Imagining the Past of the Present

Bibliographic Data

ID4915600
AuthorsMark Windsor (0000-0001-8666-426X, Masaryk University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume75
Issue1
Pages268-287
Publication date2024-11-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/pq/pqad114
OpenAlexW4389506987
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited37

Some objects we value because they afford a felt connection with people, events or places connected with their past. Visiting Canterbury cathedral, you encounter the place where, in 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered by four knights of Henry II. Knowing that you are standing in the very place where Becket's blood was spilled gives the past event a sense of tangible reality. One feels 'in touch with' the past; history seems to 'come alive'. In this paper, I propose an explanation for the phenomenology of such experiences in terms of an imaginative activity that represents what an object is historically connected with as part of the object in the present. One imagines of the site of Becket's murder Becket being murdered. According to my account, objects that embody their histories are representations in Kendall Walton's sense: they have the function of serving as props in games of make-believe

Aesthetics · Archbishop · Art · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Object (grammar · Phenomenology (philosophy · Value (mathematics · Classics · Computer Science · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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