出教训并将之运用到现在、去期待将来(或至少是近似的将来),为当前将要采取的行动提供理由(如果不是辩护的话),以使得将来好于目前状况。不管历史哲学是什么别的东西,它属于这样一类学科,其意味着将秩序和理性带入“实用的过去”中去,而非职业历史学家在不同研究领域中为同行的启迪而构建的“历史的过去”中。在历史学家构建的过去和历史哲学家构建的过去中做出区分,可以(或似乎可以)洞察当代西方科学文化中特别令人不安的一种关系,也就是文化现代主义语境中事实与虚构的关系(有时指历史与文学的关系)。 Practical past consists of all those memories, illusions, small amounts of information, attitudes and values ​​that individuals or groups do their utmost to mobilize to justify the various acts of life, to preserve dignity, to explain, to find excuses or to persevere Go down. Political, legal and religious past are rarely touched unless they are ideologically or preconceived. From the “practical past,” we can draw lessons from it and apply it to the present, looking forward to (or at least in the near future) future, justifying (if not defensive) the action to be taken now, Make the future better than the current situation. Regardless of what other things historical philosophy is, it belongs to the category of disciplines that mean bringing order and reason into the “practical past,” rather than the enlightenment that career historians have for peers in different fields of research The construction of the “past history” in. To make a distinction between the past constructed by historians and the past constructed by philosophers of history can (or may seem to) be able to gain insight into the particularly troubling relationship in contemporary Western science and culture, that is, the fact and reality in the context of cultural modernism Fictional relationship (sometimes refers to the relationship between history and literature).