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R. G. Collingwood | |
|---|---|
 R. G. Collingwood | |
| Born | Robin George Collingwood 22 February 1889 Gillhead,Cartmel Fell,Lancashire, England |
| Died | 9 January 1943(1943-01-09) (aged 53) Coniston, Lancashire, England |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | University College, Oxford |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | British idealism Historism[1] |
| Institutions | Pembroke College, Oxford |
| Main interests | Metaphysics Philosophy of history Aesthetics |
| Notable works | The Principles of Art (1938) The Idea of History (1946) |
| Notable ideas | Historical imagination Coining the English termhistoricism[1][2] Aesthetic expressivism |
Robin George CollingwoodFBA (/ˈkɒlɪŋwʊd/; 22 February 1889 – 9 January 1943) was an Englishphilosopher,historian andarchaeologist. He is best known for his philosophical works, includingThe Principles of Art (1938) and the posthumously publishedThe Idea of History (1946).
Collingwood was born on 22 February 1889 inCartmel,Grange-over-Sands, then inLancashire (nowCumbria), the son of the artist and archaeologistW.G. Collingwood, who acted asJohn Ruskin's private secretary in the final years of Ruskin's life. Collingwood's mother was also an artist and a talented pianist. He was educated atRugby School andUniversity College, Oxford, where he gained a First in Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin) in 1910 and a congratulatory First inGreats (Ancient History and Philosophy) in 1912.[3] Prior to graduation, he was elected a fellow ofPembroke College, Oxford.
During World War I, he served in admiralty intelligence in London from 1915 to 1918. In 1918, after returning to Oxford, he married Ethel Winifred Graham (1885-1973), a graduate ofSomerville College, Oxford, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He later married Kathleen Frances Edwardes in 1942, with whom he had another daughter.
Collingwood was a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, for some 23 years until becoming theWaynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy atMagdalen College, Oxford. He was taught by the historian and archaeologistF. J. Haverfield, at the timeCamden Professor of Ancient History. Important influences on Collingwood were the Italian IdealistsBenedetto Croce,Giovanni Gentile andGuido de Ruggiero, the last of whom was also a close friend. Other important influences wereHegel,Kant,Giambattista Vico,F. H. Bradley andJ. A. Smith.
After several years of increasingly debilitating strokes, Collingwood died atConiston, Lancashire, on 9 January 1943. He was a practisingAnglican throughout his life.
Collingwood defined philosophy as "thought of the second degree, thought about thought". An astronomer investigates phenomena and provides a theory from their observations, if the astronomer were to think about their process this would be philosophy.[4]
Collingwood is widely noted forThe Idea of History (1946), which was collated from various sources soon after his death by a student,T. M. Knox. It came to be a major inspiration for philosophy of history in the English-speaking world and is extensively cited, leading to an ironic remark by commentatorLouis Mink that Collingwood is coming to be "the best known neglected thinker of our time".[5] Collingwood is quoted multiple times inE.H. Carr's famous bookWhat is History?.[6]
Collingwood categorized history as a science, defining a science as "any organized body of knowledge."[7] However, he distinguished history from natural sciences because the concerns of these two branches are different: natural sciences are concerned with the physical world, while history, in its most common usage, is concerned with social sciences and human affairs.[8] Collingwood pointed out a fundamental difference between knowing things in the present (or in the natural sciences) and knowing history. To come to know things in the present or about things in the natural sciences, "real" things can be observed, as they are in existence or that have substance right now.[citation needed]
Since the internal thought processes of historical persons cannot be perceived with the physical senses and past historical events cannot be directly observed, history must be methodologically different from natural sciences. History, being a study of the human mind, is interested in the thoughts and motivations of the actors in history,[9] this insight being encapsulated in his epigram "All history is the history of thought."[10] Therefore, Collingwood suggested that a historian must "reconstruct" history by using "historical imagination" to "re-enact" the thought processes of historical persons based on information and evidence from historical sources. Re-enactment of thought refers to the idea that the historian can access not only a thought process similar to that of the historical actor, but the actual thought process itself. Consider Collingwood's words regarding the study of Plato:
In its immediacy, as an actual experience of his own, Plato's argument must undoubtedly have grown up out of a discussion of some sort, though I do not know what it was, and been closely connected with such a discussion. Yet if I not only read his argument but understand it, follow it in my own mind by re-arguing it with and for myself, the process of argument which I go through is not a process resembling Plato's, it actually is Plato's, so far as I understand him rightly.[11]
In Collingwood's understanding, a thought is a single entity accessible to the public and, therefore, regardless of how many people have the same thought, it is still a singular thought. "Thoughts, in other words, are to be distinguished based on purely qualitative criteria, and if two people are entertaining the (qualitatively) same thought, there is (numerically) only one thought since there is only one propositional content."[12] Therefore, if historians follow the correct line of inquiry in response to a historical source and reason correctly, they can arrive at the same thought the author of their source had and, in so doing, "re-enact" that thought.
Collingwood rejected what he deemed "scissors-and-paste history," in which the historian rejects a statement recorded by their subject either because it contradicts another historical statement or because it contradicts the historian's own understanding of the world. As he states inPrinciples of History, sometimes a historian will encounter "a story which he simply cannot believe, a story characteristic, perhaps, of the superstitions or prejudices of the author's time or the circle in which he lived, but not credible to a more enlightened age, and therefore to be omitted."[13] This, Collingwood argues, is an unacceptable way to do history. Sources that make claims that do not align with current understandings of the world were still created by rational humans who had reason for creating them. Therefore, these sources are valuable and ought to be investigated further to get at the historical context in which they were created and for what reason.
The Principles of Art (1938) comprises Collingwood's most developed treatment ofaesthetic questions. Collingwood held (followingBenedetto Croce) that works of art are essentially expressions of emotion. For Collingwood, an important social role for artists is to clarify and articulate emotions from their community.
Collingwood considered 'magic' to be a form of art, as opposed tosuperstition or 'bad science'. Magic for Collingwood is a practical exercise to bring about a certain emotional state. For example magic like awar dance before a battle is a ritual whereby the warriors work themselves up into a particular emotive state in order to do battle.[12] In giving such a conception Collingwood hoped to address the issue of the word 'magic' having "no definite significance at all", he intended to ameliorate this by making it a term "with a definite meaning".[14] He accuses anthropologists of prejudice when analyzing the magical practices of previous generations, as they assumed that it must fulfill the same purpose of modern science.[15]
Collingwood developed a position later known asaesthetic expressivism (not to be confused with various other views typically calledexpressivism), a thesis first developed by Croce.[16]
In politics Collingwood defended the ideals of what he called liberalism "in its Continental sense":
The essence of this conception is ... the idea of a community as governing itself by fostering the free expression of all political opinions that take shape within it, and finding some means of reducing this multiplicity of opinions to a unity.[17]
In hisAutobiography, Collingwood confessed that his politics had always been "democratic" and "liberal", and sharedGuido de Ruggiero's opinion that socialism had rendered a great service to liberalism by pointing out the shortcomings oflaissez-faire economics.[18]
Collingwood was not just a philosopher of history but also a practising historian and archaeologist. He was, during his time, a leading authority onRoman Britain: he spent his term time at Oxford teaching philosophy but devoted his long vacations to archaeology.
The family home was at Coniston in the Lake District and his father was a leading figure in the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society. Collingwood was drawn in on a number of excavations in the area. He was interested inHadrian's Wall, and suggested that it was not so much a fighting platform but an elevated sentry walk.[19] He also put forward the suggestion that Hadrian's defensive system included a number of forts along the Cumberland coast: this interpretation is still regarded as valid in the case of for exampleAlauna (Maryport).[20]
He was very active in the 1930 Wall Pilgrimage for which he prepared the ninth edition ofBruce's Handbook.
His final and most controversial excavation in Cumbria was that of a circular ring ditch near Penrith known asKing Arthur's Round Table in 1937. It appeared to be a Neolithic henge monument, and Collingwood's excavations, failing to find conclusive evidence of Neolithic activity, nevertheless found the base of two stone pillars, a possible cremation trench and some post holes. Sadly, his subsequent ill health prevented him from undertaking a second season so the work was handed over to the German prehistorianGerhard Bersu, who queried some of Collingwood's findings. However, recently, Grace Simpson, the daughter of the excavatorF. G. Simpson, has queried Bersu's work and largely rehabilitated Collingwood as an excavator.[21]
He also began what was to be the major work of his archaeological career, preparing a corpus of theRoman Inscriptions of Britain, which involved travelling all over Britain to see the inscriptions and draw them; he eventually prepared drawings of nearly 900 inscriptions. It was finally published in 1965 by his student R. P. Wright.
He also published two major archaeological works. The first wasThe Archaeology of Roman Britain, a handbook in sixteen chapters covering first the archaeological sites (fortresses, towns and temples and portable antiquities), inscriptions, coins, pottery and brooches.Mortimer Wheeler, in a review[22] remarked that "it seemed at first a trifle off beat that he should immerse himself in so much museum-like detail ... but I felt sure that this was incidental to his primary mission to organise his own thinking".
However, his most important work was his contribution to the first volume of the Oxford History of England,Roman Britain and the English Settlements, of which he wrote the major part,Nowell Myres, adding the second smaller part on English settlements. The book was in many ways revolutionary, for it set out to write the story of Roman Britain from an archaeological rather than a historical viewpoint, putting into practice his own belief in 'Question and Answer' archaeology.
The result was alluring and influential. However, asIan Richmond wrote, 'The general reader may discover too late that it has one major defect. It does not sufficiently distinguish between objective and subjective and combines both in a subtle and apparently objective presentation.[23]
The most notorious passage is that on Romano-British art: "the impression that constantly haunts the archaeologist, like a bad smell, is that of an ugliness that plagues the place like a London fog".[24]
Collingwood's most important contribution to British archaeology was his insistence on question-and-answer archaeology: excavations should not take place unless there is a question to be answered. It is a philosophy which, asAnthony Birley points out,[25] has been incorporated byEnglish Heritage into the conditions for Scheduled Monuments Consent. Still, it has always been surprising that the proponents of the "new" archaeology in the 1960s and the 70s have entirely ignored the work of Collingwood, the one major archaeologist who was also a major professional philosopher. He has been described as an early proponent ofarchaeological theory.[26]
Outside archaeology and philosophy, he also published the travel bookThe First Mate's Log of a Voyage to Greece (1940), an account of a yachting voyage in the Mediterranean, in the company of several of his students.
Arthur Ransome was a family friend, and learned to sail in their boat, subsequently teaching his sibling's children to sail. Ransome loosely basedthe Swallows inSwallows and Amazons series on his sibling's children.
All 'revised' editions comprise the original text plus a new introduction and extensive additional material.
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