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Hello, I'm back. 
 
Guess I would like to generally support Ross Emmett's position on this, more or less. I
think the issue in defining terms is to at least initially see how people are currently
using them. I had not seen this term "presentist" prior to this discussion and therefore
have no preconceived notion of what it does (or should) mean. It is therefore unsurprising
to me that there is disagreement over its meaning.
 
However, I guess that I am closer to Ross's view on the meaning of "whig history," and
that it is more like what Pat Gunning has labeled as "presentism,"
which would impact how that term should be defined if it is to be of any separate use. I
have most frequently seen this term "whig history" used by more or less heterodox
historians of economics, e.g. Peter Boettke. Unless I misread him, it is the history as
written by those who consider mainstream neoclassical economics to be the end all and be
all, or at least the best thing going at least for now, and then view the history of
economics in terms of its development to this modern orthodoxy as a grand culmination.
 
I suppose one could use the term with a modifier to get Pat's meaning, e.g. "Austrian whig
history," thereby assuming that there is a standard story for Austrians (Menger to Bohm-
Bawerk to Mises to Hayek to....). Clearly the meaning of the word "whig" here is not in
its old British political sense, as Hayek described himself, but in the sense of a self-
satisfied and complacent elite that is congratulating itself.
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
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