Robin George Collingwood

Suppose you are preacher who wants to speak a word to a polarized situation. Words take on meaning within a context and unfortunately yours is a situation divided between " right " and " left " (here meant very generally to signify the two poles of a divided society) with the result that your word will inevitably be subsumed into the narrative of one context or the other. This is unfortunate because the meaning of what you want to say is distorted when taken up into an alien context: if you speak you are bound to be misunderstood, whatever you say. Call this the preacher's dilemma. As a matter of fact, a third option is silence, but this too may be misunderstood, so it's probably more accurate to speak of a trilemma. However, this phrase is not so snappy and does not convey the tragic note that " dilemma " does, so I have decided to sacrifice pedantic accuracy in this instance. Perhaps I am caught up in the very dilemma about which I am writing. The preacher's dilemma was in my mind last week as I followed the papal visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh. Pope Francis had to decide whether or not to say the word Rohingya. He had previously shown solidarity with the Rohingya nine months ago in February calling them by their name, making clear that the Rohingya are " good people, " peaceful, and that they are unjustly persecuted. However, that word is taboo in Myanmar. The Muslims in Rakhine state are recognised neither by Myanmar nor Bangladesh, and so to refer to the stateless group is to wade into an ongoing political struggle, something that the Pope would wish to avoid. Moreover, local Catholic bishops advised him against antagonising the majority Buddhist society for fear of backlash, and the Pope would obviously regret that outcome, not only because of the harm done, but because he would aspire to work collegially, heeding local advice. On the other hand, not to use the word would upset Rohingya activists, and probably the Rohingya as a whole. In view of the attention of the world media the Pope possessed a megaphone like few others, so his words were at this moment were at a premium. Surely he should seize the opportunity for justice. What to do? If the Pope failed to speak truth to power (with the thundering volume of a Guardian editorial) that would appear an understandable betrayal. The author of the Politics once wrote that most men will what is noble but do what is expedient, and perhaps this was how western, liberal journalists framed the situation. No wonder, then, that Catholic commentators did not anticipate the visit with relish. It was planned when the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi carried the hopes of a peaceful resolution, before the military crackdown had expelled 600,000 Rohingya. But now the situation had become notorious and the UN had spoken in terms of ethnic cleansing. So, the pope's dilemma was compared with that of Pius XII who was criticised for not speaking out strongly against the Nazis (albeit to protect the innocent). Still, Francis had tweeted that he had looked forward to the visit: there was no going back. What happened was that the Pope met the leaders of Myanmar, first the military (in a rescheduled visit on Monday) and later the Nobel Laureate. On the Tuesday he spoke up publically for the rights of all, and the need for decisive action, but to the dismay of activists, refrained from mentioning Rohingya or ethnic cleansing. Then he travelled to Bangladesh and on the Friday in Dhaka at an inter-faith gathering met twelve Rohingya including a twelve year old girl whose entire family had been murdered by the military. Unscripted, and in the midst of tears, Francis finally pronounced the word: the presence of God today is also

This paper explores certain issues that arise at the borderline between conceptual analysis and metaphysics, where answers to questions of a conceptual nature compete with answers to questions of an ontological or metaphysical nature. I focus on the way in which three philosophers, Kant, Collingwood and Davidson, articulate the relationship between the conceptual question “what are actions?” and the metaphysical question: “how is agency possible?” I argue that the way in which one handles the relationship between the conceptual and the ontological question has important implications for one’s conception of the nature of philosophy and that thinking hard about what it takes to defend the autonomy of the mental and of the agent-centred perspective should force us to think about our underlying conception of philosophy and to choose between one that understands it as first science and one that understands it as the under-labourer of science. Keywords: Davidson, Collingwood, reasons and causes, autonomy of the mental.

It might appear that the titular question has already received a widely accepted answer (as indicated by Peter Kivy in 1999): aesthetic expression is an emotional quality of an expressive object, and not the actual expression of its creator’s real feelings. The latter thesis lay at the heart of the so‑called classic expression theory that dominated aesthetic views during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Later, however, that theory was repeatedly subjected to fundamental criticism and gradually replaced by the view cited by Kivy – a view that had also remained essentially binding for around two thousand years: from the times of Plato to the eighteenth century. So at least that element of the dispute over expression seemed to have been resolved. However, in 2003, The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics included an attempt to reinstate a version of classic expression theory, using arguments that were unquestionably persuasive. The aim of the present article is to assess that proposition and to attempt to resolve the renewed dispute between classic expression theory and the still dominant view of aesthetic expression.

R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943) is well known for his contributions to the fields of aesthetics and the philosophy of history. Perhaps the most distinctive and constant feature of his work, however, is his effort throughout to articulate and clarify the relations between domains of thought that are traditionally held to be distinct - such as religion, art, history, science and philosophy. In this essay, I consider the import of the conclusion to his treatise The Idea of Nature, and argue that a careful consideration of how and why he came to write this conclusion shows that he appreciates the relative autonomy of natural science and history as fields of inquiry, but argues that successful scientific research requires that scientists come to understand the import of the work of their predecessors. Far from accepting as a limitation of historical research with respect to natural science the idea that the past cannot be repeated but that natural occurrences can, Collingwood holds that, with different aims in mind, both scientist and historian must and do engage regularly and successfully in the effort to bring to life the character and significance of past events.

Claude Lévi-Strauss holds that history and anthropology difffer in their choice of complementary perspectives: history organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations. For R. G. Collingwood historical science discovers not only pure facts but considers a whole series of thoughts constituting historical life. Also Lévi-Strauss sees this: "To understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be." However, Lévi-Strauss does not perceive the double-sense of history, which can fijirst be a record of historical "conscious" facts and second, a chain of unconscious or half-conscious acts. Like Lévi-Strauss, Charles Bally has derived the main theses of his theory from Saussure. However, contrary to Lévi-Strauss, Bally does not fijind structures at the inside of the phenomena but at their outside: "Our attention is drawn to the expressive side and not to the interior side of the facts of language." Bally calls those structures not "history" but "style." In Roland Barthes's attempt to establish a structuralist system of fashion we can fijind a defijinition of style very similar to Bally's. In the end, however, none of these thinkers addresses the fact that unconscious relations within historical life are constantly interlocked with conscious elements.

"Spanish translation of R. G. Collingwood, "Question and Answer”, chapter five of the book An Autobiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939, pgs. 29-43.
Traduccion castellana del articulo de R. G. Collingwood, "Pregunta y Respuesta”, capitulo cinco del libro An Autobiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939, pgs. 29-43.

It is a common statement in the most traditional views of the history of the philosophy of art to consider the nineteenth century as the moment of birth of the expression theory of art, a theory that ended pushing aside the already declining  imitation theory of art. It is also usually understood that the expressionist theory defended that the essence of art was to express emotion, that the artist aim was to translate somehow emotions into artworks, and that these emotions ended in some way reaching the audience or the public of the work of art that was contemplated, listened to, or read...

This explanation of art received a further development during the first half of the twentieth century by R. G. Collingwood among others, but was soon replaced by other theories that moved in a wider scope. Nevertheless Collingwood's approach to art continues being a reference for the reflection of many contemporary philosophers, although the general sense of their approach to his philosophy of art is mainly negative: it is more worried about criticizing Collingwood's view than about understanding it.

The aim of this exposition is not to defend Collingwood's explanation of art, but to show important errors of interpretation that have become a common place in the objections that are made against his proposal. To accomplish it, I pretend to take a close look to the criticisms to his theory made by one of the most important exponents of the aesthetics of the analytical tradition, George Dickie. I have chosen him because he both summarizes and has contributed to extend quite well the general tone of the objections against Collingwood's account of art. These mainly focus on the understanding of art as imagination, on the definition of art as expression of emotion, and on the relation between these two approaches to art. By their analysis, I hope to give some clues to help in a better understanding of these concepts in Collingwood's philosophy of art, not only because of the historical value that this might have, but because of the light that Collingwood's approach to art can throw upon contemporary reflections on the relation between art, emotion and value.

It is the ambition of natural science to provide complete explanations of reality. Collingwood argues that science can only explain events, not actions. The latter are the distinctive subject matter of history and can be described as actions only if they are explained historically. This paper explains Collingwood's claim that the distinctive subject matter of history is actions and why the attempt to capture this subject matter through the method of science inevitably ends in failure because science explains events, not actions. It argues that Collingwood's defence of the methodological autonomy of history vis-à-vis natural science is not based on a commitment to human exceptionalism, i.e. the exclusion of human beings and their doings from the rest of nature, but on the view that explanations which appeal to norms are different in kind from explanations which appeal to empirical regularities. Given the close relationship between the method and the subject matter of a distinct form of inquiry, actions elude any attempt to explain them through the scientific method because the application of this method entails that what is thus explained is not an action but an event.

Is the cinema just a craft, or a form of art? In this essay, my thesis is that the cinema is a form of art as it performs functions that craft does not. To this end, I will focus on Collingwood’s definition of craft posed in The Principles of Art describing craft as a phenomenon in which there is a relation between means and end. Although this is not an exact definition, but it helps with defining cinema as art, as there is no direct, exact relation between means and end in it. I will review some of the similarities between art and craft, which indicate the need for finding more distinctive features to distinguish art and craft. I will argue Collingwood’s views according to which art is defined as having no relation between means and end, being the result of artists’ collaboration, expressive of emotions, imaginary, and arouser of emotions are useful in examining cinema as an art. In addition, I will explain my recent personal experience with craft and art, where medical craftsmen aimed to cure my sickness, whereas watching the movie John Wick (USA, dir. Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, 2014) healed and comforted me by arousing my emotions and imagination. Accordingly, I will propose that being arouser of imagination may be one of the main characteristics of arts, which determines its value for individuals, societies, and governments.

Die Stoßrichtung von Gadamers Antwort auf den Historismus bleibt in der Forschung ein umstrittenes Thema: Während seine philosophische Hermeneutik einerseits beschuldigt wird, lediglich die Aporien des Historismus zu radikalisieren, sehen andere in ihr die endgültige Überwindung der Problematik. Dieses Essay zeichnet die Linien von Gadamers Kritik anhand einer konkreten, aber heute weitgehend vergessenen Auseinandersetzung mit einer zeitgenössischen Gestalt des Historismus nach. Die sogenannte Problemgeschichte des Neukantianismus diente Gadamer nämlich schon in den 1920er Jahren, aber auch in Wahrheit und Methode (1960) als Folie, um sein Verhältnis zum Historismus zu klären. In einem ersten Schritt wird mit Nicolai Hartmann der meist ungenannte Gegner Gadamers identifiziert. In einem zweiten Schritt wird Gadamers Kritik an Hartmann rekonstruiert, die seine Position als einen Historismus zweiten Grades verständlich macht.

The nature of Gadamer’s response to the challenge of historicism remains a controversial issue. While some scholars claim that his critique only leads deeper into the aporia of historicism, others credit him with overcoming the problem. This essay will elucidate Gadamer’s response to historicism by examining his nearly forgotten critique of a contemporary version of historicism, namely, neo-Kantian Problemgeschichte. As early as the 1920s and again in Truth and Method (1960), Problemgeschichte served as Gadamer’s counterexample by which his own response to historicism was discussed. First, this essay will identify the mostly anonymous addressee of Gadamer’s critique as Nicolai Hartmann. And second, it will give an account of Gadamer’s critique of Hartmann in order to reveal Gadamer’s position as a kind of second-degree historicism.

"Michel Weber and Will Desmond, (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008. (695 p. + 726 p. ; ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 ; 398 €)
Gathering 115 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought aims at interpreting Whitehead secundum Whitehead, at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary development.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Aesthetics
II. Anthropology
III. Ecology
IV. Economy
V. Education
VI. Ethics
VII. Gender Studies
VIII. History
IX. Language
X. Mathematics and Logic
XI. Metaphysics
XII. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind
XIII. Public Policy
XIV. Science
XV. Sociology of Science
XVI. Theology and Religion
XVII. Theory of Knowledge
XVIII. Urbanism & Architecture
XIX. Biographical entries
XX. Critical Apparatus

Authors : A Sister of St-John, Adam Scarfe , Albert C. Lewis, Alessandro Sardi, Alix Parmentier, Andrew Dawson, Annamaria Miranda, Arran Gare, Barbara Muraca, Berit Brogaard, Beth Lord, Brian G. Henning, Bruce Duncan MacQueen, Bruce G. Epperly, Carol F. Johnston, Carol P. Christ, Claude de Jonckheere, Claus Michael Ringel, Clifford Cobb, Craig Eisendrath, Daniel A. Dombrowski, David G. Butt, David Ray Griffin, Dominic J. Balestra, Donald Wayne Viney, Donna Bowman, Douglas R. Anderson, Elias L. Khalil, Elie During, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Franck Robert, Gao Shan, Gary A. Cook, George Allan, Giangiacomo Gerla , Gottfried Heinemann, Graham Bird, Granville C. Henry, jr., Gudmund Smith, Guillaume Durand, Howard Woodhouse, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Jaime Nubiola, James Connelly, James Williams, Jean-Pascal Alcantara, Johanna Seibt, John B. Cobb, Jr., John H. Buchanan, John Quiring , John W. Lango, Jonathan Delafield-Butt, Jorge Luis Nobo, Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Joseph E. Earley, Sr., Joseph Grange, Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas, Judith Jones, Julie A. Nelson, Kipton Jensen, Leemon McHenry, Les Muray, Lieven Decock, Liliana Albertazzi, Luca Gaeta, Luca Vanzago, Manuel Bächtold, Marc Maesschalck, Maria Pachalska , Mark Modak-Truran, Mark R. Dibben, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Max Velmans, Michael Epperson, Michael Fortescue, Michel Weber, Murray Code, Mustafa Ruezgar, Norman Sieroka, Patrick J. Coppock, Paul Custodio Bube, Peter Hare, Peter Simons, Pierfrancesco Basile, Les Muray, Randall E. Auxier, Richard Feist, Robert Castiglione, Robert J.Valenza, Ronny Desmet , Ross L. Stein, Rudolf Windeln, Stephen T. Franklin, Sylviane R. Schwer, T. L. S. Sprigge, Thomas A. F. Kelly, Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C., Timothy E. Eastman, Vincent Shen, Volker Peckhaus, William Jay Garland, William T. Myers"

كتاب مبادئ الفن لكولينجوود المترجم الى العربية في طبعته الآولى:
الترجمة الكاملة (إبريل 1966 – الدار المصرية للتأليف والترجمة) لاحمد حمدى محمود ومراجعة على ادهم.

نشرت مكتبة الأسرة عام 2001 طبعة ثانية لثلث محتوى هذه الترجمة بعنوان: (الكتاب الأول/ الفن وما ليس بفن). ولم نعثر على اية مصادر تفيد بطبعات ثانية لباقى المحتوى والذي تضمن: (الكتاب الثاني/ نظرية الخيال) و (الكتاب الثالث/ نظرية الفن).
فيما يلى إعادة نشر أحد مباحث محتوى الترجمة الكاملة مع خلاصة الفصل الخاص به.
(إعادة نشر هذا الجزء من الكتاب من الممكن أن تعيد من تقديم المناقشة حول العلاقة بين النزعة الفردية والنزعة التشاركية في الفن، وذلك في إطار فلسفة علم الجمال لفيلسوف إنجليزى عرف العالم إنتاجه الفكري أوائل القرن العشرين وحتى الأربعينات)

In this essay, Ahlskog examines R. G. Collingwood’s conception of the philosophy of history and its metaphilosophical import. Ahlskog shows that Collingwood’s philosophy of history is simultaneously both a descriptive metaphysics of history and an elucidation of the relation between historical and philosophical thought. As a descriptive metaphysics, Ahlskog argues that Collingwood’s account has an irreducible and underexplored role for contemporary issues in the philosophy of history. The metaphilosophical import of Collingwood’s philosophy of history is unpacked through an elaboration of Collingwood’s ideas about the historicity of human experience and understanding. In conclusion, Ahlskog argues that the metaphilosophical dimension of Collingwood’s philosophy of history is integrally connected with the concept of history as self-knowledge.

The status of art in Plato's philosophy has always been a difficult problem. As a matter of fact, he even threw the poets out from his ideal state, a passage that has led some interpreters to assess that Plato did not develop a proper philosophy of art. Nevertheless, R. G. Collingwood, wrote an article titled “Plato's Philosophy of Art”. How can it be? What could lead one of the most important aesthetic scholars of the first half of the twentieth century to make this thesis about Plato? To understand Collingwood's position at that time, I will review it in a new light: his own philosophy of art at that moment as it was propounded in Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, a work he published that same year. I will also examine how Collingwood's position changed when he returned to the same subject in 1938, on the publication of The Principles of Art. Finally, I will end this article defending the correctness of Collingwood's earlier interpretation of Plato's position on art.

Conspiracy theories are widely deemed to be superstitious. Yet history appears to be littered with conspiracies successful and otherwise. (For this reason ‘cock-up’ theories cannot in general replace conspiracy theories since in many cases the cock-ups are simply failed conspiracies.) Why then is it silly to suppose that historical events are sometimes due to conspiracy?  The only argument known to me is due to Sir Karl Popper who criticizes what he calls ‘the conspiracy theory of society’ in The Open Society and elsewhere.  His critique of the conspiracy theory is indeed sound.  But it is a theory no sane person maintains.  Moreover its falsehood is compatible with the prevalence of conspiracies.  Nor do his arguments create any presumption against conspiracy theories of this or that.  Thus the belief that it is superstitious to posit conspiracies is itself a superstition.  The paper concludes with some speculations as to why this superstition is so widely believed.

Fearing that his health would not permit him time to leave to the world the full range and depth of his offerings in philosophy, R. G. Collingwood sat down in the late summer of 1938 with the intention of getting as much of his thinking down on paper and out in public as he could in the time left to him. The result of this flurry of activity was An Autobiography: a short, bold, and stylistically informal book that is not only immensely readable as the life-story of an unceasingly active man, but also philosophically rich, in places intriguing and, above all, accessible to any reader. After four chapters of what are mostly memoirs of his youth, chapter five of this Autobiography describes one of the fundamental concepts of Collingwood’s thinking on various subjects: namely, what he calls his “logic” (or “theory”) of question and answer. It is an extremely suggestive and deceptively complex chapter – which is probably part of the reason why Collingwood scholars have offered so many different accounts of the significance or “place” of “question and answer” in Collingwood’s philosophy...

This long paper makes the following claims on Collingwood's theoretical and methodological approach to the study of human societies: 1. All social scientific research has both a historical and a non-historical component, which we may call, in the restricted sense of the word, 'scientific'. The scientific component is general, the historical one particular or concrete (see proposition 5). The scientific component is always subordinated to the historical one. – 2. The subject-matter of history (understood as the historical component of social scientific research) is both multiple and single. On the one hand, it is multiple for it divides itself into more or less distinct areas of cultural activity -- mainly art, technology, science, philosophy, law, politics, mores. On the other hand, it is single, for these areas, although distinct, are not separated; they interact in many ways, and those interactions are what the historian studies. – 3. Each cultural area, as well as their interactions, evolve in what is almost always a progressive sequence. Nonetheless various forms of regression, recession and decline also take place. Humans keep struggling between civilization and barbarism. This back and forth also belongs to the subject-matter of history. – 4. The actions of humans, whose products are res gestae ('things achieved') are always concrete solutions to equally concrete problems faced by individuals and groups of individuals who also are concrete, ie situated on a given cultural level. There is no greater fallacy than to conceive problems faced by people as 'general' or people facing problems as 'general human beings' (see proposition 1). By the way, cultural areas are defined by such problems (see proposition 2). – 5. Concrete solutions to concrete problems make up human actions which historians (or social scientists insofar as they are historians) can only identify, interpret and evaluate by means of normative theories ('criteriological sciences'). Those theories are eminently applicable to the processes of civilization and barbarism themselves (see proposition 3), for these processes are also normative ideas. – 6. Normative theories are not only the instrument through which we can identify, interpret and evaluate res gestae (see proposition 4); they are themselves res gestae. In that sense propositions 1-5 apply to normative theories as well, and so they also belong to the subject-matter of history. – 7. The identification, interpretation and evaluation of the solutions to concrete problems (including the solutions to the concrete problems solved by the normative theories themselves) is all that historians as historians do. And all that historians as historians do is to solve concrete problems (those of historical research), which belong as such also to the subject-matter of history ('second-order history'). – 8. There always is some décalage between the cultural level of the historian and the cultural level of the human beings (including other historians) whom he or she studies. Such décalage is sometimes huge, and we should never hide it. On the contrary, it has to be faced with courage and lucidity.

An exploration of the connections between two ideas that beguile us in their relative proximity but which stand stubbornly apart, if only because of the considerable distance between their respective purveyor’s styles of thinking:  Proust’s idea of involuntary memory—represented by the Madeleine—and Wittgenstein’s  idea of aspect-perception— represented by the famous Duck-Rabbit drawing.  Both are unassailably real, from a psychological point of view, or at their least basic experiences are real, if not their theoretical interpretation on the part of Proust and Wittgenstein.  I consider the consequences and ramifications of the assumption that these two ideas—or sets of ideas— are indeed very close, that they form no less than the basis of the human life-world and the nature of art.  

By means of a reading of the penultimate chapter of Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method, this paper offers a re-evaluation of several points in leading interpretations of his philosophy. It is argued that this chapter, ‘Philosophy as a Branch of Literature’, invites us to rethink the relation between a systematic or problem-oriented and an historical or exegetical philosophy; how linguistic analysis (particularly in the form of ordinary language philosophy) relates to the history of philosophy; and how the question of literature in philosophy is not merely a question about literature, but of philosophy.
In contrast to Connelly and D’Oro, it is here argued that Collingwood  (a) offers a profound criticism of the idea that philosophical problems are eternal, (b) invites us to deepen our understanding of ordinary language philosophy as well as (c) the idea of a therapeutic method in philosophy, and  (d) problematizes the tendency to think that the question about the form philosophical writing takes is a secondary issue that can be side-stepped.

Key Words
Collingwood, philosophical method, history of philosophy, ordinary language philosophy, literature, analytic philosophy

In this essay, I examine the similarities between the Lake District in England and Iceland. Both places have tales of a Norse past and settlement, but these settlements were much more closely linked than has previously been discussed. Using place-name studies, I was able to compare almost identical names in both Iceland and the Lake District. I used some of the essential work of Gillian Fellows-Jensen, as well as newer scholarship by Ryan Mark Foster and Martina Domines Veliki to establish historical and onomastic links. Both locations share a distant Norse background with Ireland, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man. Though the Lake District has very little documentary evidence, especially in comparison with Iceland, using place-names, contemporary sources and Landnámabók, I was able to connect activity in Irish Sea to the settlement period of Iceland.
What first alerted me to these similarties was W.G. Collingwood’s nineteenth century work, A Pilgrimage to the Saga-steads of Iceland. Hailing from the Lake District, Collingwood visited Iceland to venture through the Icelandic landscape and to witness firsthand the farms and features the sagas described. In his account, he often compares parts of the Icelandic countryside to landscape features back in the Lake District. Literary tourism was originally born in the Lake District as people followed in the footsteps of Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth. This literary tourism that Collingwood brought to Iceland, however, was revolutionary in transforming how people interacted with the sagas and with the Icelandic landscape. This study aims at answering some questions as to why some Norse place-names went out of use in Iceland and how two very different places were eventually defined by their later literary output.

Im 18. Jahrhundert in den Kanon der schönen Künste aufgenommen, strebten moderne Tänzer seit Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts zunehmend danach, den Tanz als von den anderen Künsten unabhängige und gleichwertige – wenn nicht sogar höherwertige – Kunstform zu etablieren. Um dies zu rechtfertigen, wurde der Tanz in direktem oder indirektem Rückbezug auf Wagner und Nietzsche als der Ursprung aller Künste deklariert. Zu einer Art Ursprache der Menschheit erhoben, in der diese ihre Emotionen universell verständlich zum Ausdruck bringt, stellt sich die Frage, ob im Medium Tanz das Problem der Übersetzung zwischen Kulturen möglicherweise aufgehoben ist: Erreicht der Tanz als ursprüngliche, vorrangig auf emotionaler Ebene ansetzende Sprache des Menschen eine Ebene der Unmittelbarkeit, auf der eine Übersetzung gar nicht mehr notwendig erscheint? Ausgehend vom theoretischen Ansatz des Philosophen und Ästhetikers Robin George Collingwood, der den Tanz noch vor allen anderen Künsten als eine Sprache bezeichnet, werden im Weiteren Schriften der deutschen Ausdruckstänzer Mary Wigman und Rudolf von Laban beispielhaft erörtert. Auf diese Weise möchte ich mich in diesem Aufsatz dem Thema Tanz als Sprache annähern, um das größere Themenfeld von Kunst, Sprache und Übersetzung um den wichtigen Aspekt des Tanzes zu erweitern.

Does R. G. Collingwood’s meta-philosophical theory that concepts in philosophy are organized as “scales of forms” apply to his own work on the nature of history? Or is there some inconsistency between Collingwood’s work as a philosopher of history and as a theorist of philosophical method? This article surveys existing views among Collingwood specialists on the applicability of Collingwood’s “scale of forms” thesis to his own philosophy of history, especially the accounts of Leon Goldstein and Lionel Rubinoff, and outlines the obvious objections to such an application. These objections however are found to be answerable. It is shown that Collingwood did indeed think the scale of forms thesis should apply to the philosophy of history, and even that he identified the “highest” form in history as a kind of scientific research or inquiry. But it is not demonstrated that Collingwood identified the “lower” forms explicitly. An account is then provided of the three distinct forms that can be identified in Collingwood’s philosophy of history, and of the “critical points” by which (according to Collingwood’s philosophical method) lower forms are negated and incorporated by higher forms. But it is also explained that these forms are not neatly coterminous with the stages in Western philosophical thinking about history as Collingwood narrates them in The Idea of History.

[This DRAFT book chapter is virtually complete. A slightly edited version of this chapter has been submitted and approved for publication in the forthcoming volume The Philosophical Legacy of Jorge J.E. Gracia, scheduled to be published in 2021by Rowman & Littlefield.]

Abstract: The question of development and its place in the world is one of the oldest in the history of metaphysics. In the course of the formative years of the discipline that culminated in the metaphysical views of Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus’ emphasis on development qua concrete unity of process and result eventually gave way to a commitment to identify, in one degree or other of abstraction from becoming, the fundamental locus of reality, intelligibility, and goodness with being per se. Classic examples include Plato’s absolutely separate and timeless forms as well as Aristotle’s absolutely immutable and distinct infimae species (including both immaterial and materiate forms), in terms of which his closely related theory of scientific demonstration is constructed.

Despite its subordination, the theme of development, even in the realm of presumably immaterial and timeless being, was never entirely neglected – important Islamaic and Christian metaphysicians often emphasized the active and dynamic as opposed to static nature of pure being or existence. Eventually, however, the categories of what later Christian metaphysicians would come to call “general metaphysics”, and later Islamaic metaphysicians “general matters”, would become increasingly ossified, static, and conceived in ever greater abstraction from the intelligible realities, which are intrinsic values, that they are supposed to be about. In the West, as famously explained by Étienne Gilson: The resultant science of ontology eo nomine became easy prey to Kant’s critique of the powers of abstract a priori reason. That critique would also diminish confidence in the ontological aspects of earlier metaphysical systems which trace, ultimately, to Parmenides; as well as to any intellectual intuition of some separate or absolute rational fact and the associated infallible and incorrigible axioms upon which scientific demonstration depends. Closely related, confidence in the knowability of intrinsic value also diminished, in tandem with the rise of the value-free and purely quantificational conceptions of science that dominate the present age.

In the spirit of several famous post-Kantian and later Islamaic metaphysicians, in this chapter we cast back, beyond Parmenides, to Heraclitus as the starting point of the metaphysical enterprise as well as of the developmental paradigm of metaphysics. The first section builds upon Jorge F. E. Gracia’s conception of metaphysics in terms of categories per se and their interrelations. A development of Gracia’s conception incorporates insights from R. G. Collingwood’s scale of forms and G. R. G. Mure’s conception of development. In the resultant synthesis, the interrelation of categories is conceived in terms of a developing series of categories. The second section situates Heraclitus as the founder of Western metaphysics in general and of the developmental paradigm in particular. The next section discuses aspects of the tension between the developmental and ontological aspects of Aristotle’s metaphysics and associated theory of scientific demonstration; these contributed to the eventual collapse of Aristotelian science. Finally, some basic ideas of mathematician William Lawvere’s adaptation of Hegel’s objective logic are formulated using the language of contemporary mathematical category and topos theory, a framework that holds out the exciting promise of doing for developmental metaphysics what symbolic logic has done for ontology. The preliminary result is illustrated via a metaphysical theory of Benedetto Croce.

The essays in this dual language volume were inspired by recent challenges facing the humanities. Its idea was first conceived when the author  came across with an issue of the elegant journal of Oxford University, examining the future of liberal education in the Western world. This idea led to a two-year-long research, first investigating some of the most important philosophical voices of our days and second trying to make sense of the Hungarian situation in particular. This volume presents six English language essays about the first theme, and six Hungarian language ones of the second topic. The reason behind this linguistic duality is first to underline the fact that all humanistic enquiry is language-dependent, and second to show how difficult it is for a thinker from one of the more exotic language communities to try to reach out for a wider audience.

By outlining R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history, this paper aims to scrutinize Turkish archaeology in terms of its inability to produce theoretical knowledge and contribute to public understanding of the past. Collingwood, in his seminal book “The Idea of History”, discusses the negative impact of positivism and theory of evolution on 19th century historians who were content with accumulating historical facts without explaining and theorizing historical phenomenon. In my opinion, Collinwood’s critique of the 19th century positivist conduct of history is well comparable to current Turkish archaeology. One can describe the scientific process in Turkish archaeology also as “information collecting” as opposed to hypothesis testing, knowledge producing and theory building. This very condition undermines both the quality of archaeology as a scientific discipline and its ability to get in touch with the public in a responsible way. It appears that transcending these problems may be initiated with a critique of the positivist framework that reduces archaeology merely to a fieldwork activity to collect information on past societies. On the other hand, the archaeologists also need to reflect on the uses of archaeological knowledge to develop novel ways in which to approach the public, allowing them to appreciate and understand the vast historical heritage of Turkey. I suggest that in the long run, archaeologists in Turkey should develop a more self-reflexive understanding of their discipline and show the courage to challenge structural problems by constructing new practices both within the universities and at the field.

Bu yazıda, R.G. Collingwood’un tarih felsefesi perspektifinden Türkiye arkeolojisini bilimselleşme ve toplumsallaşma başlıkları altında incelemeye çalışacağım. Collingwood, “Tarih Tasarımı” adlı kitabında 19. yüzyılda tarihçilerin doğa bilimlerindeki pozitivizm dalgasından ve evrim kuramından nasıl etkilendiklerini ve bu etkinin tarih bilimi açısından doğurduğu olumsuz sonuçlara değinir. Kanımca, Türkiye arkeolojisindeki bilim anlayışı Collingwood’un eleştirdiği 19. yüzyıl tarihçiliği ile çok benzeşmektedir. Türkiye arkeolojisinde bilim yapma anlayışı arka planında pozitivizmin yer aldığı bir malûmatçılık etkinliği olarak tarif edilebilir. Bu durum, arkeolojinin bir bilim etkinliği olarak niteliğini olumsuz etkilemekle kalmayıp ayrıca onun toplumsallaşmasını da önemli ölçüde engellemektedir. O halde, arkeolojinin modus operandi’sinden kaynaklanan bu sorunların aşılabilmesi için ilk etapta bilimsel etkinliği malûmatçılığa indirgeyen ve onu meşru kılan pozitivist anlayışla hesaplaşmaya girilmesi gerekmektedir. Toplumsallaşma ayağında ise arkeolojinin ne işe yaradığı veya yaraması gerektiği ile ilgili temel bir soruyla yüzleşme süreci bizi beklemektedir. Türkiye arkeolojisinin daha sağlam bilimsel ve toplumsal temellere erişebilmesi için,  şu anda yürürlükte olan arkeoloji pratiği üzerine self-refleksif (özdüşünümsel) düşünme alışkanlığını geliştirmenin yanında, uzun vadede yapısal değişimi sağlayacak pratikleri hem üniversitede hem de arazide hayata geçirme cesaretini göstermesi bir zorunluluktur.

This paper defends an idealist form of non-reductivism in the philosophy of mind. I refer to it as a kind of conceptual dualism without substance dualism. I contrast this idealist alternative with the two most widespread forms of non-reductivism: multiple realisability functionalism and anomalous monism. I argue first, that functionalism fails to challenge seriously the claim for methodological unity since it is quite comfortable with the idea that it is possible to articulate a descriptive theory of the mind. Second, that as an attempt to graft conceptual mind-body dualism onto a monistic metaphysics, the idealist alternative bears some similarities to anomalous monism, but that it is superior to it because it is not vulnerable to the charge of epiphenomenalism. I conclude that this idealist alternative should be given serious consideration by those who remain unconvinced that a successful defence of the non-reducibility of the mental is compatible with the pursuit of a naturalistic agenda.

R. G. Collingwood's New Leviathan (1942) presents an account of two 'dialectical' political processes that are ongoing in any body politic. Existing scholarship has already covered the first: a dialectic between a 'social' and a 'non-social' element, which Collingwood identifies in Hobbes. 1 This study elucidates the second: a dialectic between Liberals and Conservatives, which regulates the 'percolation' of liberty and the rate of 'recruitment' into what Collingwood calls 'the ruling class'. The details of this second dialectic are to be found not in Hobbes, but in classical elite theory, especially in the work of Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, who have not previously been discussed in relation to Collingwood.

Au cours des dernières décennies, la question de la réalité du passé historique suscite un vif débat qui concerne non seulement l’historiographie ou la théorie de l’histoire, mais aussi la critique littéraire. Ce débat a été posé d’estomper la distinction entre la représentation
historique et le récit fictif, ce qui met ainsi en question la prétention de l’historien de trouver une mesure de la “réalité” du passé historique. Cet article analyse la réponse critique que Paul Ricoeur propose, dans les différentes périodes de son oeuvre, au défi soulevé par le scepticisme
historique. Il met en relief la manière dont Ricoeur, à la suite de sa lecture critique de la philosophie de Heidegger au cours des années 1980 et au début des années 1990, emprunte dans son ouvrage tardif "La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli" un certain nombre de concepts clés
proposés par Heidegger dans "Être et temps", pour étayer sa théorie de la réalité du passé historique. L’objectif de cet article est moins de proposer une exégèse du travail théorique de Ricoeur que de soumettre à l’examen critique le rôle des concepts heideggériens dans son
interprétation du passé.

Strauss’s invitation to understand Greek authors as they understood themselves was attacked by influential scholars as anti-historical. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the charge is due to a misunderstanding of Strauss’s position on the respective role of interpretation and criticism in historicism. In the second part, I highlight Strauss’s view of the tension between scientific history as the manifestation of a certain age, and scientific history as the culmination of historical progress. In the third part, I discuss Strauss’s thesis that the belief in progress prevented Collingwood from taking past thinkers seriously. Collingwood claimed that the Greeks failed to appreciate that age-long traditions shaped their thought. Strauss held the opposite: the beginning of Greek philosophy coincides with questioning the identity between the ancestral and the good, and philosophy in Plato’s Republic is shown to be a form of critical reflection on the reasons why certain traditions and myths can exercise political, religious, and psychological power.