---

HU

The Embrace of Presentism

The past can never speak on its own; it is always summoned by the questions of the present. Every era looks back through the prism of its own experience, bias, and method, thereby inevitably projecting itself into the object of inquiry. Yet, only the political sphere can perform this in the fashion of necromancy. To reflective consciousness on the other hand the goal lies in explaining oneself — and that does not even require scientific curiosity.

The concept of applied historical science therefore does not designate a new discipline, but rather the admission that historical knowledge has always been instrumentalised. In its worst moments it has served collective identity and political legitimation; in its best and most noble form, cultural self-reflection. Historical writing never merely describes but always uses the past, and history as a discipline does the same — though with very different motives.
The question, then, is not whether we apply history, but how, and with what degree of consciousness.

Where nineteenth-century historicism and descriptive historiography regarded distance and objectivity as methodological ideals, it has become increasingly evident in the twenty-first century that the study of the past is inseparable from presentism. Every historical interpretation begins from the questions of its own time and returns to them. This is not a sign of arrogance or temporal superiority, but a simple epistemological fact.

Properly understood, the embrace of presentism does not make the historian an ideologue but heightens their sense of responsibility. Recognizing that interest in the past arises from the need to understand the problems of the present, historical research becomes part of society’s self-reflection. The historian is tempted by power precisely because the past is both a resource for strategic thought and a foundation of mass identity, but never a museum relic. Interpreting from the standpoint of the present does not diminish scientific value; on the contrary, it makes history self-aware and socially relevant.

For the consciousness immersed in the past, the first temptation is memory politics — the institutionalized form of applying historical knowledge to political ends. The state, the nation, the party, or any collective actor constructs its legitimacy from selected elements of the past. Collective memory, therefore, can never be a neutral common space; it is an ideological construction, in which power operates and organizes itself through narrative elements.

The power-knowledge framework provides a fertile lens for understanding this, though its unreflective proliferation has itself become problematic. Historical knowledge is indeed a product of power relations, and every narrative is at once an act of governance and a political ritual. Thus, memory politics becomes not merely the interpretation of the past but also the exercise of control over the future.

The historian’s task in such a situation is not withdrawal into some “pure” academic philosophy, but reflective intervention. Critical historiography does not defend the illusion of apolitical scholarship. It exposes, transparently, the motives behind dominant narratives. It is at this point that the application of historical science becomes a practical question as well. The honest historian, through narration, can place knowledge in the service of collective self-understanding.

A central challenge of the twenty-first century is that historical representation takes place primarily within a media space built on fictions. The past circulates not as text but as image, atmosphere, and visual topos. Film, television series, monuments, digital archives, social platforms, and low-quality generated content — all have become the new media of collective memory. The undeniable power of visuality often dissolves causal and temporal complexity into emotional impressions, which almost always obstructs the critical application of historical knowledge. Yet we must remember that even our own written texts only mediate knowledge. Therefore, the problem is not entirely new, and despair is unnecessary.

It is undeniable, however, that the aestheticization of history could be debated endlessly. “Tourist spectacle, political symbol, marketable identity-branding — this is what the past has been reduced to,” one might lament. But those who do so risk sounding like weary traditionalists who turn away from their new intellectual duties. It is enough to state dispassionately that the commodification of the past often distances it from reflection. Hence a new field for the application of history emerges: media-conscious source criticism. We must examine how the visual-digital environment shapes collective historical awareness and invest effort so that historians become the critical counterweight to manipulated memory. Artists, too, share this role when they reveal what truly makes history fascinating — not the eternal mythic battle of good and evil, but the morally relevant questions and factual complexity of each age.

Geopolitics is the most spectacular yet also the most dangerous form of applied history, a field burdened by the legacy of its advisory and ideological misuse.
Situated at the intersection of space and time, it offers a holistic perspective with genuine methodological value. Yet in its simplified and ideologized form it constructs strategic narratives from historical patterns in order to serve existing political agendas, thus participating in collective self-deception. Raw power appears in the guise of “ideological realism,” which, contrary to its name, often rummages through the past to magnify clichés, reduce them to deterministic “iron laws,” and thereby legitimize existing power structures in the name of a non-Marxist materialism.

Ideological geopolitics is not analysis at all, but pure self-justification. It weaponizes selectively chosen historical experience to defend the status quo. The critical historian’s role is the opposite. It lies in not rejecting geopolitical thinking, but to demythologize it, returning its ideological categories to their historical context. Only then can historical knowledge become truly applied. Not in the service of domination, but of understanding.

The professionalization of modern historiography in the nineteenth century was built on source criticism and methodological discipline, but it also carried with it the illusion of objectivity. The historian cannot describe the past as a neutral observer. Since the postmodern turn, it should have become clear that scientific credibility lies not in “viewpoint-lessness” but in transparency and self-reflection. The moral nihilism embedded in certain postmodern assumptions has caused at least as much harm as it has benefit, for history — while containing a subjective element — remains an exact discipline.

Today’s professional historian no longer hides their position but consciously articulates it. The disclosure of methods and assumptions has always been a cornerstone of scholarly ethics; hence it is false to claim that historiography is in crisis. History has never possessed such a broad and sophisticated arsenal as it does today. The true challenge lies in reaching audiences and conveying information effectively.

For this reason, honesty is not a personal virtue but a structural guarantee, the assurance that historical narrative remains verifiable, debatable, and capable of development. The axiom that “there is no objective historian” is not a plea for relativism but a requirement of intellectual integrity. Honesty forms the ontological foundation of scholarly practice. What we expect is not neutrality, but transparent commitment. The historian, aware of their own position on the chessboard of power, identity, and narrative, makes it possible for their work to become part of a broader public dialogue.

The moral dimension of historiography thus lies not in withdrawal from politics but in the reflective comprehension of the political context. Applied history is not propaganda but an ethical undertaking. The past must not be used as a weapon, but as a mirror, honestly, for the refinement of our collective self-image.

Humanities scholars are often seen in a state of lethargy, struggling with a sense of uselessness, even though they possess an enormous weapon: the capacity to create concepts and terminology. It is precisely this ability that has always made them of great importance to power.

The ultimate purpose of applying history is not to build a refuge from the past, but to craft from it a compass. The embrace of presentism is not the abandonment of science but the assumption of intellectual responsibility. Amid memory politics, geopolitical discourse, and mediated visions of the past, the historian’s role is neither judgment nor legitimization, but orientation. For the past is a living and operative dimension in which the conditions of the present are rooted, not a sealed relic.

Applied history, then, should not be the plaything of power, but its language of accountability. The task before us is nothing less than to return history to public life. Not as an ideological tool, nor as a heap of facts, but as a form of thought.
After all, the essential question has never been what history, as magistra vitae, teaches us, but what we do with what we already know of it.