  By distinguishing between thinking to understand and thinking to act, Oakeshott aims to protect historical, scientific, and philosophical inquiry from the imperialism of practical concerns. This aim is evident in his treatment of historical inquiry, especially in his concern to distinguish the idea of a distinctively historical past from what he calls “the practical past”. Genuine historical inquiry is concerned to establish what happened, not to elicit knowledge that speaks to present concerns. It is indifferent to “the lessons of history” (EM 316) or “the living past” (OH 19). His point is not that past experience cannot guide, but that the past that is supposed to guide is not a “historical” past. Nor is it the business of historical inquiry to generate stories about the direction of history. Books about the progress of the human mind (Condorcet) or the end of history (Fukuyama) written from the standpoint of the author’s own time do not observe the modal conditions of historical thought but are instead works of what Herbert Butterfield (1931) called “Whig history”—history designed to ratify, if not glorify, the present. A similar point can be made about stories of decline. By detaching historical knowledge from present concerns, Oakeshott articulates a theory of history as a distinct mode of inquiry and understanding. 