Robin George Collingwood

In what sense is historical knowledge dependent on testimony? The essay approaches this question by examining one of the most important philosophers of history during the twentieth century, Robin George Collingwood, and his controversial account of historical testimony. The general aim of the essay is to show both the errors of previous interpretations of Collingwood and, concurrently, to demonstrate the relevance of Collingwood’s account for understanding the role of testimony in the human sciences. The main argument of the essay is that Collingwood spoke of “testimony” with a specific sense of reliance in mind. This fact is crucial both for accurately understanding Collingwood’s philosophy of history and for understanding the relation between testimony and history as different forms of knowledge.

Abstract

In my dissertation I show that classical pragmatists understood their philosophical projects to be broadly anti-sceptical in nature—a point recent literature sometimes obscures. I then extend their ideas and deploy them against subjectivistic strains in contemporary thought.

To unpack the claims of pragmatists, I use the exegetical approach R. G. Collingwood advocated when he noted that identically worded statements have different meanings when offered as answers to different questions. He accordingly warned that we cannot grasp the intended meaning of a philosophical text simply by reading the statements in it.  We must also consider historically specific concerns that prompted the author to write it.  I particularly consider how pragmatists were provoked by discoveries in biology, by debates between empiricistic and “a priorist” psychologists and by developments in scientific methodologies, especially those tied to late 19th and early 20th century physics.

By clarifying and then extending the pragmatic philosophy of Dewey, James and Peirce—and by drawing occasional support from others such as Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Heidegger—I challenge a range of sceptical and subjectivistic currents, especially those grounded in the tenet that knowledge consists of mental representations that correlate with the “outer world.”  I use James’ critique of empiricistic epistemologies, for example, to engage with Richard Dawkins who assumes a correspondence theory of truth that is at odds with scientific practices and that would, if taken seriously, undermine our capacity to even affirm the validity of a heliocentric model of the solar system over a geocentric one.  I enter into debates about whether “unconscious cognition,” as the psychologist A. G. Greenwald put it, is “smart or dumb.”  I do so because the mistaken notion that intelligent activity is necessarily conscious activity perpetuates subjectivism by seriously exaggerating the mental side of knowing. When discussing Dewey, I focus on how his understanding of both the fine and practical arts informed his theories of perception, knowledge and meaning, and how these helped him refute the notion that experience consists of representations “in” the mind or brain. With Dewey and others such as Merleau-Ponty, I strive to show that interactions in the world achieve outcomes traditionally attributed to inner operations of mind or brain, and that the quandary about how we can get outside of our own experience to know the world is not as great a problem as we have supposed.

Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge based on the way human knowledge is constructed through social interactions amongst individuals (Brooks & Brooks, 1993). In light of our recent obsession with improving and measuring outcomes through standards in the classroom, social constructivism offers many practical solutions and theoretical ideas that often lead to good learning and teaching. The key here is that utilizing social constructivism in the classroom is tied to learning and not just "performance." Adams (2006) notes that it is precisely because of the emphasis on "learning" that social constructivism should become more evident in today's classrooms. The primary underlying factor for the focus on social constructivism in this paper can be traced to its initial theoretical origins: people construct their own understanding of the world, which, in turn, creates their own knowledge. Ishii (2003) states that, children too, construct, learn, and gain knowledge in the educational classroom setting as they progress through the system. Human acts of communication by way of language, real world experiences and interaction amongst one's peers leads to the notion of individually constructed knowledge. This final evolutionary step in acquiring knowledge is the key ingredient when trying to stimulate critical thinking in the classroom. Yet, in the case of social constructivism, individual knowledge and social knowledge are one and the same. Gordon (2008), states that this final form of knowing can only be constructed by the confluence of perspectives and ideological stances. Students involved in a social constructivist classroom are often involved in discussion, collaboration amongst one another, and solving problems through projects.

"Pergunta e Resposta" é a tradução do capítulo V intitulado “Question and Answer” da obra de Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943) intitulada An Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939, pp. 29-43). Este capítulo é de suma importância para os estudiosos da filosofia hermenêutica de Hans-Georg Gadamer, uma vez que este desenvolveu sua lógica de pergunta e resposta em partes partindo desse escrito de Collingwood.

I offer a fourfold taxonomy of species of clarity (§2), before focusing (§3) on two notions that are pertinent to understanding the forms of the notions of clarity in science, poetry and, in particular, philosophy. I argue that the notion of clarity that I call ‘scientific clarity,’ which is marked by its reliance on technical terms, though often an appropriate norm of clarity, is not the only way in which something can be clear. In particular, poetry, on R. G. Collingwood’s account, entirely eschews technical terms, but can nonetheless be crystal clear. It achieves this clarity by sensitivity to the richness of language: rhythm, ambiguity, etc. In §4, I argue that some philosophy uses language in this same way to reach its philosophical ends. Accordingly, we should allow that this is a legitimate philosophical method, and not judge such philosophy by the inappropriate standards of scientific clarity.

In what sense is historical knowledge dependent on testimony? The essay approaches this question by examining one of the most important philosophers of history during the twentieth century, Robin George Collingwood, and his controversial account of historical testimony. The general aim of the essay is to show both the errors of previous interpretations of Collingwood and, concurrently, to demonstrate the relevance of Collingwood’s account for understanding the role of testimony in the human sciences. The main argument of the essay is that Collingwood spoke of “testimony” with a specific sense of reliance in mind. This fact is crucial both for accurately understanding Collingwood’s philosophy of history and for understanding the relation between testimony and history as different forms of knowledge.

Collingwood’s aim in The Principles of Art is “to answer the question: What is art?” (p. 1) The answer Collingwood offers to that question, that art is the expression of emotion, has become notorious for its implausibility. I consider one objection against this theory, namely that it is unclear what is rendered art by this definition: for it sometimes appears to define art too broadly, containing all utterances and gestures; but at other times to define art too narrowly, excluding much of what we intuitively consider art.

I argue that this objection is mistaken, because it is founded upon a misunderstanding of the sort of project in which Collingwood is engaged. I propose a new reading, via his philosophical methodology, under which ‘art’ is differentially rather than binarily realisable. According to this new reading, art is something found in every human experience or activity, but to a greater or lesser extent. I close by suggesting one reason why Collingwood’s project under this reading is more philosophically interesting than it is under the standard reading, namely that it can give a better account of borderline cases of art.

The sciences of the soul, psychology and psychoanalysis, are in a kind of middle position between the natural sciences and the humanities - because they generally study the human being as a physical-spiritual 'hybrid being'. Consequently, they are particularly affected by the fundamental discourses in scientific theory about the different ways of knowing "explaining" and "understanding". Psychoanalysis, in particular, exhibits clear features of a hermeneutic discipline. For its part, the hermeneutic method is inseparably linked to a school of thought that was influential for the most part in Germany, for which the names of Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) are representative. The most radical representative of the hermeneutic 'school', however, was not a German, but the British philosopher and archaeologist Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943), whose work, which for a long time received little attention, has enjoyed a renewed reception in recent decades. His relationship to psychology and psychoanalysis will be examined in the following. In the process, striking parallels will be revealed, especially to psychoanalytic thought. Like Freud, with whom he shared a passion for history and archaeology, Collingwood was convinced that the past keeps its power alive in man.

There are two overall claims I want to make in this chapter. Understanding others requires that the interpreter possesses the concept of truth and the problem of other minds is a problem separate from the problem of other periods. These claims have to do with what understanding others is and what the problem of other periods consists of, not with methods of understanding others and other periods.

Until the advent of recording technology, the composer's influence as a
performer or teacher was continued posthumously only by his or her pupils
in an oral (and aural) tradition, and in written sources. By preserving the
composer's own performance in an audible form which can be recalled at any time and in any place, we have the equivalent, albeit mediated, of a direct experience with the composer. What we need to decide is how much
credence we should give to this information in relation to the score and
the other data used to prepare a performance.

This essay discuses the role of the score and recording in musicological research. It then examines some of the recordings in which Messiaen performs his own music or has had direct or indirect influence on
the performance of others, and suggests that these recordings are an invaluable aid to interpretation. Messiaen's own recordings point to a 'manner of realization' for his music, in effect a performance practice (or perhaps better a performance tradition), which will be an axiomatic reference point for future interpretations.

This special double issue of Collingwood & British Idealism Studies comprises seven original critical essays on the philosophy of Giovanni Gentile, together with new English translations of four of Gentile's shorter works.

The aim of the volume is to give English-speaking readers a wider appreciation of the breadth of Gentile's thought than the existing literature allows.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction, by Bruce Haddock and James Wakefield

Part I: Critical essays

2. Giovanni Gentile as Historian of Philosophy: The Method of Immanence in Practice, by Bruce Haddock
3. The Integral Philosophical Experience of Actualism, by Antonio Giovanni Pesce
4. Giovanni Gentile as Moral Philosopher, by James Wakefield
5. Gentile, Education and Mind, by Andrew Vincent
6. Gentile and Modernity, by Daniela Coli
7. The Actuality of Gentile’s Philosophy of History, by Rik Peters
8. Collingwood, Gentile and Italian Neo-Idealism in Britain, by James Connelly

Part II: Primary sources in translation (all translated by Lizzie Lloyd and James Wakefield)

9. The Method of Immanence, by Giovanni Gentile
10. Pure Experience and Historical Reality, by Giovanni Gentile
11. The Moral Problem, by Giovanni Gentile
12. Basic Concepts of Actualism, by Giovanni Gentile

We urgently need an alternative to Kant's proposals regarding the relation of theology and philosophy.  Kant is an atomist about theology (he sees religions as utterly separate) and a holist about philosophy (he sees reason as universal and whole).  Kant's error is one of scale: he over-states both the separation of religious traditions (which are in fact constantly shaping each other) and the universality of reason (which is in fact deeply contextual).  Current debates in Indonesia about Pancasila can fruitfully be investigated by considering them in Rawlsian and Habermasian frameworks and then by recasting them according to a contrasting, contextual, approach to philosophy.

This article develops and defends a performative conception of historical re-enactment as a fruitful method by which intellectual historians can interpret texts. Specifically, it argues that, in order to understand properly any given text, the intellectual historian should re-enact the performative activities of the writer of that text. The first section analyses one of the most influential and powerful theories of historical re-enactment, namely that found in the later writings of Robin George Collingwood. Drawing on Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances, certain key insights are identified in Collingwood's theory. Crucially, certain limitations are also stressed. The second section argues that an alternative theory of re-enactment can be developed by drawing on Judith Butler's theory of "performativity". The interpretative implications of a writer's genre, mode of experience, presuppositions, deliberate inventiveness and unintended failures are hig...

Este ensaio explora a dimensão existencial e ética do passado histórico a partir de duas perspectivas diferentes. Na primeira parte, o ensaio aborda a questão, examinando a dimensão pessoal do passado histórico a partir da perspectiva do sujeito, elaborando a essa perspectiva por meio de ilustrações literárias de Austerlitz, de W. G. Sebald. Na segunda parte, o ensaio aborda a questão sob uma perspectiva conceitual, a fim de articular as maneiras pelas quais a ideia de um passado histórico se conecta ao conceito de história como autoconhecimento. O ensaio se articula com a filosofia da história de R. G. Collingwood, a fim de mostrar que existem aspectos éticos e existenciais que são significativos para o conceito de passado histórico. Por fim, o ensaio argumenta que, tanto da perspectiva individual quanto conceitual, existe uma importante dimensão pessoal que reside dentro e não apenas além do passado histórico.

I owe you a dinner invitation, you owe ten years on your mortgage, and the government owes billions. We speak confidently about these cases of debt, but is that concept clear in its meaning? This book aims to clarify the concept of debt so we can find better answers to important moral and political questions.

This book seeks to accomplish two things. The first is to clarify the concept of debt by examining how the word is used in language. The second is to develop a general, principled account of how debts generate genuine obligations. This allows us to avoid settling each case by a bare appeal to moral intuitions, which is what we seem to currently do. It requires a close examination of many institutions, e.g. money, contract law, profit-driven finance, government fiscal operations, and central banking. To properly understand the moral and political nature of debt, we must understand how these institutions have worked, how they do work, and how they might be made to work.

There have been many excellent anthropological and sociological studies of debt and its related institutions. Philosophy can contribute to the emerging discussion and help us to keep our language precise and to identify the implicit principles contained in our intuitions.

In this paper I aim at presenting the way in which the British philosopher R.G. Collingwood discusses about the concept of «reality» using his famous "philosophical method", theorized in An Essay on Philosophical Method, a book from 1933. Curiously enough, he will apply the idea of "scale of forms" to the nature of reality only in a conference delivered in 1935-which remained unknown, as a manuscript, for many decades-entitled Method and Metaphysics. While briefly exposing the respective method, I will also try to prove to what extent the "scale of forms" is to be found in another book written by Collingwood on metaphysics, namely An Essay on Metaphysics, published in 1940.

این پژوهش با هدف بررسی و تحلیل تحوّلاتی نوشته شده که ادبیات فارسی در اواخر قرن نهم بر خود دیده است. در جستار پیش روی، ابتدا مقدّمه‌ای دربارۀ آرای صاحب‌نظران اعم از منطقیون، بلاغیون و ادبا دربارۀ شعر و حقیقت آن آمده است. سپس بر اساس روش‌های مرسوم در تاریخ اندیشه، تاریخ‌گرایی نوین و انسان‌شناسی، به بررسی و تحلیل گزاره‌ای از بهارستان که دربارۀ شعر و حقیقت آن بیان شده، پرداخته شده است. سعی بر آن بوده که این گزاره با استفاده از توصیف انبوه، نسبت به پس‌زمینه‌ای که در آن بیان شده است معنا شود. یافته‌ها نشان می‌دهد که منطقیون «تخیّل» را عنصر سازنده و حقیقت شعر معرّفی کرده و به تمایز نگاه خویش با نگاه جمهور که حقیقت شعر را وزن و قافیه می‌شمرده‌اند، تأکید ورزیده‌اند. البتّه همواره نظرگاه منطقیون مورد توجه نبوده است؛ بلکه در نظر بعضی از ادبا مانند جامی که اشعارش مملو از تخیّل است، نگرش جمهور در برابر نگرش منطقیون برکشیده شده است. نتایج به‌دست‌آمده از این پژوهش، سبب این تفوّق را برخاسته از ویژگی‌های دوره‌ای می‌داند که جامی در آن می‌زیسته است و می‌توان از آن با عنوان دورۀ گذار یاد کرد.
کلیدواژه‌ها: بهارستان جامی، پرسش و پاسخ، تذکره، دورۀ گذار، قرن نهم، گزاره.

This chapter explores how the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor integrated evidence from the ancient world into his most well-known work Primitive Culture (1871) and how his ideas about culture influenced early theories of Romanization. Tylor’s study of classics shaped how he entered one of the preeminent anthropological debates of his time: what is “culture” and do cultures progress towards civilization, degenerate towards savagery, or do both at different times? He famously defined culture as a holistic concept consisting of belief, art, laws, morals, etc., and he promoted an evolutionary theory of culture, which viewed cultures as progressing from a savage to civilized state with ‘survivals’ that could persist across stages. His evolutionary and more material ideas about culture, which drew on classical scholarship as well as ancient Greek and Latin texts, were broadly influential and, in turn, shaped the development of scholarship about the ancient world. Here, F. J. Haverfield and R. G. Collingwood—both based in Oxford around the same time that Tylor was—serve as case studies for the legacy of Tylor’s theories in so-called Romanization studies. Haverfield’s notion of a superior, comprehensive Roman culture that unilaterally spread throughout the provinces and his idea that aspects of ‘native’ culture could survive both seem in dialogue with Tylor’s ideas. More explicitly, Collingwood’s writings indicate that he was familiar with Tylor’s work and that he added nuance to Tylor’s ideas in promoting his own fusion model of Romanization. Tylor’s progressive theory of culture, refracted through Haverfield and Collingwood as well as more recent scholars, has a legacy in today’s studies of cultural change in the Roman provinces. Excavating the history of the term can, therefore, help us refine current approaches to questions raised in these studies.

Research-Based Discussion of the re-enactment method, a prescriptive method in teaching history content in secondary classrooms.  Session includes lesson resources and discussion of building greater student empathy...
Presented at School and University Partnership Conference for Education
Promising Practices for Improving Instruction

This paper revisits the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood with a view to suggesting a solution to two problems that are often discussed in the philosophy of history. The first concerns the conflictual relation between science and the history of the philosophy of science. Science aims to be delivering timeless truths about the structure of reality while the history of the philosophy of science seems to show that the timeless truths that science aims to uncover are relative to historical paradigms. Since it cannot be the case both that there are and there are not timeless truths the claims of science conflict with those of the history of the philosophy of science. I argue that for Collingwood the conflict between science and the history of the philosophy of science is an instance of the more general case concerning the relation between history and science understood as forms of inquiry governed by different absolute presuppositions.
By locating Collingwood’s philosophy of history against the background of his conception of metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions the paper aims to show that while the presuppositions of historical inquiry and of natural science are incompatible there is no deep ontological conflict between the two and the choice between history and natural science can be made on the basis of pragmatic considerations concerning which explanatory framework is best suited to address the question one wants answered. To understand
Collingwood’s handling of the conflictual relation between history (including the history of the philosophy of science) and science it will be necessary to undermine the widespread view that the primary goal of Collingwood’s metaphysics was to historicise knowledge, including, scientific knowledge. If Collingwood’s metaphysics is understood as arguing that there is no presuppositionless knowledge (rather than as claiming that all knowledge is time-bound) the possible co-existence of history and natural science is defended not by reducing scientific knowledge to historical knowledge (which would make historicism into a topsy-turvy version of scientism), but by showing that the methodological practices at work in these different forms of inquiry provide answers to different kinds of why-questions.
The second problem concerns whether the past can be objectively known. It has often been claimed that since history is written retrospectively, from a later point in time, there can be no such thing as access to the past as it is in-itself because the historian will view the past through the lens of his own zeitgeist. Collingwood would agree that there is no such thing as knowledge of the past in its immediacy wie es eigentlich gewesen, but denied that one can infer from the impossibility of knowing the past in its immediacy the impossibility of knowing the past from the perspective of historical agents with a different mindset from that of the historian. For to view reality from the point of view of historical agents with very different epistemic, moral and aesthetic norms is not equivalent to knowing the past initself or in its immediacy; it is rather to understand it through a different form of cultural mediation. His re-enactment doctrine is meant precisely to show that there is no principled barrier to understanding reality as the Greeks or the Romans did. The claim that it is at least in principle possible to adopt the perspective of past agents does not therefore entail that the past can be known wie es eigentlich gewesen or in-itself.
It is one thing to deny that the past can be known in-itself; it is another to assert that we cannot understand the world as it was understood by the Greeks, Romans and so on. The task of understanding past agents is not different in kind from that of understanding agents from other cultures that mightbe contemporaneous to the historian. Thus, unless one is willing to commit to the view that it is impossible to understand other (contemporaneous) cultures in their own terms there is no reason to hold, as Gadamer did, for example, that each new generation of historians necessarily must understand the past in a different way or, as Quine claimed, that there is no identity of meaning and that translation from past cultures must remain necessarily indeterminate.

This article develops and defends a performative conception of historical re-enactment as a fruitful method by which intellectual historians can interpret texts. Specifically, it argues that, in order to understand properly any given text, the intellectual historian should re-enact the performative activities of the writer of that text. The first section analyses one of the most infl uential and powerful theories of historical re-enactment, namely that found in the later writings of Robin George Collingwood. Drawing on Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances, certain key insights are identified in Collingwood's theory. Crucially, certain limitations are also stressed. The second section argues that an alternative theory of re-enactment can be developed by drawing on Judith Butler's theory of " performa-tivity ". The interpretative implications of a writer's genre, mode of experience, presuppositions, deliberate inventiveness and unintended failures are highlighted. The particularized nature of texts is shown to problematize the writing of unilinear histories of written debates. The article concludes by summarizing briefly the key methodological implications of performative re-enactment as they have been identified in the body of the article.

Current research in affectivity is often dominated by perspectives on the feeling/thinking dichotomy. In the paper first I reconstruct Collingwood’s position on this point as it is presented in his Religion and Philosophy, The Principles of Art, and New Leviathan, and then compare it shortly with Bergson’s view. In total five of Collingwood’s different readings of the feeling/thought relation are brought to light. Finally, I opt for a view that takes feeling and thought to be complementary and inseparable, and I try to explain why and how they are better treated in this way.

In this thesis, I will explicate the commitments and consequences of three metaphilosophical views: Metaphilosophical Realism (MR), Metaphilosophical Skepticism (MS), and Metaphilosophical Pragmatism (MP). These three views will be distinguished on several grounds, including their views on truth, reason, and progress. I will show that MR views philosophy’s relation to history as merely one as a form of pedagogy that is meant to give pupils the self-confidence to make sense of things in a particular way. For MS, philosophy lies forfeit to history, and historiography replaces philosophy as it shows an incommensurable plurality of ways of making sense. MP, however, takes historiography to be an essential part of philosophy for it reconciles distinct ways of making sense by redescribing them. In order to make redescription palatable both to redescriber and redescribed, we must conceive of a way of making sense as a skill rather than a collection of propositions.

Along with utilitarianism, British idealism was the most important philosophical and practical movement in Britain and its Empire during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Even though the British idealists have regained some of their standing in the history of philosophy, their own historical theories still fail to receive the deserved scholarly attention. This article helps to fill that major gap in the literature. Understanding historiography as concerning the appropriate modes of enquiring into the recorded past, this article analyses the key historiographical commitments that underpin the writings of the early T.H. Green (section two), Edward Caird (section three), and F.H. Bradley (sections four and five). Section six explores the influence of Bradley’s historiography. These approaches are linked by the belief that all thought can be properly understood only by critical historians who possess the appropriate tools with which to distinguish permanently valid truths from the transient imperfections with which those truths are mixed. A crucial division between them is the invocation of a neo-Hegelian Geist by the early Green and Caird, and Bradley’s reliance on a progressive human nature. Moreover, the article establishes that R.G. Collingwood’s highly influential theories of ‘absolute presuppositions’ and ‘re-enactment’ were taken largely from Bradley’s historiography.

This volume offers critical responses to philosophical naturalism from the perspectives of four different yet fundamentally interconnected philosophical traditions: Kantian idealism, Hegelian idealism, British idealism, and American pragmatism. In bringing these rich perspectives into conversation with each other, the book illuminates the distinctive set of metaphilosophical assumptions underpinning each tradition’s conception of the relationship between the human and natural sciences. The individual essays investigate the affinities and the divergences between Kant, Hegel, Collingwood, and the American pragmatists in their responses to philosophical naturalism. The ultimate aim of Responses to Naturalism is to help us understand how human beings can be committed to the idea of scientific progress without renouncing their humanistic explanations of the world. It will appeal to scholars interested in the role idealist and pragmatist perspectives play in contemporary debates about naturalism.

This paper considers Michael Oakeshott's philosophy in the light of the comparison with the idealism of Croce and Collingwood. It focuses on the relationship between different spiritual forms and on the role of philosophy. The paper shows the grounds of Oakeshott's refusal of a possible synthesis and of any hierarchy between different modes of experience. In so doing, it reveals Oakeshott's critique of any teleology in knowledge and of the connection between historical and logical development. On the other hand, it considers Oakeshott's conceptions about the dialectical and critical nature of philosophy. Overall, the paper illustrates the originality and the consistency of Oakeshott's interpretation of idealism.