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Conclusion: R. G. Collingwood’s Intellectual Loneliness after 1924 and its Roots in His Ruskinian Education

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The Formative Years of R. G. Collingwood
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Abstract

Speculum Mentis marks a culmination and a turning-point in Collingwood’s thought. In some ways, it achieves an excellence which its author never surpassed. For subtlety of reasoning and interweaving of parts, it is probably his most remarkable work. Perspicuity of style tends to camouflage the fact that ideas are being woven back and forth into a complex pattern of dialectic. What is first posited gets revised over and over again, until the book arrives at the conclusion that this process of continual revision constitutes the truest picture of the mind. The mind lives by striving always to correct its own errors, although it never will overcome them entirely. The claim that it can do so derives from philosophical dogmatism, and it is precisely dogmatism of this kind which Collingwood rejects most decisively.

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References

  1. Speculum Mentis, p. 82.

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  2. The most convenient source of this information is the Oxford University Calendar. During the nineteenth century, any one year of the Calendar contained the examination Results for the previous twenty years. During the twentieth century, each issue of the Calendar has contained results for the previous fifteen years. An alternate source is the Oxford University Gazette, vols. I-LV (1870–1925). In it, it is necessary to Consult the “Class Lists” for First and Second Examinations in each year. Still a third source is Oxford Honours 12201894: Being an Alphabetical Register of Distinctions Conferred by the University of Oxford from the Earliest Times (Oxford, 1894). It is convenient when one wishes to trace a particular name (prior to 1894).

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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

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Johnston, W.M. (1967). Conclusion: R. G. Collingwood’s Intellectual Loneliness after 1924 and its Roots in His Ruskinian Education. In: The Formative Years of R. G. Collingwood. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9481-5_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9481-5_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-011-8678-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-9481-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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