In this chapter, first published in History and Memory in 1989, Jörn Rüsen defines four ways of using history (or four types of historical consciousness) by telling a story about the historical relationship between two Scottish clans and the ways this relationship could be interpreted in the present. Rüsen defines historical consciousness as a meaningful nexus between past, present, and future – a way to translate the past into the present for the future – and that a value-laden interpretation of history can generally translate into four types of historical consciousness: traditional, exemplary, critical, or generic. Using s