Mind, history, and dialectic : The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood

108 Pages·1969·83.967 MB·English

by  Louis Mink

I
x
PREFACE
The most recent bibliography, containing the most complete list of
works about Collingwood, is in William M. Johnston's The Forma
tive Years of R. G. Collingwood (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1967).
MI ND, HISTORY,
In the essay which follows, Collingwood's ten philosophical
books are cited, by abbreviations, in the text. Except as noted, all
were published by or for Oxford University Press. In the order of
AND DIALECT IC
their writing, they are:
RP Religion and Philosophy (London: Macmillan and Co.,
1916) . r
SM Speculum Mentis (1924)
OPA Outlines of a Philosophy of Art (1925). Reprinted, complete,
in Essays in the Philosophy of Art by R. G. Collingwood, The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood
ed. Alan Donagan (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1964).
EPM An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933)
IN The Idea of Nature (written 1933-34, published 1945)
IH The Idea of History (written 1936-39, published 1946)
PA The Principles of Art ( 1938)
A An Autobiography (1939)
EM An Essay on Metaphysics (1940)
NL The New Leviathan ( 1942). This book, unlike Colling
wood's other books, is divided into paragraphs numbered
r.r, I.II, ... r.2, ... etc.; and citations of this book are
therefore to the numbered paragraphs rather than to pages.
CHAPTER I
Introduction
When a man is proud because he can understand
and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to
yourself, If Chrysippus had not written obscurely,
this man would have had nothing to be proud of.
-Epictetus, Enchiridion
I · Collingwood as a Systematic Philosopher
NoT MANY ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHERS IN THIS CENTURY HAVE
reached an audience wider than a corporal's guard of their own col
leagues, and if one were to name the English-speaking philosophers
who have been widely read among non-philosophers three names
would appear in surprising conjunction: Dewey, Russell, and Col
lingwood. On academic philosophy itself Collingwood's influence,
with scattered exceptions, has been negligible. Yet nine of his philo
sophical books-all, in fact, except his first book-remain in print
twenty-five years after his death. Although he never aimed to be a
"popular" philosopher like the now-forgotten C. E. M. Joad, Col
lingwood wrote his books not for his professional colleagues but for
an educated public; and he seems to have found not only an audi
ence but one which is interestingly diverse and quietly growing.
Historians have read The Idea of History who have not opened an
other philosophical book since they were undergraduates, and critics
and theorists of the arts are as familiar with The Principles of Art as
with any work of aesthetics in our time. And although Collingwood
was not a theologian, he has been rather more widely known in the
ological schools than in departments of philosophy. So many people
have called Collingwood an "unduly neglected" thinker that he is
coming to be surd y the best known neglected thinker of our time.
I
I 3 / Introduction
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC 2
It is easier to account for the indifference to Collingwood by his weight and authority. On the other hand, among the books there are
philosophical colleagues than for the continued interest in him by a prim a f acie inconsistencies of doctrines and methods. The sense of
wider audience. Alone among the Oxford philosophers of his gen interrelationship is not easily and smoothly transformed by the
eration, it was his fate to carry the banner of systematic philosophy reader into an understanding of systematic connections. One does
onto a field whence all but he had fled. In the quarter-century not expect consistency in a collection of obiter dicta, however bril
spanned by his major work, philosophy was rapidly changing char liant; but Collingwood's often memorable and provocative views
acter in the English-speaking world, and nowhere was the change carry with them the promise of being more than isolated insights
more definite than at Oxford. When Collingwood arrived at Oxford a~d then seem to abjure their own promise as they fall to fighting
as a student in 19(>7, the idealism of T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley with each other. As a consequence, Collingwood's work to an un
was already being replaced by the realism of Cook Wilson and usual degree calls. for interpretation. The very lucidity and straight
Prichard, and the high tide of realism in the l92o's was succeeded in forwardness of his style have tended to conceal this need. I have
the next decade by analytical philosophy. Independent by tempera never heard an historian complain that he could not understand The
ment, Collingwood took no part in this change, and as a result he !~ea of History; yet I am convinced, and much of this essay is de
stood alone, looking more and more like a familiar of all the devils signed to show, that unless this book is interpreted in the light of the
which were being industriously exorcised. To those who noticed that continuity of Collingwood's ideas developed through his other
he had translated Croce, he appeared to be Croce's English disciple. books, The Idea of History is certain to be misunderstood-crea
To others he looked like the last epigone of British Hegelianism. To tively misunderstood, perhaps, but it is a minor merit of a book that
still others he seemed a survival of a pernicious Kantianism which it is subject to interesting misinterpretations. The same could be said
would not down. of his other books, not excepting his own autobiography.
The truth is that Collingwood was a systematic philosopher in a Henry James has a story about a writer whose books were discov
time which had little use for philosophical systems. To a consider ered to be p~rts of. a grand des!gn which could not be suspected by
able degree, however, he shared his colleagues' suspicion of the anyone readmg a smgle book; m the image which gives its name to
grandiose systems of the nineteenth century. Like the systematic James_'s s~ory, they were parts of a "figure in the carpet." The meta
philosophers of the tradition, he was concerned to articulate the phor 1s smgularly apposite to Collingwood's series of books, at least
categories of experience in their full range and complexity, and to m t~e sense that each book needs some interpretative background
accommodate aesthetic, religious, and political experience as well as pr?v1ded_by one or more of the others. This is not because he kept in
the more familiar philosophical problems of perception, logical in mmd a smgle complex system which he parcelled out bit by bit, but
ference, and ethical judgment. But like philosophical analysts, he because his thinking went through a process of development and
never reached a conclusion on an issue merely by deducing what he change in which earlier stages were modified but not entirely super
ought to think about it from general principles already formed. As a seded by ~ater on~s, a process which is itself an illustrative example
?f
result, the corpus of his work makes up neither a system nor a series the not10n of dia.lectical change which was one of his own leading
of analyses of particular problems. After Speculum Mentis, which ideas. Almost certamly he was not aware of this, and we can under- '
was an early attempt at a system in the classical sense, each of his stand it better than he, since we can read his books together as he
books must be seen as the discussion of a specific set of questions in never did. His Autobiography is of no help on this point, since it is a
the context of a possible system. His books are, as it were, not parts reconstruction of the past entirely from the standpoint of his inter
of a system but fragments of systems. Each one seems to belong to ests and recollections at the time of its writing in 1938; and he seems
some intellectual scheme which includes but goes beyond it, and the not even to have reread his own earlier books for this purpose (cf. A,
feeling that in discussing art or history or religion one is focusing 56).
one's attention on a specific area but not cutting off, as with blinders, One example may suffice, for the moment, of the way in which
one's sense of its relation to other areas, gives each book a particular his books implicate, although they do not refer to, each other. The
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC I 4 5 / Introduction
philosophical chapters of The Idea of History have gener~lly been one. The provision of a coherent interpretation of Collingwood
thought to overintellectualize history unconscionably. Collingwood which takes both of these factors into account is, I believe, more il
says there that "all history is the history of thou~ht," and seems. to luminating than a study of the historical sources and affinities of his
mean by this that the historian can understand, m some honorific ideas. Such a study would be by no means irrelevant: Collingwood
sense of "understand," only those historical actions which resulted devoted. much time and thought to the study and teaching of the
from processes of deliberate reflection and calculation. But in The history of philosophy, and his own work can even be seen as a mo
Principles of Art (written in 1937, between the original draft of The saic of theses, problems, and methods whose provenance can be
Idea of History in 1936 and its partial revision in 1939), Colling traced. It could hardly be otherwise, in view of the fact that he re
wood develops in detail a philosophical psychology which makes the garded the history of philosophy not as a record of philosophical
connection between emotion and thought much closer and more doctrines to be accepted or refuted but as a series of problems about
continuous than it is commonly believed to be, and thereby makes what philosophers have meant, to be solved by interpreting what
clear that what he means by "thought" in The Idea of History is they have said as answers to questions which we ourselves must re
much broader in scope than the ratiocinative process his critics have construct and think through. But Collingwood cannot be identified
taken it to be. with any "school" although he learned something from many. His
Because he wrote for a "public" and because he believed that a conception of philosophy itself is ~~' and his repeated in
technical vocabulary conceals presuppositions which partly prejudge sistence that "philosophical reasoning leads to no conclusions which
any issue formulated in that vocabulary (EPM, 201-208), Colling we did not in some sense know already" (EPM, 161), as well as his
wood never availed himself of the systematic philosopher's privilege view that dialectical controversy reveals principles of antecedent but
of coining neologisms or advancing stipulative definitions-a proce unrecognized agreement (NL, 24.59), are principles which Socrates
dure which if it does not clarify at least does not mislead. But al would have claimed as his own; but at the same time the Socratic
though this admirable self-denial enhances the grace of an already Platonic ontology of Forms is entirely alien to Collingwood. His so
limpid style, it enormously increases the difficulty of tracing out the lution of the mind-body problem (in The New Leviathan) is
figure in the carpet whose arabesques lead from book to book. S inoz0t, as is also the genetic account of moral concepts (e.g.,
Terms shift their meaning from context to context, not like terms in "goodness is ... bestowed upon whatever possesses it by mind's
common language but in fact as covertly technical terms given tem practical activity in the form of desire," NL, lI.68), but his doctrine
porary rather than permanent jobs. The term "philosophy" itself as of the spontaneity of consciousness (PA, 207-208) is the antithesis
sumes such protean forms that, as T. M. Knox has observed (IH, of Spinoza's determinism. Kant's method of transcendental deduc
xv); Collingwood apparently regarded philosophy as identical with tion is ubiquitous in Colling~d, and not only in the Kantian form
whatever he was most interested in at the time. (But since he re of his primary question about history, "How is historical knowledge
garded philosophy as "thought about thought," this attitude is not possible?" But Kant's fundamental distinctions between understand
merely a parti pris.) ing and reason, between analytic and dialectic, between the theoreti
The discussion of Collingwood's books as a single series may cal and the practical, are as thoroughly abrogated by Collingwood as
therefore be of some use in correcting misinterpretations and in they were by Hegel. In fact, if Collingwood can be associated with
sketching a framework within which those who have been primar any single figure in the history of philosophy that one would be
ily interested in one part of the figure in the carpet (as historians Iisgcl, although even then only by virtue of Collingwood's brief but
have been familiar with The Idea of History) may at least discern its illuminating reinterpretation of Hegel in The Idea of History,
position in the larger outline. And this outline is both logical, be which disposes of the cliches that Hegel's dialectic was a mechanical
cause Collingwood was a systematic philosopher, and historical, be instrument grinding out historical inevitability, and that Hegel
cause he never thought of himself as having a system but issued a thought that political history ended with the Prussian state and the
series of "interim reports" (cf. EPM, 198) of his progress toward history of philosophy with himself. (A student who had read Col-
I
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC 6 7 / Introduction ,
lingwood before reading Hegel remarked to me with wit that he leas~ not obvious; but even its possibility is a warning against the
found himself regarding Hegel as a neo-Collingwoodian.) The habit, no less common now than it was among Collingwood's col
similarities between Collingwood and his older friend Croce have leagues, of lifting a sentence from its context and assuming that it
been widely remarked, although the differences between them are must mean what we would mean by it if it ever entered our heads to
generally ignored. And it has not been noticed, I believe, that the say such a thing.
modern philosopher most influential on Collingwood's later thought
-perhaps the only one-was Whitehead. There are no particular
affinities between the metaphysical scheme of Process and Reality, 2 · Affinities with Pragmatism and Existentialism
which is subjected to sympathetic but astute criticism in The Idea of
Nature, and any of Collingwood's leading ideas. But there is a re Once the figure is discerned, however, it reveals hitherto un
markable resemblance between Collingwood's mature view that the noticed affinities between Collingwood's thought and other types of
course of scientific thought reflects the logical efficacy of absolute recent philosophy with which he has never been identified and of
presuppositions which have a finite historical career, and White which he himself had no knowledge. We may well pause here to
head's thesis, in Science and the Modern World, that the fundamen take no_te of these, since the argument of the following chapters is
tal concepts of modern science have given rise, in the development not designed to prove nor to discuss in detail a thesis which never
of science from the seventeenth century to the present, to results theless, I am convinced, it supports: that the themes most explicit in
which can no longer be intelligibly interpreted in terms of those Collingwood's later work but discoverable throughout the whole ca
concepts, and which call for a new set of metaphysical concepts. Col reer of .his t~o~ght are those commonly associated with pragmatism
lingwood is no more a rival of Whitehead's than history is a rival of and existentialism. In a very general way, this may account for the
science. He regarded Whitehead as a "progressive" metaphysician, fact that philosophers have found in Collingwood a provocativeness
that is, one engaged in trying to state the presuppositions of modern not easy to dismiss as merely a matter of style or manner, while non
science rather than in defending as eternal truths the presuppositions philosophers have endured his philosophical arguments in the feel
of outmoded science. But he believed himself to be pursuing a differ ing th~t they c_arry significance beyond the intramural disputes of
ent, although related, aim: "the chief business of twentieth-century professional philosophers. Both pragmatism and existentialism have
philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history" (A, 79; ~ouched n~rves of modern thought and culture. If they have been, as
"twentieth-century history" does not mean the historical events of IS often said, less philosophical theories than expressions of secular
our century but its new historical consciousness, the "idea" of his faiths and do.u?ts, they have at least been relevant to the problematic
tory). One can imagine that in Collingwood's view Science and the human condition; and they have been not merely expressions of it
Modern World exhibits an historical consciousness in reflecting on ?ut pr~posals of ways of thinking about it. It is these ways of think
science; and it is thus an important datum for Collingwood's own mg which bear some comparison with Collingwood's ideas.
reflection on the historical consciousness and its implications. Collingwood's few references to pragmatism are brief and un
This is the merest sketch of Collingwood's philosophical pro illuminating. He never distinguishes among different theories of
genitors, and it could be indefinitely elaborated in numbers and in pragmatism or instrumentalism, and, -apart from one uncomplimen
detail (I have not mentioned, for example, Vico or Dilthey, al tary reference to William James's Varieties of Religious Experience
though Collingwood's debt to the former is as great as to Kant and (A, 9.3) and a footnote in Religion and Philosophy (1916), he never
to the latter as great as to Croce).1 But an historical study of "i~flu­ me~t10ns any othe~ pragmatist by name, not even the English prag
ences" is in the case of Collingwood very likely to be unilluminat matist F. C. S. Schiller. As early as Speculum Mentis, he dismissed
ing, because it begs the question of interpretation. It would be mis the "babblings of pragmatism," which, he said, "analyses the ab
leading to construct a genealogy of Collingwood's ideas as if it were s:ract co_ncept of science and jumps to the conclusion that the analy
evident what those ideas are. If there is a figure in the carpet, it is at sis applies to knowledge in general" (SM, 182). But despite his
I
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC 8 9 / Introduction
clearly very superficial understanding of a pragmatism which was at are not true or false but "right" or "wrong" in the sense that they
its apogee in the United States during his own career, he was never help or fail to help us get ahead in the process of inquiry-are intel
theless in unsuspected agreement on many points. ligible only as characteristic of a pragmatic, rather than of a corre
The first sentence of Speculum Mentis is "All thought exists for spondence, coherence, or semantic conception of truth.
the sake of action" (SM, 15); and the final chapter of his Autobiog Pragmatism has been widely represented as a philosophy of sci
raphy is entitled "Theory and Practice." Now it may be as much of entific method; Collingwood's comment on it in Speculum Mentis
an occupational disease among dons to believe that their ideas have reflects this opinion. However, it should not require argument that,
practical consequences as to insist that they need no such justifica while pragmatism, especially in the forms of it represented by Peirce
tion. But the fact is that Collingwood combatted as fiercely as and Dewey, was partisan to natural science against the still lively op
Dewey ~Jadical or categorical distinction between thinking and position from dogmatic philosophy and theology, pragmatism itself
acting, between the theoretical and the practical. What we call is not "scientific" but historical and genetic; it regards systems of
' thinking and what we call a~ting Collingwood regarded as ~ges of knowledge, social institutions, and concepts of value as arising-and
a sin le and continuous process. The intimate connection of thought perishing-in the transactions of men with nature and with each
and action he sometimes stated in a different way, for example, in other, and seeks to ease the process of change throucrh understand
the metaphor of thought as the "Inside" of action and action as the ing how past ways of solving problems become form~lized as habits
"Outside" of thought, a metaphor which is basic to his description of of mind and thereby inhibit the attack on new problems. Colling
the historical understanding of actions by the re-enactment of the wood could readily. have acknowledged as a statement of his own
thoughts of which they are the "Outside." This has often misled crit theory of absolute presuppositions Dewey's observation in his Logic:
ics who supposed that Collingwood regarded mind as a sort of Car "Failure to examine the conceptual structures and frames of ref
tesian mental substance inhabiting a physical body and having prop erence which are unconsciously implicated in even the seemingly
erties which are introspectable but not otherwise observable. But this most factual inquiries is the greatest single defect that can be found
is exactly what Collingwood wished to reject: he regarded mind not in any field of inquiry." 2 And; with a slight demurrer at the use of
as an entity but as an activity, with functions all of which are ac "mind" as an entity-word (and this is an objection which would be
tive! y expressed; his account of mind (as we shall see in detail in withdrawn after an examination of Collingwood's naturalistic the
Chapter 4) is, like that of the pragmatists, genetic and functional. In ory of mind), Dewey could readily have agreed with the summation
The New Leviathan he boldly attributed a kind of primacy to the of Speculum Mentis: "For the life of mind consists of raising and
practical over the theoretical with the broad claim that the root con solving problems, problems in art, religion, science, commerce, poli
ceptions of theoretical (in his terminology, "scientific") thinking tics, and so forth. The solution of these problems does not leave be
have their origin in the different ways in which men become aware hind it a sediment of ascertained fact, which grows and solidifies as
of themselves as agents acting in concrete situations. the mind's work goes on .... When the problem is fully solved the
Along with the rejection of a radical distinction between thought sediment of information disappears and the mind is left at liberty to
and action, and all of the consequences of that rejection, Colling go on" (SM, 317). Anyone who supposes that science is the slow but
wood also shares with pragmatists the conception of knowing as an steady addition of law to law, historical knowledge of fact to fact,
active process of inquiry rather than as the discovery and possession and art of technique to technique, will not be able to agree with this
of a body of truths, and also a distaste for formal logic insofar as that statement, but for the same reason he will have little sympathy for
claims to exhaust the possible patterns of inferential thinking. What that philosophical pragmatism which is ironically misinterpreted as
Collingwood called his "logic"-namely, his logic of question and enshrining common sense when in reality it calls common sense rad
answer-is in fact, as in the case of Dewey, not a formal logic but a ically into question.
theory of inquiry. Some of its more remarkable principles-for ex It may seem even more surprising to associate Collingwood with
ample, that all propositions are answers to questions, and that they contemporary existentialism, Certainly many.o f the themes of ex-
I 1 I / Introduction
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC IO
wood holds that "human nat~~e~ if it is a name for anything real, is
istentialists and philosophers of existence-anxiety, inauthenticity,
only a i:ame .for human actmttes. ... The historical process is a
paradox, the ontology of non-Being, the exaltation of subjectivity,
process m which man creates for himself this or that kind of human
and the use of phenomenological method-are not to be discovered
nature by re-creating in his own thought the past to which he is
in Collingwood even by the most acrobatic feats of intuitive inter
heir" (IH, 226; italics added).
pretation. To some extent, however, this is due to the fact that ex
" Ther~ are other ~orrespo~dences. What Collingwood calls the
istentialist thought has developed a self-generating mode of dis
corr~pt10n of consc10usness, the failure of the attempt to become
course which energizes its participants as it baffles its critics; and
~onsc~o~s of and acknowledge our emotions, corresponds to the ex-
Collingwood was as remote from the existentialist stvle as was Rud
1stentia.hst category of inauthenticity, or what Sartre has called la
yard Kipling. (The real affinities between existentialism and prag
n:a~vatse f oi. Collingwood is very much more willing than existen
matism are also obscured by such differences of language.) ~ahsts commonly are to explore the logic of abstract concepts, but
The most important point at which Collingwood's views make
like the~ he enters a gener~l caveat against confusing the clarity
contact with those familiar in recent existentialism is the question of
and logical fo:m of abstract10ns with objectivity; his criticism of
freedom. This is also a point on which the figure in the carpet may
Hegel ~~7tes bne~y what ~ie:kegaard had said-to put it mildly-at
escape notice. In The New Leviathan Collingwood treats freedom as length .. ~egel aims at bmldmg up the concrete out of abstractions;
the consciousness of alternative courses of action, in the sense that not r~ahzmg that, unless the concrete is given from the start the ab
such consciousness is not a disclosure that there is an objective situa stractions out of which it is to be built up are not forth~oming"
tion of choice but actually is constitutive of choice as a real possibil (NL, 33:89~· .And for Collingwood "concrete" means the unique
ity. The consciousness that one is choosing among alternative objects and ~e mdiv.idual. Both his view of history and his ethical theory
completely transforms the situation in which one (as an observer are pr~":~ facte op~n to the same objections which one encounters in
might say) chooses, but is not conscious of oneself as choosing. This the criticism of Extstenzphilosophie. In ethics he holds that the most
view apparently identifies "freedom" with a high order of reflective :at~on~l .conception of duty is that of individual and unique agents
awareness-in fact, with what in Chapter 4 we shall call "fourth m mdmdual an? ~nique situations; both agent and situation tran
level consciousness"; but as "thought" is connected with "emotion" scend general pr~nciples and gene:al descrip~ions by which they can
as well as distinguished from it, so all of the higher mental func be compare~ wi.th other agents m other situations. In history he
tions are dialectical transformations of lower functions; and in The holds ~hat hi~toncal knowledge is "wholly a reasoned knowledge of
Principles of Art, which is mainly concerned with the lower func what l~ tr.ansient and concrete" (IH, 234). The resemblance here is
tions of feeling and imagination, freedom appears as the spontaneity ~ot comc1dental: the consciousness of duty is elsewhere explicitly
of consciousness in every activity at every level. What this means re identified with "his.torical thinking" (NL, 18.52). But it is usually
quires an exposition of ideas yet to be made, but it is at least evident tho~ght-to many it appears self-evident-that although all events
that Collingwood shares the existentialist rejection of the notion that are m a sense transient and concrete and all decisions are in a sense
human experience can be exhaustively understood and explained in personal and unique, events can be explained and decisions can be
terms of the causal determinants of experience. Judged onl~ to the extent that they are instances of general principles
A corollary of this rejection is the principle that there is no fixed of explanat10n (e.g.,. causal laws) or justification (e.g., rules of con
or determinate human "nature" as is claimed or presupposed by duct). We can .explam an event or justify an action, it seems, only to
views otherwise as widely divergent as classical rationalism and the exten~ t~at it falls under concepts. To the extent that it falls under
stimulus-response psychology. This is the principle which connects ~on~epts it is n~t "in?i:idual" or "unique"; to the extent that it is
Sartre's formula that "existence precedes essence" ("essence" here mdmdual or umque, it is unintelligible by any rational criteria.
meaning a human nature invariant through time and distinguish S~ch a case agai?st Col.lingwood is strong; but my present pur
able from its individual exemplifications) and Ortega's assertion pose is not to assess its ments nor to consider what might be said on
that "Man has no nature; he has only a history." Similarly Colling-
I
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC I2 r 3 / Introduction
his behalf but rather to bring out the point that his affinities with philosophical books, including his Autobiography and the two post
existentialism are made more evident by the fact that both are sub humous volumes, The Idea of History and The Idea of Nature. Col
ject to the same criticisms. Of course, the logical incompatibility be lingwood also translated volumes by the Italian philosophers Bene
tween rationality on the one hand and uniqueness and transience on detto Croce and Guido de Ruggiero and was the author of a
the other is assumed in the criticisms but explicitly questioned by charming description of a sailing journey throuo-h the Mediter
Collingwood. His position, although differing in many particulars, ranean, The First Mate's Log. The only one of Colli'ngwood's books
is not unlike that of Jaspers on the "fundamental problem of reason to ~e take~ seriously by his professional colleagues was the Essay on
and Existenz": "Philosophy, wherever it is successful, consists of Philosophical Method, published in mid-career in 1933· Yet he did
those unique ideas in which logical abstractness and the actual not regard his books as popularizations but as his major contribution
present become, so to speak, identical." 3 in philosophy; and he addressed them to a "public" interested in the
It would be wholly unprofitable to raise and impossible to settle application of philosophical argument to problem·s (political, aes
the question whether Collingwood is an "existentialist" or a "prag thetic, religious) of civilized life, an interest which he accused his
matist." The significance of such affinities as can be discerned is to professional colleagues of having abandoned for "minute philos
indicate that the figure in the carpet also has a ground. Thinking of ophy."
any sort takes place against a background of concepts and concerns, Collingwood's first published writing was his book Religion and
and with thinking of any originality the background is richer and Philosophy ( 1916). During the next eight years he wrote several ar
more varied than can be detected by anyone whose perspective on ticles on philosophy of religion and philosophy of history, and also
the origin and transformation of ideas is shallow. The difficulty with two ~ooks, never pu,~lished, one an early version of his "logic of
the theory of Weltanschauungen is that, like the eye in vision, one's quest10n and answer and the other an analysis of "process or be
own W eltanschauung is an instrument, not an object of thought. coming." The manuscripts of both were destroyed after he wrote
Only in historical perspective, after it has done its work, can it be the Autobiography (A, 99, n. l). In 1924 he published Speculum
seen how it has done so. We do not have a name to describe or an Mentis, an attempt at a "system" in which he discusses art, relio-ion
articulated theory to explain the movement of thought which trans science, history, and philosophy as modes of experience. Durin; th~
formed, after the First World War, what we call, in its earlier forms, ~ollow~ng years he continued to write on this wide range of subjects,
"Romanticism." But I think it is likely that the future historian of mcludmg the small book Outlines of a Philosophy of Art in 1925.
our time will see Collingwood along with pragmatists and existen Most of his "professional" articles were written during this time. A
tialists as tributaries of a common stream. For the present, the pos new period began with the publication in 1933 of the Essay on Phil
sibility alone may help to bring into relief, in the chapters which fol osophical Method. His intention at that time was to carry out appli
low, certain themes and emphases which no coherent interpretation cat10ns of the method of analysis prescribed in this book: The Idea
can neglect. of Nature, published in 1945 after his death, was mainly written in
1933-34, and The Idea of History, also posthumously edited and
published in 1946, was largely written in 1936. However, it was The
3 · The Problem of Interpretation
Princ~ples of Art, published in 1938, which in the Autobiography of
1939 .1s calle~ "the. second in my series," and the Essay on Meta
Collingwood's published work was of three types, each intended physzcs, published m 1940, one year after the Autobiography, whicn
for a different audience. The first group includes his archaeological appeared as "Volume II" of his "Philosophical Essays." The New
studies in the history of Roman Britain, the second, a handful of Leviathan appeared in 1942, a year before his death in 1943· During
articles and reviews addressed to philosophers and printed in pro the fi~al decade, onl~ two publishe~ articles were not later incorpo
fessional journals, and the third, and most important, his ten rated m the manuscript of the published books. From an active ca-
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC I I4 I 5 / Introduction
reer which spanned little more than two decades, his ten books con Alan Dona?an i.n his The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood.
tain most of the relevant and available evidence for an interpretation These class1fica~10ns agree ~n omitting reference to Collingwood's
of his work and an assessment of it. short boo~ .Outlines of.a Philosophy of Art (1925), and in regarding
As I have already suggested, however, there can be no assessment both Re_ligzon and Philosophy and Speculum Mentis (corroborated
of Collingwood apart from an interpretation of him; and there can by ~ollmgwood's own judgment in his Autobiography) as juvenilia.
be no interpretation which does not suggest or explicitly state some This leaves the seven books beginning with the Essay on P hilosophi
classification of his books by the themes central to his thinking at cal Method ,C1?33) and ending with The New Leviathan (1942).
different stages or by the nodal points of change in his views. Col In K~o~ s Judgment, these seven books fall into two groups, the ,,,-
lingwood's own attempt at a history of his own opinions in the Au first cons1st1.ng of the Essay on Philosophical Method, The Idea of
tobiography is unfortunately of little direct help. For one thing, he Nature (wntte~ between 1933 and 1937, and revised mainly in 1939
traces the conception of almost all of his original views-of those, at and 194~; pubhs~ed ~osthumously in 1945), and The Idea of His
least, which he mentions at all-to the years during and immedi t~ry c.wntten mam!y 1Il 1936, supplemented in 1939 and partially re
ately after the First World War. The one exception is the "new con v.1s~d m 1940; published posthumously in 1946), and the second con
ception of history" (A, IIO): that all history is the history of s1stmg of. the Aut?biography~ ~e Essay on Metaphysics and The
thought, and is known by the re-enactment in the historian's mind New Leviathan, with The Principles of Art belonging partly to the
of the thought which he is studying. Collingwood says (A, 107, II5) first and partly to the second of these two groups.
that this was the conclusion of a train of thought which covered Chronologically, the break between these two groups falls in the
twenty years and was not complete until about 1930. But it has years 1936-37. In Knox's opinion, the break marked a radical shift
seemed completely incredible to his interpreters that this "train of in Co~lingw~od's unde:standing of the relation between philosophy
thought" was "complete" as early as 1930. and history: m the earlier period he still distinguished them as inde
For another thing, Collingwood is mainly concerned in the Au pend~nt forms of thought, each with its own problems and meth
tobiography to reconstruct the course by which he arrived at his ods; 1~ t~1e latter .group, and e~pecially in the Essay on Metaphysics,
"rapprochement between history and philosophy," and in so doing he ass1m1lated J:h~l?sophy to ~istory, yielding to a radical skepticism
he says a great deal about history but very little about philosophy. abo~t the poss.1b1hty of solvmg philosophical problems. Whereas
in
And particular he has nothing to say about the theories and ar until 1936 he still believed in th: possibility of metaphysics as a sepa
guments in the Essay on Philosophical Method, their origins or their rate study, by 1938 he was saymg that metaphysics is (and in fact
relation to his later views and interests. And finally, of course, the always ha~ .been) exclusively an historical inquiry into the absolute
Autobiography was itself succeeded by both the Essay on Metaphys presuppos1t10ns of past thinkers. And Knox has not been alone in
ics and The New Leviathan, both of key importance in any interpre believing that 'the brilliant promise _of the Essay on Philosophical
tation. The Autobiography, like Augustine's Retractations or Nietz- Method was sadly distorted and dissipated after 1937 in the Autobi
. sche's Ecce Homo, complicates the problem of interpretation rather ography an? t?e t":o books which followed it. The true Colling
than providing independent and authoritative evidence. And on the w?od, m this view, 1s the middle C?Iling~ood, whose powers slowly
basis of the common evidence of the published work, there exist al failed and whose grasp of the logtc of his own views escaped him
ready two different and incompatible interpretations. Since I shall after the Essay on Philosophical Method.
propose yet a third, it may be useful here to summarize these inter In Donagan's interpret.ation, on the other hand, Collingwood's
pretations so far as they are exemplified in "periodizations" of Col £~peated attempts to characterize philosophy and its relations to and
lingwood's work. differences from history and science can be dismissed as "muddled
One periodization, by Collingwood's student, friend, and editor, 3nd conf~sed"; but out of t~is lifeless hus.k there emerged an origi
T. M. Knox, appears in the Editor's Introduction to the posthumous ?al and h~ghly developed philosophy of mmd, which is defensible in
The Idea of History; the second is developed and argued in detail by its own nght and in addition was a remarkable anticipation, like
MIND, HISTORY, AND DIALECTIC I 16 I 7 / Introduction
testified, is an expansion of Collingwood's introduction to these lec
nothing else of its time, of interests and ~iews n~w com~on i~ En
glish and American philosophy. The mam outlmes of this philoso tures. Now Collingwood's moral philosophy was quite explicitly dia- -lt
phy of mind are contained in four books: The Idea of Natu~e, The lectical: in it he illustrated and applied the Essay's logic of the "over-
Idea of History, The Principles of Art, and The New Leviathan; ~P of classes" with respect to the concepts of feeling, appetite, desire,
4 'l!?-d will, and the concepts of their associated values, which are, re
these comprise "the later philosophy of. Colling.wood." ~ut in add~­
spectively, pleasure, satisfaction, happiness, and good. Moreover, his
tion, Collingwood himself gave two different mterpretat10ns of this
dialectical moral philosophy is substantially confirmed in what
philosophy of mind, an "idea,~is~" i1:t~r~,r~tation in. the_ Essay on
Donagan has described as Collingwood's philosophy of mind in The
Philosophical Method, and an histoncist i~terpretat10n m ~e :'1u
New Leviathan, as it is also complemented by the theory of imagina
tobiography and in the Essay on Metaphy~zcs. In Don~gan s. v~;~'
not the Essay on Philosophical Metho~ (which even for ~nox,!s lit tion in Book II of The Principles of Art. The latter is an analysis of "t
tle more than an introduction to a philos<?phy not yet wntten [IH, tJie developmental stag~s of consciousness by which rational thought
xxi]) but The New Leviathan is Collingwood's chef d'oeuvre. e.!!!_erges from undifferentiated feeling through_i ntermediate levels
The thesis which I wish to p_ropose in this essay, that Colling of consciousness _and -imagination; this exactly parallels, in the
will
wood's leitmotif throughout the entire corpus of his work was a con 0rmerJ_ t!!_e analysis of the emergence of rational from undiffer
tinuous examination of the possibility and nature of dialectical entiated feeling through levels 0£ appetite and desire. There is much
thinking (and that, quite consistently, the apparent changes in his to be explicated and assessed in this El:!_ilosophy of mind; the point of
views are themselves dialectical transformations), suggests an en present relevance is that its development between 1933 and 1941 is a
tirely different periodization of his work.5 Like ~nox ~nd_Donaga~, smoothly continuous and internally consistent fulfillment of the
I regard Religion and Philosophy as the least illummatmg of his program of the Essay on Philosophical Method. _It is Collingwood's
works; in that book he was attempting to exemplify a notion of sys theory of the dialectical nature of mind, as it reveals itself through
tematic philosophy which he never abandoned, but he had not yet action and imagination and is reflected upon in ethics, aesthetics,
connected the idea of system with the idea of dialectic. But unlike and logic.
Knox and Donagan, I regard S..f!_eculum Mentis as in certain ways But at the same ti!Jle, Collingwood continued, as he had in Spec
the most illuminating of his books, because it is his first attempt to ulum Mentis, to regard mind as something which reveals itself not
give-content to an emerging idea of the formal c~aracteri:tics of dia only in individual action and expression but in corporate culture, in
lectical patterns and is necessary to an u,nderstandmg of his later and the institutions of which science as well as politics are examples.
more subtle dialectic (in a way which exactly parallels Knox's judg And so, as on one hand he was pursuing an analysis of the dialec
ment that Speculum Mentis contains the germ of his later "scepti tical nature of mind, on the other he was making a dialectical analy
cism and dogmatism") (IH, xi). And the Essay on Philosophical sis of the products of mind. The form which the latter takes is a his
Method, I shall argue, is Collingwood's dialectical logic, produced by tory of the development of fundamental concepts, guided by the
reflection on the kind of thinking exemplified but not discussed principle that in the history of thought such fundamental concepts
("shown" but not "said") in Speculum Mentis. change in the mode of what Hegel called Aufhebung, by retaining
but at the same time transforming their own past. The analysis of
the dialectical nature of mind itself results in a philosophical theory;
4 · The Idea of Dialectic the dialectical history of concepts is a project. The former can be
produced only by the reflection of an individual thinker; the latter is
Collingwood first lectured on moral philosophy in 1919 and con too vast a project for any single person to encompass. Nor of course
tinued to lecture annually "with constant revision" during "almost did Collingwood claim to do so. But he contributed chapters to the
the whole remainder" of his tenure at Pembroke College, that is, project and laid out its principles of method: the chapters are The
until 1934 (A, 149). The Essay on Philosophical Method, Knox has Idea of Nature, The Idea of History, and the specimina philo-