The Idea of History

R. G. Collingwood

Description

Robin George Collingwood, FBA (1889 – 1943) was an English historian, philosopher, and archaeologist most famous his philosophical works. Along with “The Principles of Art” (1938), Collingwood's “The Idea of History” was his best-known work, originally collated from numerous sources following his death by a student of his, T. M. Knox. It became a major inspiration for philosophy of history in the western world and is extensively cited to his day. This fascinating volume on history and its relationship to philosophy will appeal to students and collectors of vintage philosophical works alike. Contents include: “The Philosophy of History”, “History's Nature”, “Object”, “Method”, “Greco-Roman Histography”, “The Influence of Christianity”, “The Threshold of Scientific History”, “Scientific History”, “England”, “Germany”, “France”, “Italy”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume today in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Metaphysics
• Idealism
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie
• Movements

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 14 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528766838
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE IDEA OF HISTORY

By
R. G. COLLINGWOOD
First published in 1946
Copyright 2019 Read Co. History
This edition is published by Read Co. History, an imprint of Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.readandcobooks.co.uk
R. G. C OLLINGWOOD

Robin George Collingwood was born on 22nd February 1889, in Cartmel, England. He was the son of author, artist, and academic, W. G. Collingwood.
Collingwood attended Rugby School before enrolling at University College, Oxford, where he received a congratulatory first class honours for reading Greats. He became a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for 15 years until he was offered the post of Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was greatly influenced by the Italian Idealists Croce, Gentile, and Guido de Ruggiero. Another important influence was his father, a professor of fine art and a student of Ruskin.
Collingwood produced The Principles of Art in 1938, outlining the concept of art as being essentially expressions of emotion. He claimed that it was a necessary function of the human mind and considered it an important collaborative activity. He also published other works of philosophy, such as Speculum Mentis (1924), An Essay on Philosophic Method (1933), An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), and many more. In 1940, he published The First Mate s Log , an account of a sailing trip he undertook with some of his students in the Mediterranean.
Collingwood died at Coniston, Lancashire on January 1943, after a series of debilitating strokes.
EDITOR S PREFACE
1. Disiecta membra
D URING the first six months of 1936 Collingwood wrote thirty-two lectures on The Philosophy of History . The manuscript falls into two parts, each of which he intended to work up into a book. The first is an historical account of how the modern idea of history has developed from Herodotus to the twentieth century; the second consists of metaphysical epilegomena or philosophical reflections on the nature, subject-matter, and method of history.
Of the two projected books the second began to take shape in the spring of 1939 when, during a short stay in Java, Collingwood started to write The Principles of History . In this work he proposed to discuss the main characteristics of history as a special science and then to consider its relations with other sciences, particularly natural science and philosophy, as well as its bearing on practical life.
In 1940 he revised part of the 1936 manuscript, especially the section on Greece and Rome, and rechristened it The Idea of History . But though he meant eventually to make it a companion volume to The Idea of Nature , he was unfortunately unable to work on it any further.
It was Collingwood s wish that his posthumous papers should be judged by high standards when their publication was under consideration, and the decision to construct a book out of these manuscripts on history has not been taken without some hesitation. It was thought, however, that they contained material which might be useful to historians as well as to philosophers and which was too good not to be published.
Since the greater part of the available material was little more than a first draft, much more editing has been necessary here than in The Idea of Nature . But I think it right to say that although the layout of the book and some of its form are due to the editor, the content is everywhere Collingwood s. The design of the book makes some repetitions almost inevitable (particularly in the separate essays which I have chosen and grouped together to form Part V and which it seemed best to print almost exactly as they were written), and the various dates at which different parts were composed, as well as the development of the author s thought even during the writing of the 1936 manuscript, may serve to account for such occasional inconsistencies as still remain.
With the exceptions noted below, the basis of the book is the 1936 lectures, and I have followed the plan of those lectures by making one book instead of two. My reason for this is that while there are available sufficient unpublished manuscripts and published essays to make a separate book of papers on the nature of history, I am not satisfied that the quality of all the unpublished material is sufficiently high to warrant publication.
The manuscript of The Principles of History is a fragment, containing only one-third of what was planned, but Collingwood wrote on it a note authorizing its publication with a preface explaining that it is a fragment of what I had, for twenty-five years at least, looked forward to writing as my chief work In spite of this authority, I have not felt justified in printing more than the three excerpts which appear below as Part III , 8 and Part V , 3 and 6 . And even these I have included with some misgivings. They are written in Collingwood s later manner, and their style and temper is sometimes rather out of key with the rest of the book; but their inclusion serves to round off his view of history and to expound in more detail some points only briefly indicated elsewhere.
In Part V , 1 and 2 , I have included two essays on history which have been published already: the Inaugural Lecture which Collingwood delivered as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy on 28 October 1935 (published as a pamphlet by the Clarendon Press) and the lecture which he gave to the British Academy on 20 May 1936 (published in the Proceedings of the Academy, vol. xxii, and now reprinted with the Academy s consent). It has not seemed worth while to reprint other essays on history which he published from time to time, either because they represent positions which he later abandoned, or else because their substance has been absorbed into the contents of the present volume. Particulars of these essays may be found in the list of his philosophical writings appended to an obituary notice in the Proceedings of the British Academy , vol. xxix. To that list the following items should be added:
1925
Economics as a Philosophical Science ( Int. Journal of Ethics , vol. xxxv).
1926
Religion, Science, and Philosophy ( Truth and Freedom , vol. ii, no. 7).
1928
Translation of Croce s article Aesthetic in Enc. Brit ., 14th edn.
1929
A Philosophy of Progress ( The Realist , no. 1).
1940
Fascism and Nazism ( Philosophy , vol. xv).
Thanks are due to the editors, and to Messrs. Longmans, Green, Co., the publishers, of the English Historical Review for permission to make use, in this book Part IV , 1 (iv) , of a book-review contributed by Collingwood to that periodical.
2. Magis amica veritas
If Collingwood s wishes about his posthumous papers continue to be observed, this will be the last of his philosophical books, and it may be appropriate to make some general remarks in this section about his philosophical work, and, in 3, about his personality and his position in the world of philosophy.
He always claimed that philosophy should be systematic, but his philosophical writings make up not so much one system as a series of systems. They may perhaps be divided into three groups, although some development of thought may be traceable within the works of each group. The first consists of what he came to regard as juvenilia, Religion and Philosophy (1916) and Speculum Mentis (1924). The second begins with the Essay on Philosophical Method (1933) and continues with The Idea of Nature (which dates, except for its Conclusion, from 1934) and much (1936) of The Idea of History . The last comprises the Autobiography (1939), the Essay on Metaphysics (1940), and The New Leviathan (1942). The Principles of Art (1938) is akin in part to the second group, in part to the third.
A full appraisal of work so many-sided as that which these volumes contain would take more space than can here be allowed, and therefore it may be well if the discussion is mainly confined to only one of its facets, namely to Collingwood s conceptions of the relation between philosophy and history. He said himself in his Autobiography that his aim in philosophy had been to bring about a rapprochement between these two disciplines, and since so much of what I have to say in this section is critical in tone, it must be affirmed at the outset that this aim is successfully achieved in the books written at the zenith of his powers, i.e. in what I have just described as the second group of his philosophical writings. The Essay on Philosophical Method argues that the subject-matter of philosophy resembles history rather than nature and that its method must be constructed accordingly. The Idea of History forces on the attention of philosophers the epistemological problems to which the existence of history gives rise, and, like The Idea of Nature , it shows how philosophical questions can be illuminated and solved by an historical approach. It is not too much to say that after these books English philosophers will be able to continue ignoring history only by burying their heads in the sand.
Collingwood s views on philosophy and history, as well as on other matters, have often been compared with Croce s, and certainly there is an interesting parallel between the philosophical development of the two men. Croce s first interest in philosophy was kindled by the Herbartian and anti-Hegelian Labriola; Collingwood was indoctrinated as an undergraduate with Cook Wilson s realism. It was their artistic and historical interests that made both of them dissatisfied with the philosophy they had been taught; they both proceeded to study Hegel for themselves and to do original work in history; and they both worked their way to a form of idealism and eventually to an identification of p