Dr. Chiel van den Akker is lecturer Historical Theory at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is the author of Elementaire Deeltjes - Geschiedenis (Athenaeum 2019) and The Exemplifying Past. A Philosophy of History (Amsterdam University Press 2018).

"Chiel van der Akker's 2018 The Exemplifying Past: A Philosophy of History is an ambitious attempt to break new ground in developing a philosophy of history that builds on the ideas of narrative and retroaction central to the earlier work of Arthur Danto, Louis Mink and Frank Ankersmit. It is a book that should be of great interest to all concerned with the philosophical underpinnings and status of historical knowledge and understanding. One of its advantages is having packed a dense and detailed argument into a volume of only 150 pages - a commendable achievement."- David Weberman, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice (2021)

• Preface, 1. Introduction: Retroaction, Indeterminacy, and Seeing-in, 2. Periods and Other Minds, 3. Mink's Riddle of Narrative Truth, 4. Resemblance, Substitution, Expression, 5. Exemplification, 6. Danto's End of Art, Bibliography, Index