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R. G. Collingwood

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An Autobiography

by R. G. Collingwood (Author), Stephen Toulmin (Introduction)

4.5 56 ratings

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This early work by Robin G. Collingwood was originally published in 1939 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'An Autobiography' is the story of Collingwood's personal and academic life. Robin George Collingwood was born on 22nd February 1889, in Cartmel, England. He was the son of author, artist, and academic, W. G. Collingwood. He was greatly influenced by the Italian Idealists Croce, Gentile, and Guido de Ruggiero. Another important influence was his father, a professor of fine art and a student of Ruskin. He published many works of philosophy, such as Speculum Mentis (1924), An Essay on Philosophic Method (1933), and An Essay on Metaphysics (1940).

ISBN-10

0198246943
ISBN-13

978-0198246947
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

December 9, 1982
Language

English
Dimensions

9.02 x 5.98 x 0.13 inches
Print length

192 pages
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About the Author

The late R.G. Collingwood was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (December 9, 1982)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198246943
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198246947
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.17 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.02 x 5.98 x 0.13 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,321,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,274 in Linguistics (Books)
- #4,395 in Modern Western Philosophy
- #5,238 in Linguistics Reference

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4.5 56 ratings

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Australian (Brisbane) reader

"The clearest representative of historicism in the English tongue"

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2009

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Leo Strauss, in 1965, thought R.G. Collingwood "the clearest representative of historicism in the English tongue" and in particular recommended reading paragraphs from chapters V-IX of his "An Autobiography." Historicism (primary among other meanings) is the view that all thought is historically determined or limited and cannot escape its time and place.

If coupled with A.J.Ayer's "Language, Truth and Logic" on positivism (one meaning of which is that value judgements are irrational) one has an introduction to historicism and positivism in the English tongue in the 20th century.

Ayer and Collingwood wrote these books and taught in the pre-war Oxford of the 1930's. One view of England at this time can be seen in Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", both the book and the excellent mini-series with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.

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Cody Franchetti

A Fundamental Contribution to Historiography

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2012

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Collingwood needs no introduction, but this little known book does. It is short, concise, vigorous, and precious. I venture to say that for the historiographer who is interested in a clear stating of the humanistic approach to history and the truths that that can reveal OUTSIDE of science, this book is even more valuable than the seminal "The Idea of History", which is so widely read and known.
I will not enter here in a synopsis of the debate in the philosophy of history that has become increasingly polarized--and confused--as the twentieth century has drawn to a close; but I will say that anyone interested in the topic must read this book.

11 people found this helpful

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J. C. Leissring

an Important Philosopher

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2015

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Collingwood, in the spectrum of philosophers, occupies a position subjacent to the "big names," such as Russell, Moore, Quine and the others, however, the more I study his writing, the more I come to feel that he has a thoughtful and useful approach to the problems of philosophy. This read is quite personal and useful as an introduction to his other work which ranges from art, through history (well discussed here), metaphysics, and more.

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Reference Librarian

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2004

Do read this before you die. It is highly readable and gives a synopsis of what Collingwood was trying to accomplish with his great series of philosophical works.

12 people found this helpful

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Clay Garner

‘Science is less like a hoard of truths, than an organism which undergoes continuous alteration’

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2021

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“It must have been Descartes’ Principia; I was about nine when I found it, and already knew enough about the corresponding modern theories to appreciate the contrast which it offered. It let me into the secret which modern books had been keeping from me, that the natural sciences have a history of their own, and that the doctrines they teach on any given subject, at any given time, have been reached not by some discoverer penetrating to the truth after ages of error, but by the gradual modification of doctrines previously held; and will at some future date, unless thinking stops, be themselves no less modified.’’

Nine years old! Very few adults, especially the educated, understands this basic truth. What is ‘science’ really?

“I will not say that all this became clear to me at that childish age; but at least I became aware from reading this old book that science is less like a hoard of truths, ascertained piecemeal, than an organism which in the course of its history undergoes more or less continuous alteration in every part.’’

Science constantly changing. Right! Think Augustine. And Pascal.

What else did he reject?

“An important document of the school, or rather of the parallel and more or less allied school at Cambridge, was G. E. Moore’s recently published article called ‘The Refutation of Idealism’. This purported to be a criticism of Berkeley. Now the position actually criticized in that article is not Berkeley’s position; indeed, in certain important respects it is the exact position which Berkeley was controverting. In order to see this, I had only to open the article and Berkeley’s text and compare them.’’

This careful checking of sources reoccurs regularly in this story. Fake news isn’t new.

Another insight . . .

“The questioning activity, as I called it, was not an activity of achieving understanding with, or apprehension of, something; it was not preliminary to the act of knowing; it was one half (the other half being answering the question) of an act which in its totality was knowing.’’

Now, this recalls C S Peirce and his explanation of the key role of ‘abduction’.

What about ‘logic’?

“The effect of this on my logic was to bring about in my mind a revolt against the current logical theories of the time, a good deal like that revolt against the scholastic logic which was produced in the minds of Bacon and Descartes by reflection on the experience of scientific research, as that was taking new shape in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Novum Organum and the Discours de la Méthode began to have a new significance for me. They were the classical expressions of a principle in logic which I found it necessary to restate: the principle that a body of knowledge consists not of ‘propositions’, ‘statements’, ‘judgements’, or whatever name logicians use in order to designate assertive acts of thought (or what in those acts is asserted: for ‘knowledge’ means both the activity of knowing and what is known), but of these together with the questions they are meant to answer; and that a logic in which the answers are attended to and the questions neglected is a false logic.’’

Context matters. Ideas exist in a movie — not a photograph. Is an acorn only a nut? Or is it an Oak tree?

What reaction from unknown context?

“A great deal of the popular dislike of metaphysics is based on grounds of this sort, and is ultimately due to critics who, as we say, did not know what the men they criticized were talking about; that is, did not know what questions their talk was intended to answer; but, with the ordinary malevolence of the idle against the industrious, the ignorant against the learned, the fool against the wise man, wished to have it believed that they were talking nonsense.’’

Condemning so much easier (enjoyable) than difficult research. ‘Malevolence of the idle’. Everywhere.

What did Collingwood find at Oxford?

“The inference which any pupil could draw for himself was that for guidance in the problems of life, since one must not seek it from thinkers or from thinking, from ideals or from principles, one must look to people who were not thinkers (but fools), to processes that were not thinking (but passion), to aims that were not ideals (but caprices), and to rules that were not principles (but rules of expediency).’’

Wow! This sounds just so . . . so . . . current!

What else?

“If the realists had wanted to train up a generation of Englishmen and Englishwomen expressly as the potential dupes of every adventurer in morals or politics, commerce or religion, who should appeal to their emotions and promise them private gains which he neither could procure them nor even meant to procure them, no better way of doing it could have been discovered.’’

How bad was it?

“That would not have made me give them up; for I had already analysed the principles of ‘realist’ criticism and knew that what it so admirably demolished was not (or not necessarily) the views it ostensibly attacked, but the critic’s own perversion of these views; although the ‘realist’ could never distinguish between the perversion and the reality, because the perversion was simply the reality as seen through his distorting spectacles. If I had stated these ideas to the leaders of the ‘realist’ school, they would have said, as I have heard them say a hundred times, ‘you don’t mean that; what you mean is . . .’ and then would have followed a caricature of my ideas in terms of ‘realist’ principles, with sandbags for arms and legs; all so beautifully done that I could hardly have restrained my impulse to cheer.’’

I’ve found this so often in my own life. ‘You don’t mean what you said, you believe what I think you do’. Horrible.

I Bent of a Twig
II Spring Frost
III. Minute Philosophers
IV. Inclination of a Sapling
V. Question and Answer
VI. The Decay of Realism

VII. The History of Philosophy
VIII. The Need for a Philosophy of History
IX. The Foundations of the Future
X. History as the Self-knowledge of Mind
XI. Roman Britain
XII. Theory and Practice

Can this work from more than one hundred twenty years ago enlighten? Well . . .

“I became conscious of a change for the worse during the eighteen-nineties. The newspapers of the Victorian age made it their first business to give their readers full and accurate information about matters of public concern. Then came the Daily Mail, the first English newspaper for which the word ‘news’ lost its old meaning of facts which a reader ought to know if he was to vote intelligently, and acquired the new meaning of facts, or fictions, which it might amuse him to read. By reading such a paper, he was no longer teaching himself to vote. He was teaching himself not to vote; for he was teaching himself to think of ‘the news’ not as the situation in which he was to act, but as a mere spectacle for idle moments.’’

News as entertainment! Not from this century. Who could have thought?

“the time of writing, England has not formally bidden farewell to its parliamentary institutions; it has only permitted them to become inoperative. It has not renounced its faith in political liberty; it has only thrown away the thing in which it still professes to believe. It has not given away its Empire; it has only handed over the control of that Empire’s communications to a jealous and grasping power. It has not ceased to have a voice in European affairs; it has only used that voice to further the ends of another power even more jealous and even more grasping.’’

How did he know?

“This has been done not by the wish of the country, or of any considerable section in the country, but because the country has been tricked. To recall what I said on pp. 48–9, the forces which have been at work for nearly half a century corrupting the public mind, producing in it by degrees a willingness to forgo that full, prompt, and accurate information on matters of public importance which is the indispensable nourishment of a democratic society, and a disinclination to make decisions on such matters in the public-spirited frame of mind which is a democratic society’s lifeblood, have ‘trained up a generation of Englishmen and Englishwomen’ to be the dupes of a politician who has so successfully ‘appealed to their emotions’ by ‘promises of private gain’ (the gain of personal safety from the horrors of war) that they have allowed him to sacrifice their country’s interests, throw away its prestige, and blacken its name in the face of the world, in order that he should glare out from his photographs with the well-known hypnotic eyes of a dictator.’’

So . . . so . . . perceptive.

Another keen insight . . .

“The contrast between the success of modern European minds in controlling almost any situation in which the elements are physical bodies and the forces physical forces, and their inability to control situations in which the elements are human beings and the forces mental forces, left an indelible mark on the memory of every one who was concerned in it.’’

This understanding of the overwhelming impact of 1914 is lost to current world. Important since is important fulfillment of Jesus prophecy of the last days - Matthew chapter 24.

‘’I knew enough history to understand the force of the contrast. I knew that for sheer ineptitude the Versailles treaty surpassed previous treaties as much as for sheer technical excellence the equipment of twentieth-century armies surpassed those of previous armies. It seemed almost as if man’s power to control ‘Nature’ had been increasing pari passu with a decrease in his power to control human affairs.’’

And I think the division of ‘control of nature’ vs ‘control of people’ is breaking human society in pieces. Collingwood was right.

“It was a plain fact that the gigantic increase since about 1600 in his power to control Nature had not been accompanied by a corresponding increase, or anything like it, in his power to control human situations. And it was also a plain fact that the ill effects of any failure to control a human situation were more serious now than they had ever been before, in direct proportion to the magnitude of the new powers put by natural science, with divine indifference, into the hands of the evil and the good, the fool and the wise man.’’

Power is not wisdom. Control is not success.

“Not only would any failure to control human affairs result in more and more widespread destruction as natural science added triumph to triumph, but the consequences would tend more and more to the destruction of whatever was good and reasonable in the civilized world; for the evil would always begin using the engines of destruction before the good, the fool always before the wise man. I seemed to see the reign of natural science, within no very long time, converting Europe into a wilderness of Yahoos.’’

Writing in 1930’s. Perceptive, insightful, fascinating.

This autobiography especially interesting due to the era described, over century ago. And because Collingwood was a serious, deep, perceptive thinker. Nails the change he experienced. More than that, dug beneath the surface to unearth the new ideas, assumptions that impelled this new world.

Reader needs serious interest in history of ideas, familiarity with philosophy, and ability to understand different viewpoints.

I especially liked his insight into the changes then, that we now experience overwhelming modern society, culture, education, politics, etc., etc..

I also was fascinated by the erudite, self-educated, understanding of Collingwood as a youth. Nothing like anyone today. He didn’t thank he was special. He felt others had read more and understood more.

What a loss!

No bibliography

No index

No notes

No photographs

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Brian Gable

Easy to understand for the layman

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2019

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A very interesting view on life, which is still valid today

Dr. J. Vaughan Johnson

Very Interesting

Reviewed in Australia on September 22, 2022

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Collingwood was one of the greatest British philosophers of the 20th Century and this book gives sound insight into his thinking. Sadly, he barely mentions his keen interest in archaeology for which he was perhaps better known to the wider British public.

Wilder, Sean

Admirably intelligent and cogent even today

Reviewed in France on April 25, 2017

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When a friend translated this book into French, I doubted that I would find it as interesting as he did. I was wrong. Collingwood does not only make comments on the uses and abuses of philosophy in political thought, but does so in clear, forceful English that could be a model for students to learn from.

AK

Très intelligent; et très méchant

Reviewed in France on September 16, 2014

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Brillant et comme autobiographie, et comme oeuvre philosophique. Il faut bien le lire comme témoignage de son époque, et ses erreurs politiques.

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Tell

Collingwood is allways worth reading, but this one is special

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2008

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