Abstract
Benedetto Croce is the contemporary thinker whom early Collingwood most resembles. As we shall see, this is true especially of Croce’s writings from 1901 to 1910. Whether the resemblance is owing to Croce’s direct influence upon Collingwood or to Vico’s influence upon both Croce and Collingwood 1 is one of those problems of affiliation which are so elusive in the case of Collingwood (and also of Croce). That Collingwood felt a certain affinity with Croce is abundantly clear. In 1921, for example, Collingwood wrote to Croce:
This I say because some things in the paper look like the observations of a hostile critic, and I should like you to know that that is very far from being the character they were intended to bear. I have no time to write about work to which I feel hostile: I only write about the people whom I most closely agree with.2
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References
On Collingwood and Vico, see infra, Ch. VIII, notes 29-31.
Letter by R. G. Collingwood to Benedetto Croce, Oxford, May 28, 1921. Quoted in Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, p. 314. The paper referred to is “Croce’s Philosophy of History,” Hibbert Journal, 19, (1920–1921), 263-278.
Collingwood’s translations from Croce include: The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (London, 1913); An Autobiography (Oxford, 1927) from Contributato alla Critica di me stesso (Bari, 1915); and “Aesthetic”, in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed. (Chicago, 1929), Vol. I, pp. 263-271.
Collingwood’s translations from de Ruggiero include: Modern Philosophy, tr. R. G. Collingwood with Howard Hannay (London, 1921) from Part IV of the Ruggiero’s Storia delta filosofia; and A History of Modern Liberalism (London, 1927).
See infra, Ch. VIII, Sect. 1.
There are one or two lapses, however, In The Idea of History, p. 194, Collingwood cites the 1909 edition of Croce’s Logica as if he thought it were the only edition. Actually the first edition came out in 1904 and was radically revised in 1909.
Quoted in Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, p. 316.
Collingwood’s other monographs include: “Croce’s Philosophy of History”, (1921), in Debbins ed., pp. 3-22; “Plato’s Philosophy of Art”, (1925) in Donagan, ed., pp. 157-183; “Oswald Spengler and the Theory of Historical Cycles”, (1927) in Debbins, ed., pp. 57-75.
For more details on Croce’s early periods, see infra Ch. VII, Sect. 3. The best account of them is perhaps still Croce’s Contributato alla critica di me stesso, which Collingwood translated in 1927 under the title An Autobiography [cited hereafter as Croce, An Autobiography]. As translator, Collingwood may have borrowed this title from John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) Autobiography, (1873), or, as seems more likely, from Giambattista Vico’s Auto-biografia (1728-29, with an appendix, 1818). It is evidence of Collingwood’s affinity with Croce that he chose to use the same title for his own An Autobiography (1938), a work which resembles Croce’s in the emphasis that both works place on expounding the author’s doctrine rather than narrating the events of a lifetime.
Dora Marra, Conversazioni con Benedetto Croce su alcuni libri della su Biblioteca (Milan, 1952).
Quoted in: Francesco Olgiati, Benedetto Croce e lo Storicismo, (Milan, 1953), p. 11.
Croce, An Autobiography, pp. 26-27, 60.
Speculum Mentis (1924), p. 12, Collingwood, Outlines of a Philosophy of Art (1925) in Donagan, ed., p. 153; Collingwood, The Principles of Art (1928), p. 3.
On Gentile, see infra, Ch. VIII, Sect. 2.
The Idea of History, p. 159.
The passages in The Idea of History are as follows: on Kant, pp. 93-104; on Hegel, pp. 113-122; on Croce, pp. 190-204; on Oakeshott, pp. 151-159.
Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge, 1933), p. 6. In the Preface, p. v, Oakeshott expresses appreciation for the “kindness and encouragement” of H. H. Joachim (1868–1938), who was a friend and colleague of Collingwood at Oxford. Collingwood mentions Joachim as “an intimate and beloved friend of my own” in An Autobiography, p. 18.
Tomlin, “The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood”, Ratio, 1 (1958), 124.
See Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London, 1962). One parallel, however, remains: Oakeshott shares Collingwood’s admiration for Hobbes as a giant among political theorists. See Oakeshott “Introduction”, in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (Oxford, 1960), pp. vii-lxvi, and Collingwood, The New Leviathan, pp. iii-iv.
Croce, An Autobiography, pp. 28-31.
Croce, An Autobiography, p. 26.
Croce, An Autobiography, pp. 34-35.
Croce, An Autobiography, p. 42. Croce did not hear Labriola’s lectures on the philosophy of history, which give an interesting view of the state of the field before Croce tackled it. See Antonio Labriola, I Problemi delta Filosofia delta Storia. Prelezione letta nella Università di Roma it 28 febbraio 1887 (Turin, 1887).
Croce, La Storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell’Arte (1893).
Labriola’s La Concezione Materialistica delta Storia (Rome, 1895–1896) prompted Croce to take up the study of Marx. Alfred Bonnet translated the work, with a Preface by Georges Sorel, as Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l’histoire (Paris, 1898).
Materialismo storico ed Economia marxistica (Milan, 1900); tr. C. M. Meredith, Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx (London, 1914).
See R. G. Collingwood, “Economics as a Philosophical Science”, International Journal of Ethics, 36 (1925–1926), 162–185. This article attempts to define “economic action” as a “subordinate element” in moral action. The basic concepts bear a striking resemblance to Croce in the Pratica, which Collingwood cites, ibid., p. 163, note 1. Marx is not mentioned. For Collingwood’s attitude toward Marx as an unconvincing philosopher, but a “grand fighter”, see Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 152.
Jules Chaix-Ruy, “La Genèse de l’historicisme chez Benedetto Croce”, Revue internationale de philosophie, 7 (1953), 315.
Croce, An Autobiography, p. 27.
Between 1902 and 1912, Croce revised his Estetica no fewer than three times, making a total of four editions in ten years. Similarly the Logica went through two radically different versions, between 1905 and 1909, and the Pratica had seen its third edition by 1916, just eight years after it was first published. For a complete list of the various editions see infra, Bibliography.
For Collingwood’s views on religion as a distinct form of experience, see infra, Ch. X, Sect. 2.
Tr. as What is Living and What is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel, tr. from 3 Ital. ed. of 1912 by Douglas Ainslie (London, 1915) Ainslie took as his title the longest essay in the Saggio: “Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto nella filosofia di Hegel”. (1906.)
See infra, Ch IX, Sect. 1. For the phrase, “distinct but not separate”, see Speculum Mentis, p 170
Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, tr. R. G. Collingwood, p. 236.
First published as articles in 1912–1913. It appeared in book form first in a German edition, Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Historiographie (Tübingen, 1915). The first Italian edition came out in 1917. It is this work which Collingwood discusses in “Croce’s Philosophy of History”, Hibbert Journal, 19 (1920–1921), 263-278; repr. in Debbins, ed., pp. 3-22. Croce himself considered the Storiografia as the fourth and concluding volume in his Filosofia dello Spirito.
For a correction of this view, see infra, Ch. VIII, note 2, and Ch. XII, Sect. 1.
In Croce’s case, historicism is best understood to mean the thesis that history and philosophy are co-extensive. This position of Croce’s is most widely known today in the form in which it is stated in Storia come Pensiero e come Azione (1938); tr. Sylvia Sprigge as History as the Story of Liberty (New York, 1938).
For Gentile’s contribution to the philosophy of culture and Collingwood’s appraisal of it, see infra, Ch. VIII, Sect. 2.
Collingwood, “Can the New Idealism Dispense with Mysticism?” PAS, Supp. 3 (1923), 162.
Collingwood, Letter to Croce of May 29, 1921, quoted in Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, p. 314.
Anyone familiar with Speculum Mentis need only browse through Croce’s Estetica, Logica, and Pratica to be amazed by the similarity in terminology. At times, if one judges merely by the terminology and not by the argument, one might think that Speculum Mentis was a later work by the same author.
As an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, Ainslie took a Pass in English History and French literature in 1887.
Bernard Bosanquet, Review of Benedetto Croce, Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic, tr., Douglas Ainslie (London, MacMillan, 1913) in: The Hibbert Journal, 13, (1914–15), 217-220; Review of Croce, Logic as the Science of the Pure Concept, tr., Douglas Ainslie from the 3rd Italian ed., (London, MacMillan, 1917) in: Mind 27 (1918), 475-484.
Ibid., p. 475, note 1.
Smith published a total of twenty articles and no books.
Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 18.
J. A. Smith, “Philosophy as the Development of the Notion and Reality of Self-Consciousness”, in J. H. Muirhead, ed., Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements, 2nd Series (London, 1925), pp. 227–244, esp. 231-233.
J. A. Smith, “Knowing and Acting”, [26 November 1910] in: Oxford Lectures in Philosophy 1910–1923 (Oxford, 1910–1923), pp. 3–31.
It appeared in 1913 along with an English translation of one other of Croce’s works: The Philosophy of the Practical, tr. Douglas Ainslie (London, 1913); one year later appeared Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx, tr. C. M. Meredith (London, 1914). Together with Ainslie’s translation of the Aesthetic (London, 1909), Collingwood’s Vico brought to four the number of Croce’s works available in English by 1914. For further translations in 1915 and after, see Bibliography.
For Carritt’s reminiscences of Oxford philosophy of the 1890’s, see: “Our Fathers that Begot Us”, Oxford Magazine, 77, (1958–1959), 366-370, and “Fifty Years a Don”, Oxford Magazine, 78, (1959–1960), 274-276.
Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 22.
Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 56.
E. F. Carritt, The Theory of Beauty (London, 1914), pp. 179–218.
Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 56.
Collingwood was to share this view. See Outlines of a Philosophy of Art in Donagan, ed., pp. 120-121, on the way in which “formalistic art” and “traditions of design” are perpetuated by “schools” of artists.
See infra, Ch. X, Sect. 1. See also Collingwood, Outlines of a Philosophy of Art (1925) in Donagan, ed., pp. 52-55. Cf. ibid., p. 88: “The Aesthetic activity is the activity of imagination and imagination creates its own object.” See also The Principles of Art, Ch. 7.
Collingwood, Outlines of a Philosophy of Art in Donagan, ed., p. 154.
See especially Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, in Donagan, ed., Ch. II, “The Forms of Beauty”, pp.72-89.
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Johnston, W.M. (1967). Benedetto Croce as a Foil to R. G. Collingwood. In: The Formative Years of R. G. Collingwood. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9481-5_7
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