Abstract
Collingwood’s first major work Speculum Mentis privileges philosophy in taking it to be the pre-eminent conscious activity. Philosophy conceives the world to be coeval with the activity of consciousness. The process of becoming aware of the world corrects the perspectives of subordinate modes of consciousness such as science, art, history and religion, which enact but misperceive the reciprocity of world and consciousness. Philosophy’s reflexive celebration of its apprehension of the role of consciousness raises a number of questions over its interpretation of experience and its evaluation of forms of consciousness. The temptation to dismiss Speculum Mentis as a piece of youthful and exuberant idealism that rejects the objectivity of the world should be resisted. Collingwood’s reluctance to identify himself as an idealist derives from his appreciation of how its label is liable to misrepresentation as a form of world-denying subjectivism. He is at pains to distance himself from such a categorization throughout his career. In Speculum Mentis Collingwood subscribes to an objective idealism that assumes the world to be independent and objective, and yet to be correlated to the succession of ways by which it is apprehended. If Speculum Mentis does not succumb to subjectivism, its deprecation of non-philosophical forms of experience reduces the complexity of experience.
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Notes
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (trans. Sir James Baillie) (London and New York: George, Allen and Unwin and Humanities Press, p. 81. Hegel: Werke Theorie Werkausgabe (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), (eds E. Moldenhauer and K. Michels), Vol. 3 Die Phaenomenologie des Geistes, p. 39.
R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), p. 77.
R. G. Collingwood, ‘Notes on Historiography’ in R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of History and other writings in philosophy of history (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 238.
See R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 66, where Collingwood refers to the purely historical character of metaphysics and R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Revised Edition: edited with an Introduction by R. Martin) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 58. Collingwood refers to metaphysics as an historical science.
W. H. Dray, History as Re-Enactment — R. G. Collingwood’s Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 28.
L. Rubinoff, Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), p. 245.
G. D’Oro, Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 140.
J. Connelly, Metaphysics, Method and Politics — The Political Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003), p. 153.
See R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995), pp. 176–198. See also ‘The Nature of Metaphysical Study’, Collingwood Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Dep. 18, and ‘Libellus de Geratione’, Collingwood Manuscripts, Bodleain Library, Dep. 28.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940).
See R. G. Collingwood, ‘Notes towards a Metaphysic’, Collingwood Manuscripts, Bodleain Library, Dep. 18. For an explanation of how rational patterns in nature are implicit and await human perception and cognition for their express appreciation. For Collingwood’s account of civilization, which includes reference to mankind’s interaction with nature, see R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 280–292.
R. G. Collingwood, ‘Jane Austen’, Collingwood Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Dep. 17/3; R. G. Collingwood, ‘A Footnote to Future History’ Collingwood Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Dep. 12/1; R. G. Collingwood, Ruskin’s Philosophy: an address delivered at the Ruskin Centenary (Kendal: Titus Wilson, 1919), pp. 15–22. In these writings, where Hegel is not the principal subject, reference is made to the significance of Hegel’s combination of philosophy and history.
Hegel’s lecture series on the philosophy of right tend to be less quietistic, prompting some commentators to suggest that Hegel’s more conservative standpoint in The Philosophy of Right does not represent his fundamental beliefs. In fact, the lecture series do not alter fundamentally the perspective of The Philosophy of Right. See G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ueber Rechtsphilosopie (ed. K. H. Ilting) (Stuttgart: Froman Verlag, 1974). Ilting in the Introduction urges that the lectures cast a new light upon Hegel, indicating the strategic considerations behind his overt conservatism. For a more extended discussion of the matter,
see G. K. Browning, Hegel and the History of Political Philosophy (London and New York: Macmillan, 1999), Introduction.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, pp. 1–2; K. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach in D. McLellan, Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
G. Graham, The Shape of the Past — A Philosophical Approach to History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 1–45.
For a contemporary discussion of nation states in an era of globalization see, D. Held, A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt and J. Perraton, Global Transformations (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1999), pp. 32–85.
M. Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).
See J. Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge Massachussets and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 329–373,
and A. MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), p. 3.
For a more detailed consideration of the background of Lyotard’s thought, see G. K. Browning, Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000).
See J-F. Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law, Form and Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
J-F. Lyotard, Phenomenology (trans. B. Bleakley) (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991).
See J-F. Lyotard, Political Writings (trans. B. Readings and K. Geiman) (London: UCL Press, 1993).
See his writings on the events of May 1968 in J-F Lyotard, Political Writings, (London: UCL Press, 1993), pp. 33–85.
J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowedge (trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).
J-F. Lyotard, The Differend (trans. G. Van Den Abbeele) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 11.
J-F. Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (trans. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby) (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
See Ibid. pp. 325–336; and see also J-F. Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime trans. E. Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).
See P. Zagorin, ‘Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations’ in B. Fay, P. Pomper and R. T. Vann (eds) History and Theory — Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), § 203–204.
J. Rawls, ‘Burton Dreben: A Reminiscence’ in J. Floyd and S. Shieh (eds), Future Pasts: Perspectives on the Place of the Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Rawls’s project of rethinking political theory in the light of its past and the present configuration of social and political practices is evidenced in all of his work, notably in the notion of reflective equilibrium and the revival of the metaphor of the social contract in J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971),
and in his reflections upon the historical emergence of liberalism in J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. xxi–xxvii.
R. Bellamy and D. Castiglione, ‘Constitutionalism and Democracy — Political Theory and The American Constitution’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 27, 1997, p. 604.
J. Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, in J. Rawls, Collected Papers (ed. S. Freeman) (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999).
A. Maclntyre, A Short History of Ethics (London and New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 255.
Mulhall and Swift classify MacIntyre as a communitarian in their excellent book, S. Muihall and A. Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992).
A. MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), pp. 226–246.
A. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (London: Duckworth, 1999), pp. 21–28.
See A. MacIntyre, ‘A Partial Response to My Critics’, in J. Horton and S. Mendus, (eds) After MacIntyre — Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair MacIntyre (Cambridge And Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), p. 302.
R. G. Collingwood, The First Mate’s Log (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 150. Collingwood’s critique of utility approaches Marx’s critique of a commodity economy in that he likens the invocation of utility to judge actions to an economy in which commodities only possess exchange value.
On the complex state of sovereignty in the contemporary world see, for instance J. Rosenau, ‘Governance in a Globalizing World’, in D. Held and A. McGrew (eds), The Global Transformations Reader (Oxford and Cambridge, Polity, 2000).
See G. K. Browning, Hegel and the History of Political Philosophy (London and New York, Macmillan, 1999).
See, for instance, T. M. Knox, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
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© 2004 Gary K. Browning
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Browning, G.K. (2004). Conclusion: Philosophy, Politics and the Unity of Theory and Practice. In: Rethinking R. G. Collingwood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230005754_7
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