Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

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Author: Giuseppina D'Oro

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Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience

‘An accomplished piece of writing which offers many genuine insights into Collingwood’s conception of philosophy . . . I can think of no other work which covers this ground so thoroughly or competently.’ James Connelly, University of Southampton ‘Clearly argued and well-written . . . [This book] helps to put Collingwood back in touch with much mainstream philosophical thinking while not losing sight of what is distinctive in his work.’ Peter Johnson, University of Southampton ‘. . . [a] well-written book [that] makes a spirited and convincing case for the claim that Collingwood was one of the most original and one of the most penetrating philosophers, writing in English, in the twentieth century. More importantly it makes a case for saying that Collingwood has a continuing relevance in present day philosophy and that his views can be helpful in ﬁnding a way forward in some of the most contentious areas in contemporary philosophy – especially in philosophy of mind and action, and in the understanding of the character and role of philosophy.’ Rex Martin, University of Kansas

Routledge studies in twentieth-century philosophy

1

The Story of Analytic Philosophy Plot and heroes Edited by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar

2

Donald Davidson Truth, meaning and.knowledge Edited by Urszula M. Z eglen´

3

Philosophy and Ordinary Language The bent and genius of our tongue Oswald Hanﬂing

4

The Subject in Question Sartre’s critique of Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego Stephen Priest

5

Aesthetic Order A philosophy of order, beauty and art Ruth Lorland

6

Naturalism A critical analysis Edited by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland

7

Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy Richard Gaskin

8

Rules, Magic and Instrumental Reason A critical interpretation of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences Berel Dov Lerner

9

Gaston Bachelard Critic of science and the imagination Cristina Chimisso

10 Hilary Putnam Pragmatism and realism . Edited by James Conant and Urszula Z eglen´ 11 Karl Jaspers Politics and metaphysics Chris Thornhill 12 From Kant to Davidson The idea of the transcendental in twentieth-century philosophy Edited by Jeff Malpas 13 Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience Giuseppina D’Oro

Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience

Giuseppina D’Oro

London and New York

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the US and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 2002 Giuseppina D’Oro All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known of hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-16478-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-25903-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-23971-0 (Print Edition)

To my parents

Contents

Preface List of abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction

1

1 Collingwood and the metaphysics of experience

9

2 The Kantian heritage of Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics

24

3 Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

37

4 Collingwood’s anti-naturalism

53

5 Collingwood’s ‘rehabilitation’ of the ontological proof

67

6 Collingwood and the radical conversion hypothesis

79

7 Collingwood and the project of naturalised epistemology

88

8 The Idea of History as a branch of descriptive metaphysics

103

9 Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and action

125

10 Conclusion: Collingwood and the nature of philosophical knowledge Notes Bibliography Index

140 144 165 172

Preface

I am extremely grateful to three people for their help and support during this project and for their comments on various aspects of Collingwood’s thought: David Boucher, James Connelly and Rex Martin. I would like to thank David Boucher for letting me browse through the Collingwood archives at the Collingwood Centre in Cardiff and for providing so many opportunities to discuss my work and sharpen my understanding of the material. I would also like to thank Rex Martin for introducing me to the Collingwood Centre and for encouraging me in the early stages of this project. I owe a very special debt to James Connelly who has guided me through the labyrinth of Collingwood’s unpublished manuscripts at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and whose invaluable suggestions have helped to shape this book. Finally, the completion of this project was made possible by an Arts and Humanities Research award, which relieved me from teaching and administrative duties in the academic year 2000–2001, and for which I am very grateful. Versions of the individual chapters of this book have been presented as papers at the conferences of the British Idealism group in Gregynog and Cardiff, at the Collingwood Centre in Swansea and in Cardiff and at the Collingwood conference in Oxford. Versions of the individual chapters have also been presented in published articles. Chapters 1 and 8 draw on ‘Collingwood’s Conception of Scissors-and-Paste History Revisited in the Light of his Conception of Metaphysics’, which was ﬁrst published in International Studies in Philosophy, 32: 4, 2000. Chapter 2 was published, in a slightly different form, as ‘How Kantian is Collingwood’s Metaphysics of Experience?’ in Collingwood Studies 6, 1999. Chapter 5 ﬁrst appeared in Idealistic Studies 30: 3, 2000 and a version of Chapter 6 appeared in Dialogue XLI, 2002, under the title ‘Collingwood, Metaphysics and Historicism’. Finally, Chapter 8 draws on ‘On Collingwood’s Conceptions of History’ that appeared in Collingwood and British Idealism Studies VII, 2000. Much of the material, however, is new, and so is the attempt to create a general framework for the discussion of individual issues.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used for reference to works by Collingwood. For full details of works cited, see the bibliography. AA EM EPM IH IN NL PA PH RPh SM

An Autobiography An Essay on Metaphysics An Essay on Philosophical Method The Idea of History The Idea of Nature The New Leviathan The Principles of Art The Principles of History Religion and Philosophy Speculum Mentis

Introduction

My ﬁrst encounter with Collingwood was, very much by chance, through the pages of An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM). I was so struck by the elegance of the prose and the insights into the nature of the method and task of philosophy contained within it, that I could not understand how such a book could possibly have escaped my attention until then. To this day, I keep wondering why such a jewel of philosophical reﬂection has received so little attention. My admiration for EPM is, to some extent, reﬂected in the present book, as it has coloured my approach to Collingwood’s work as a whole. Often, it was Collingwood’s account of the subject matter, method and task of philosophical inquiry, as outlined in EPM, that guided me through the reading of his later philosophy. It was Collingwood’s claims concerning the nature of philosophical concepts and distinctions, and how they differ from empirical concepts and classiﬁcations, which made my understanding of both An Essay on Metaphysics (EM) and The Idea of History (IH) so much easier. As I believe Collingwood’s conception of the nature and task of philosophical inquiry to be, in essence, correct, this book is not so much a commentary, as a philosophical reconstruction, reinterpretation and defence of his thought. The approach of the book is thematic rather than chronological. The main texts considered are EPM and EM and the focus is on Collingwood’s conception of philosophy. The choice of a thematic approach partially reﬂects my belief that there is a fundamental continuity between Collingwood’s early and later work, that, in its essentials, and despite substantial terminological changes, Collingwood’s account of the nature of philosophical reﬂection remains constant. This, of course, is a controversial claim, as many would maintain that EPM and EM belong to two distinct periods, that the later Collingwood clearly departs from the conception of the method and task of philosophy as outlined in EPM. It is an assumption of this book that the idea of a fundamental discontinuity between an early and later Collingwood is bogus and that the so-called radical conversion hypothesis, according to which the later Collingwood underwent an historicist turn, is mistaken. My main goal, however, in providing a reconstruction of Collingwood’s

2

Introduction

thought, has been less to rebut a widespread, if mistaken, account of his philosophical development, than to highlight Collingwood’s contribution to our understanding of philosophy, of its method and subject matter. For this reason, I have attempted to focus as much as possible on the philosophical issues at stake and I have delayed the discussion of the scholarly disputes surrounding Collingwood’s alleged historicist turn until fairly late in the book. I have chosen, in other words, the rather unusual strategy of beginning by assuming that there is continuity between the early and the later Collingwood. Such a strategy, although perhaps controversial, has enabled me, on the one hand, to keep the focus on the philosophical issues rather than the scholarly disputes and, on the other, to bring to light the philosophical concerns common to EPM and EM without having to defend myself at each stage against the possible objection that the two books belong to two distinct periods. Discussing EPM and EM side by side has not always been easy because Collingwood substantially altered his philosophical vocabulary, if not his philosophical outlook, in his later years and, at times, this makes the reconstruction of his argument more difﬁcult. Collingwood’s change of philosophical vocabulary, however, is not, in my view, due to a substantial change in his philosophical views; it seems, rather, to be due to the fact that, in his later years, Collingwood felt more urgently the need to engage his philosophical opponents in a debate and felt that he would not have been taken seriously had he not made an effort to address them on their own terms. Even a cursory look at the vocabulary employed in EPM and in EM clearly shows that, in the latter, Collingwood makes a conscious effort to rid his language of any terminology that might suggest an afﬁliation to the idealist school. Although only seven years had elapsed between the publication of EPM (1933) and EM (1940), the philosophical climate had substantially changed. By the time of the publication of EM, the neoempiricism of Russell and Ayer had won new ground and idealism was no longer a philosophically respectable position to hold. The change in philosophical vocabulary from EPM to EM is, I believe, to a great extent, the expression of Collingwood’s attempt to adjust to the new philosophical climate. There are, in other words, no philosophical reasons for Collingwood’s change in philosophical vocabulary, but principally only sociological ones. The focus of this book, as mentioned earlier, is Collingwood’s conception of the nature of philosophical inquiry. My claim is that Collingwood developed a form of Kantian-inspired metaphysics; Kantian, that is, in so far as it seeks to uncover not the ultimate structure of reality but the presuppositions which govern our experience of the world. I develop Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Collingwood, I claim, shares with Kant the view that metaphysics is concerned with describing the structure of experience. For this reason I refer to Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics as a descriptive metaphysics

Introduction

3

or metaphysics of experience. I argue that, like Kant’s, Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics is an attempt to explain the possible co-existence of judgements, such as those of theoretical and practical reason, that rest on incompatible assumptions about the nature of reality. There are, of course, important differences. First, Kant’s conception of practical reason coincides, to a great extent, with moral reasoning. For Kant, consequently, to explain the possible co-existence of practical and theoretical experience meant to explain how moral discourse could co-exist alongside scientiﬁc discourse. Collingwood’s conception of practical reason is much broader than Kant’s. For Collingwood, to explain the possible coexistence of practical and theoretical experience means to explain how history is possible or, more generally, how the type of discourse of which social scientists avail themselves can co-exist alongside the discourse of natural science. Second, Kant emphasised our ignorance of things as they are ‘in themselves’: in Kant’s critical philosophy it is our inability to know the ultimate structure of reality that, on the one hand, makes metaphysics, traditionally understood, a vain enterprise and that, on the other hand, makes morality possible. By contrast, things as they are in themselves play no role in Collingwood’s attempt to defend the possibility of history. For Collingwood things as they are in themselves are not so much unknown to us as unknowable. Collingwood builds on the Kantian insight that human knowledge involves presuppositions and claims that, as there cannot be any such thing as presuppositionless knowledge, there can be no knowledge of things in themselves and hence no metaphysics, as traditionally understood. Metaphysics, to be possible, must undergo an epistemological reform: it must be carried out as the study of the presuppositions or heuristic principles that govern the different forms of knowledge or experience. Whereas the distinction between phenomena and things in themselves plays an important role in Kant’s critical philosophy, Collingwood seeks to eliminate the gap between epistemically conditioned knowledge (of phenomena) and epistemically unconditioned knowledge (of things in themselves). Since all forms of knowledge or experience require presuppositions, there cannot be a sheer ontology untainted by any epistemological assumptions or, as Collingwood puts it, a ‘study of pure being’. Being can only be known under the rubric of theoretical, practical or aesthetic experience. In spite of such differences, the argumentative strategies employed by Kant and Collingwood are very similar. For both Kant and Collingwood it is in the very nature of thought to contain antinomies or contradictions. Such antinomies or contradictions, like that between freedom and determinism, arise because different kinds of experience, such as theoretical, moral, and aesthetic, rest on different presuppositions about the nature of reality. Whereas the possibility of theoretical or scientiﬁc knowledge rests on the assumption of the regularity of nature, the possibility of practical knowledge rests on the presupposition of metaphysical freedom. Such

4

Introduction

antinomies, as Collingwood would put it, arise as a result of our ability to make conceptual distinctions to which there correspond no empirical differences: our ability to distinguish, for instance, between the true, the good and the beautiful. It is a cornerstone of both Kant’s and Collingwood’s thought that proper metaphysics is not an investigation into a supersensible realm of real entities, but an investigation into the a priori concepts or categories that make different forms of experience possible. Further, both Kant and Collingwood appear to be engaged in a reform rather than in a straightforward critique of the metaphysical tradition. Whereas neither Kant nor Collingwood believed in the existence of Platonic forms, or in a transcendent realm of real entities, they both acknowledged the role that universals play in an account of the possibility of experience. The forms of the good and of beauty become, for Kant and Collingwood, the heuristic principles that govern moral and aesthetic judgement. Collingwood had to defend this conception of metaphysics, as an investigation into the fundamental principles that structure domains of inquiry, on two fronts. On the one hand, he had to defend it against realist philosophers harking back to a dogmatic or pre-critical conception of the metaphysical task. On the other hand, he had to defend it against the neo-empiricist critique of metaphysics. I consider Collingwood’s critical assessment of metaphysical realism in Chapter 3 and his engagement with the neo-empiricist critique of metaphysics in Chapter 4. Collingwood, I argue, is a weak anti-realist as he denies not the existence of mindindependent objects but the acquaintance theory of knowledge according to which truth consists in the correspondence of knowledge with the thing known (adaequatio intellectus et rei). Collingwood’s anti-realism, I argue, is of an epistemic rather than ontological or metaphysical nature. In discussing the nature of Collingwood’s critique of metaphysical realism I have taken particular care to explain the exact nature of Collingwood’s critique of the traditional conception of truth as correspondence. I have argued that Collingwood’s critique of the traditional conception of truth does not entail the end of philosophy and does not constitute a threshold onto a post-philosophical age. Collingwood, in other words, does not hold the history of philosophy, and the standard problems of philosophy, to be the result of persistent philosophical errors. He does not, consequently, believe that such problems can be resolved once such errors are unmasked. The persistence of certain philosophical issues has its roots in the fact that philosophical distinctions do not cut nature at the joints: the philosophical classiﬁcation of experience into theoretical, moral and aesthetic, in accordance with the concepts of the true, the good and the beautiful, for instance, is not a distinction that exists in the nature of things. The conﬂict that arises between science and morality, therefore, has its roots in our very ability to make conceptual distinctions to which there correspond no empirical classes. I consider Collingwood’s effort to maintain such distinctions against

Introduction

5

the neo-empiricist critique of metaphysics in Chapter 4 where I try to show that Collingwood’s defence of metaphysics takes the form of an argument aimed at demonstrating that certain concepts, although not empirically veriﬁable, are necessary in order to explain how different forms of experience are possible. I try to show that, by developing a descriptive metaphysics along Kantian lines, Collingwood succeeds, at one and the same time, in setting himself up as a critic of (dogmatic) metaphysics against the realists and as a defender of (descriptive) metaphysics against the logical positivists. This interpretation of Collingwood’s philosophical project as Kantian in origin may be regarded as problematic for two reasons. First, the claim that Collingwood’s metaphysics is a descriptive metaphysics or metaphysics of experience appears to conﬂict with Collingwood’s lasting attachment to what could be reasonably regarded as a bastion of the old, pre-critical or dogmatic metaphysics: the ontological proof. Kant’s critical philosophy, one might legitimately argue, is committed to the view that existence is not a real predicate and to the denial that there may be any necessary existential claims. By contrast, Collingwood’s sympathetic evaluation of the ontological proof appears to suggest that he was prepared to contemplate the possibility that there may be necessary existential propositions. Second, the interpretation of Collingwood’s philosophical project along Kantian lines conﬂicts with the standard interpretation of Collingwood’s metaphysics according to which the task of metaphysics is to enquire, not into the heuristic principles that govern disciplines, but into the historically relative presuppositions that are endorsed by different people in different periods of time. I discuss Collingwood’s conception of the ontological proof in Chapter 5 and engage with the standard historicist interpretation of Collingwood’s metaphysics in Chapters 6 and 7. In Chapter 5 I attempt to show that Collingwood’s interpretation of the ontological proof is so unorthodox that it does not really pose any threat to an understanding of his philosophical project as a Kantian-inspired metaphysics of experience. In Chapters 6 and 7 I get down to justifying some of the assumptions that govern the book, namely, that there is an underlying continuity between Collingwood’s early and late work and, consequently, that it is inappropriate to speak of an early and a late philosophy in Collingwood. In Chapter 6 I try to undermine the so-called radical conversion hypothesis by showing that Collingwood’s conception of the subject matter, method and task of philosophical inquiry remained, in its essentials, unaltered throughout his thought. In Chapter 7 I consider the accusation of historicism raised against the later work as an instance of a more generic objection, according to which Collingwood eventually came to subscribe to a form of epistemological naturalism as he became interested in genetic questions concerning the origin of knowledge rather than in logical questions concerning their validity. I argue that, in EM, as indeed in EPM, Collingwood’s concern lies with the validity rather than the origin of knowledge claims by

6

Introduction

showing that the argument by which Collingwood establishes that certain absolute presuppositions are explanatorily necessary involves showing that such presuppositions are logically related to the form of experience they make possible. Collingwood’s argument, in other words, does not so much seek to show what presuppositions people make as a matter of historical fact or as a matter of human psychology, but what presuppositions they ought to make as a matter of logic. To this extent, like Kant, he is concerned with the question of right (quid iuris) rather than with the de facto question concerning the origin of knowledge. Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics, therefore, is not a sociology of knowledge. The interpretation of Collingwood’s philosophical project as a form of descriptive metaphysics also provides the interpretative key to his philosophy of history as discussed in Chapter 8. In this chapter I argue that whereas EPM and EM are meta-philosophical reﬂections about the method, subject matter and task of philosophical inquiry, IH, as a branch of his descriptive metaphysics, focuses on the a priori categories or principles that govern historical understanding. The concept of action is one such category. The concept of action or of a rational process is an a priori category in the sense that it is a presupposition that historians bring to the investigation of the subject matter. The presumption of rationality, therefore, is as crucial to the historical investigation of reality as the presupposition of the uniformity of nature is to scientiﬁc inquiry. This reading of Collingwood’s philosophy of history as a branch of descriptive metaphysics has one important implication. As a branch of descriptive metaphysics Collingwood’s philosophy of history is concerned not so much with providing a set of methodological instructions to historians, as with clarifying a number of conceptual issues by answering questions such as ‘What is the nature of historical explanation?’ and ‘What is the subject matter of history?’ In discussing Collingwood’s philosophy of history I take the rather unusual step of hardly ever mentioning the word ‘re-enactment’. This might seem surprising, as ‘re-enactment’ is probably the best-known technical term Collingwood ever used. I have deliberately avoided mentioning it because it is this term that, by and large, is responsible for a psychologistic reading of Collingwood’s philosophy of history, according to which the historian seeks to gain access to the thoughts of historical agents by empathetically identifying with them. Further, Collingwood’s claim that historians ‘re-enact’ the thoughts of historical agents is only one way of expressing the view that historical explanations are rational rather than causal, a claim that is easily made without employing a term that is pregnant with psychological overtones. I discuss re-enactment in the context of Collingwood’s account of the nature of thought and the criteria for the identity of thought in Chapter 9. My goal, in this chapter, is to clarify Collingwood’s account of the nature of mind and to assess whether his account of the mind has anything to contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. Collingwood claims that

Introduction

7

one of the main questions that govern debates in the philosophy of mind, namely, ‘How can the body, a material substance, interact with an immaterial one, the soul?’ is wrongly posed. The relationship between the mind and the body, for Collingwood, is not the relationship between two substances but the relationship between two sciences and their respective modes of inquiry. The implications of this claim are far-reaching, as they strike at the heart of the project of cognitive psychology and lay the ground for a neo-Kantian approach to the philosophy of mind in which the relationship between the mind and the body is conceived in terms of the relationship holding between the a priori categories or principles which govern the social and the natural sciences. Collingwood’s approach to the question concerning the relationship between the mind and the body, grounded as it is in his conception of metaphysics as an inquiry into the principles which govern different domains of inquiry, provides a nonreductive solution to questions concerning the relationship between the mind and the body, a solution which should still be attractive to nonreductionists who wish to avoid the trappings of Cartesian dualism. In the ﬁnal chapter I argue that Collingwood’s conception of philosophical knowledge entails that philosophical problems are perennial and that there is a role for philosophical inquiry even in the face of the decline of traditional metaphysics and the growth of natural science. My main goal throughout the book has been to provide an account of Collingwood’s thought that highlights its philosophical strengths and clariﬁes his contribution to problems that have been at the heart of philosophical debates in the twentieth century. I have, therefore, attempted to show where Collingwood stands on issues such as the relationship between philosophy and psychology, the Realism/Anti-Realism debate, the relationship between philosophy and the sociology of knowledge, the project of naturalised epistemology, etc. It may be worth noting that there is at least one respect in which Collingwood’s philosophical concerns diverge from the concerns of most twentieth-century philosophers. Much of twentieth-century philosophy has been obsessed with the problem of scepticism. Collingwood, by contrast, appears to be unmotivated by sceptical questions. With the exception of very sparse remarks suggesting that scepticism is the result of the endorsement of realism, and that realism is a self-contradictory position to hold (I have discussed these remarks in Chapter 3), Collingwood appears to be uninterested in sceptical issues. This may not be surprising, as he understood himself as being engaged in the conceptual task of clarifying answers to questions such as ‘What is natural science?’ and ‘What is history?’ rather than in providing a theory of knowledge. Since my goal has been to clarify Collingwood’s position on such issues, rather than provide an account of Collingwood’s philosophical development, I have made very selective use of the body of unpublished manuscripts now available in the Bodleian Library and referred to them only in

8

Introduction

those cases in which they genuinely contributed to the understanding of the published texts. However, I would like to mention a few manuscripts that I have found invaluable. These are the 1929 and 1932 methodological introductions to the Lectures on Moral Philosophy and Collingwood’s correspondence with Ryle on the subject of the ontological proof. Collingwood wrote various versions of the Lectures on Moral Philosophy and, each time, he added an introduction. The introduction ﬁnally took on a life of its own and was, in a revised form, published as EPM. The introductions to the Lectures on Moral Philosophy, therefore, are early drafts of the Essay. Whereas the unpublished introductions neither alter nor add to the published account of philosophical method, they are much more accessible. One gets the impression that by the time Collingwood came to write EPM, he had worked out the issues so well for himself that he used a kind of philosophical ‘shorthand’, something which might account for the Essay’s elusive quality. As early drafts often do, the introductions provide easier access to Collingwood’s account of philosophical method. Another manuscript that I found extremely helpful is the text of the correspondence between Ryle and Collingwood over the ontological proof. The correspondence helps in clarifying three issues. First, that what is at stake between Ryle and Collingwood is the existence of synthetic a priori propositions, of which Ryle believes the ontological proof to be one. Second, that Collingwood’s defence of the ontological proof is a rather covert (and admittedly misleading) way of defending the possibility of synthetic a priori claims. Finally, that the disagreement between Ryle and Collingwood arises out of the fact that Collingwood and Ryle understand rather different things by the ‘synthetic a priori’. For Ryle a claim is synthetic a priori if it is a necessary (i.e. a priori) existential (i.e. synthetic) proposition. For Collingwood, by contrast, a claim is synthetic a priori if it is explanatorily rather than analytically necessary. If this book engenders a re-assessment of Collingwood’s contribution to philosophy and thereby re-ignites a discussion about the subject matter and method of philosophical analysis, I will regard my task as accomplished.

1

Collingwood and the metaphysics of experience

The task of philosophy, for Collingwood, is not to enlarge or expand knowledge but to engender reﬂection on the fundamental principles or presuppositions on which knowledge rests. Philosophy, Collingwood claims, ‘does not, like exact or empirical science, bring us to know things of which we were simply ignorant, but brings us to know in a different way things which we already knew in some way’ (An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM), 161). Philosophy for Collingwood is a reﬂective activity whose task is to bring to light or render explicit what was already implicitly known. The subject matter of philosophy is the key principles underpinning certain areas of knowledge or experience such as art, natural science and history, principles which are implicitly known to the practitioners of those disciplines, to the practising artist, scientist and historian. The subject matter of philosophy, therefore, is second order: the philosopher is not concerned with particular works of art, scientiﬁc hypotheses or historical arguments but with the nature of the activity in which artists, scientists and historians are engaged. The practitioners of particular disciplines are not required to conceptualise or thematise the nature of their activities; if they do so, if scientists become, for instance, interested in second-order questions concerning the principles which underpin the scientiﬁc investigation of nature, they take on the role of philosophers. Any activity, therefore, be this art, science or history, is governed by certain fundamental principles, principles that delineate the nature of that activity, that need not be explicitly known to the practitioner and which constitute the subject matter of philosophy. How are these principles known, how are they brought to light or rendered explicit? In EPM1 Collingwood says that the method of philosophy is neither deductive nor inductive (EPM, 151). It is not deductive because philosophers need to provide some justiﬁcation for the principles they claim lie at the basis of particular areas of knowledge. Such principles need to be argued for; the philosopher, consequently, cannot argue from those principles deductively or treat these principles as mathematical or geometrical axioms from which conclusions are drawn through step-by-step deductive inferences. The method by which the philosopher brings these principles to

10

Collingwood and the metaphysics of experience

light or makes them explicit is not inductive either. This is because the principles argued for by the philosopher need to be already implicitly possessed by the practitioners of those disciplines in order for that form of experience or knowledge to be possible. Given that such principles make a particular form of experience or knowledge possible, they cannot be derived empirically or known inductively. The philosopher must consequently begin from certain disciplines, from their practice and regressively ascend to the conditions of their possibility. In this way philosophy uncovers principles that are a priori, not in the sense that they are necessarily true, or cannot be denied without contradiction, but in the sense that they underpin, structure and make possible a particular area of knowledge or experience. The method that philosophy employs is therefore not a priori in the sense that the philosopher establishes certain principles either intuitively or deductively. It is a priori in the much weaker sense that philosophy uncovers or brings to light certain principles by reﬂecting on the nature of experience. In the way in which a linguist reasons to the grammatical rules of language from the practice of native speakers, the philosopher too reasons from certain forms of knowledge to the principles that govern it. The principles that the philosopher advances as capturing the deep structure of a particular area of experience are justiﬁed to the extent that they succeed in explaining the nature of the activity singled out for attention, not to the extent that they are intuitively or deductively true. Philosophical method, Collingwood says, differs from both the deductive method employed in the exact sciences such as geometry and mathematics and the inductive method employed in the sciences of observation and experiment because philosophical arguments have a feature that both deductive and inductive arguments lack: reversibility. The reversibility thesis emerges as a result of the endorsement of the Socratic principle ‘that philosophical reasoning leads to no conclusions which we did not in some sense know already’ (EPM, 161). As we have seen, philosophy’s task, for Collingwood, is not to add to knowledge but to elucidate, clarify and render explicit what is already implicitly known. The principles which a philosophical argument advances in explanation of a certain area of knowledge or experience are therefore answerable to the experience they attempt to analyse and clarify: an account of the nature of art which failed to do any justice to the practice of artistic production could not count as an appropriate explanation of that practice. This is not a feature of the method employed in the deductive sciences: a geometrical proof, for instance, is valid if no logical errors are made in deducing the conclusion from the premises; the proof would not be invalidated by the consideration that it failed to capture or do justice to one’s expectations of the results. Philosophical thought, Collingwood says: shows a contrast with that of the exact sciences. Our knowledge that

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the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides depends . . . on the proof . . . The proof is our only source of assurance that the conclusion is true. In philosophy this is not so; we know this normally without any proof at all; and the service which the proof does for us is not to assure that this is so, but to show us why it is so, and thus to enable us to know it better. (EPM, 162) Philosophical arguments, unlike arguments in geometry and mathematics are ‘veriﬁed’ by checking them against or comparing them with the experience they attempt to explain and clarify. In philosophy, therefore, the principles that are advanced in explanation of a certain area of knowledge or experience ‘must be defended by their success in defending experience’ (EPM, 174): If philosophy differs from exact science in this way – the anticipation, as we may call it, of its conclusions by an experience that possesses them in substance before its reasoning begins – other differences will follow: the chief being that in philosophy the conclusions can be checked by comparing them with these anticipations, and that by this checking the principles at work in the reasoning can be veriﬁed. (EPM, 163) Whereas, say, a geometrical proof, would not be invalidated by the fact that the results of that proof were unexpected, failure to do justice to experience, be this ethical, scientiﬁc or aesthetic, casts doubt on the adequacy of the argument which was meant to explain how that experience is possible (see EPM, 163). Philosophical arguments, for Collingwood, also differ from inductive ones. Inductive arguments, like deductive ones, lack the feature of reversibility. Inductive arguments attempt to establish universal laws through the examination of individual facts and empirical regularities. In inductive arguments the facts observed are the premises or starting point and the universal laws are the conclusion. To this extent the inductive method exhibits certain surface similarities with philosophical method. But there are important differences too. The formulation of universal laws of nature through the process of inductive generalisation relies on principles that are presupposed rather than justiﬁed by inductive arguments. The principle of the uniformity of nature or the principle that the future resembles the past is a principle that is presupposed by inductive arguments, not one that is justiﬁed by means of induction. For this reason, Collingwood says, inductive arguments are irreversible in the same sense in which deductive arguments are: ‘the principles on which induction rests receive no support from the inductive process itself’ (EPM, 167). It is important to point out that the Socratic principle according to which

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philosophical reasoning merely elucidates what is already known does not entail that philosophy has no normative role, that it can only describe knowledge or experience. Philosophy, for Collingwood, is concerned with laying bare the logical ground on which experience or knowledge rests. As such, it is not a psychological enterprise concerned with restating or repeating what the practitioners of any discipline do as a matter of fact, or what they believe their activities to consist in. As a logical rather than psychological enterprise philosophy is a criteriological discipline, i.e. it is both descriptive and normative. It is descriptive because it analyses and clariﬁes the principles which regulate the various departments of knowledge, and in doing so it takes its cue from the practice of e.g. art, natural science, history. It is normative because in articulating the fundamental principles that govern those disciplines it uncovers certain standards through which the erroneous conception of the nature of a particular discipline can be corrected. As he put it in EPM: Logic . . . has a double character. On the one hand it is descriptive, and aims to give an account of how we actually think; on the other hand it is normative, and aims at giving an account of the ideal of thought, the way in which we ought to think. If logic were merely descriptive, it would be a psychology of thinking; like all psychology, it would abstract from the distinction of thoughts into true and false, valid and invalid, and would consider them merely as events happening in the mind . . . But neither is logic merely normative. A purely normative science would expound a norm or ideal of what its subject matter ought to be, but would commit itself to no assertion that this ideal was anywhere realized. (EPM, 128–129) The philosopher must begin with a reﬂection on the practice of art, natural science, history, etc., but the process of elucidation or clariﬁcation of the various areas of knowledge or experience may lead the artist, scientist, historian, etc., to reconsider their conception or understanding of the nature of the activity in which they are engaged. Collingwood, for instance, makes it clear that the principles that structure experience are justiﬁed not simply to the extent that they conform to experience but to the extent that they explain how it is possible. Competing principles can therefore be ruled out on the basis of their weaker or greater explanatory power. As Collingwood puts it: To say that theory must be checked by appeal to experience, therefore, seems like saying that the more rational must prove its rationality by conforming to the less rational, which seems like appealing from Philip sober to Philip drunk. But what is asked of the higher is not simply that it should agree with the lower, but rather that it should

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explain it . . . Consequently, when we ask whether a moral theory tallies with moral experience we are asking whether the theory makes intelligible the moral experience which we actually possess. (EPM, 172) Collingwood, therefore, does not simply require that philosophical reﬂection be in line with common-sense knowledge or experience; philosophical reﬂection must explain how the latter is possible. To illustrate Collingwood’s point one might consider the relationship in which the Categorical Imperative stands to ordinary knowledge of morality. Everyone, Kant claims, even those who have never discussed moral philosophy, is aware of a distinction between acting out of duty (doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do) and acting in accordance with duty (doing the right thing for other reasons, such as prudential considerations). The Categorical Imperative explains how moral consciousness is possible. We have a sense of morality to the extent that we implicitly acknowledge that imperative, even if we may not be able explicitly to articulate the moral law. It is a relationship of this kind that, for Collingwood, holds between a form of experience and the principles on which it rests. What is the relationship between the various forms of experience? Collingwood believed the various forms of knowledge or experience to be ‘attitudes of mind’ which provide not mutually exclusive accounts of what exists but complementary explanatory principles on the basis of which what exists or what there is can be described. The artist looks at the world as an artistic creation, the natural scientist as a series of events governed by deterministic causal laws, the historian as a product of human activity. This is so because the a priori principles that underpin art, science and history disclose the world respectively as artistic creation, system of natural laws, product of human action, thereby delineating the subject matter of the ﬁrst order activities of artists, scientists and historians. Collingwood saw the major threat to the complementarity thesis as arising from the endorsement of realism, which he summed up as the doctrine that knowledge makes no difference to what is known. He believed that the attempt to deﬁne the domain of inquiry of each area of experience by employing a realist criterion of truth resulted in the view that each form of knowledge puts forward competing claims about the same objects: if the domain of inquiry of art, natural science and history is deﬁned by reference to the objects that artists, historians and natural scientists investigate, then art, science and history appear to be providing competing explanations. The a priori principles of art, science and history constitute the subject matter of The Principles of Art (PA),2 The Idea of Nature (IN)3 and The Idea of History (IH).4 Collingwood’s reﬂections on philosophical method, on the other hand, are contained in his meta-philosophical writings. It is in these metaphilosophical writings that he attempted, again and again, to articulate the nature of the relationship between the various areas of experience or

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knowledge and to defend the idea of their complementarity. Throughout these writings Collingwood attempted to explain how such forms of knowledge or experience can be distinct while complementing each other. In EPM Collingwood defended the complementarity thesis by arguing that in philosophy, unlike in the empirical sciences, the speciﬁc classes of a genus are not mutually exclusive but overlapping classes. For this reason the traditional theory of classiﬁcation does not apply to the philosophical employment of concepts. To illustrate: natural history, Collingwood claims, subdivides organisms into animals and vegetables. Animals are then subdivided into vertebrate and invertebrates and vertebrates are further subdivided into mammals, birds, reptiles and ﬁsh (EPM, 30). In natural science the speciﬁc classes of any genus are mutually exclusive because the instances that fall under the speciﬁc classes of any given genus cannot overlap. For instance, x cannot be both an animal and a vegetable; y cannot be both vertebrate and invertebrate; z cannot be both a mammal that suckles his young and a reptile that lays eggs. To use a simpler example consider the subdivision of the genus ‘colour’ into the speciﬁc classes or concepts ‘red’, ‘green’, ‘yellow’. If x is yellow, it cannot be green, if y is green, it cannot be red. In empirical science the subdivision of the genus into its speciﬁc classes occurs by progressively narrowing down the number of objects that can count as instances. There are, for example, fewer animals than there are organisms, fewer vertebrates than animals, fewer mammals than vertebrates, as there are fewer red objects than coloured ones. In this type of classiﬁcation the sum total of the instances that fall under all speciﬁc classes is equal to the number of instances that fall under the genus. So, for instance, the sum total of red objects, green objects, yellow objects, etc. is equal to the number of instances which fall under the genus ‘colour’. The traditional doctrine of classiﬁcation, as employed in the natural sciences, allows one to move vertically from speciﬁc classes to increasingly more general concepts or from general concepts to less general ones, but not sideways from a speciﬁc class to its coordinate class. For instance, there is overlap in the instances or extension of the concepts ‘vertebrates’ and ‘mammals’ as some of the instances of the genus ‘vertebrates’ are also instances of the speciﬁc concept ‘mammals’, but there is no overlap of the speciﬁc concepts ‘vertebrates’ and ‘invertebrates’; since such concepts have a different extension, the instances which fall under one do not fall under the other. What prevents horizontal overlap among classes is that the empirical sciences subdivide concepts with reference to their instances or extension rather than with reference to their intension. From the point of view of empirical science the subdivision of the genus ‘organism’ into its speciﬁc classes, ‘animals’ and ‘vegetables’, is not an internal differentiation of the genus ‘organism’. With philosophy, Collingwood claims, the case is different because the instances that fall under the speciﬁc classes of a concept or genus can overlap. He considers the concept of the good and its subdivi-

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sion into the speciﬁc concepts of the pleasant, the expedient and the right (EPM, 41). One and the same, action, Collingwood claims, can be pleasant, expedient and right. It is not simply the case that some of the instances which fall under the genus ‘good’ are also instances of the speciﬁc classes into which the concept is subdivided, in the way in which some vertebrates are also mammals and some coloured objects are red, but rather that any of the instances which fall under one of the speciﬁc classes could fall under any of its coordinate classes. From the point of view of the philosophical classiﬁcation of concepts the subdivision of a genus into its speciﬁc classes is not an empirical or external classiﬁcation, but a purely internal or conceptual distinction. A philosophical distinction, Collingwood claims, ‘is a distinction without a difference’ (EPM, 50). It is because the distinctions with which philosophy is concerned are purely conceptual that it is possible to say, for instance, that an action is both expedient and right or that the platypus, a creature which lays eggs like a reptile and suckles the new-born infants like a mammal, is both a reptile and a mammal. To illustrate how the philosophical employment of concepts allows one to say that an action is both expedient and right or that the platypus is both a reptile and a mammal, Collingwood cites Aristotle’s formula for the overlap of classes, according to which: two concepts ‘are the same thing’ in the sense that a thing which exempliﬁes the one exempliﬁes the other also, but ‘their being is not the same’ in the sense that being an instance of the one is not the same as being an instance of the other. (EPM, 50) The more general implication of Collingwood’s distinction between the empirical and the philosophical employment of concepts is that the distinction between the various areas of knowledge or experience, conceived as a philosophical classiﬁcation or distinction, allows for overlap in the objects studied in each area of knowledge, yet still permits an understanding of the conceptual distinctions involved. Following the formula for the overlap of classes, one may say that the various areas of knowledge study ‘the same thing’ in the sense that the objects which fall under the domain of investigation of e.g. chemistry and biology are the same, but that ‘their being is not the same’ because the principles employed within each discipline differ. Whereas empirical classiﬁcations seek to map conceptual distinctions onto real distinctions, the task of philosophy, Collingwood says, is the ‘distinguishing of concepts . . . coexisting in their instances’ (EPM, 51). In An Essay on Metaphysics (EM)5 Collingwood returned to the question of the status of the principles that underpin the various areas of knowledge and to the question of their relationship. Here he argued that the principles advanced by philosophical inquiry stand to the kind of

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experience they seek to account for in a relationship of logical rather than psychological priority. In the vocabulary of EM, the principles that the philosopher advances are ‘presuppositions’, i.e. assumptions of a logical nature. Logical assumptions or presuppositions differ from psychological ones in the following important respects. First, presuppositions make experience possible not in the sense that they precede experience, in the sense that they are temporally prior to it. A particular form of experience, for Collingwood, must be given, in order for the philosopher to analyse and explain its nature. Since knowledge or experience is the starting point for philosophical inquiry, experience must, temporally or chronologically speaking, precede philosophy. But whereas experience must be given, the principles advanced by the philosopher are logically prior to it, in so far as they constitute its ground or condition of possibility. Second, presuppositions or assumptions of a logical nature need not be self-consciously entertained; the practitioners of a given discipline need not be explicitly aware of the principles that underpin their activities. Third, logical assumptions or presuppositions do not entail the presence of true beliefs or propositional attitudes: an accomplished artist invited to provide some reﬂections on the nature of his own work might reveal himself to be a poor art critic. An artist may be capable of producing good work while failing to understand the nature of aesthetic production. It is because presuppositions are of a logical rather than psychological nature that it is possible for there to be a mismatch between what the practitioners of a particular discipline believe they are doing and what they ought to believe about the nature of their subject matter. The conclusions which philosophical analysis yields, therefore, need not necessarily map onto what is believed to be the case by the practitioners of a given discipline and are not impaired by considerations of that kind. Collingwood claimed that philosophy, thus conceived, is metaphysics. Since the term ‘metaphysics’ is employed in so many different ways by different thinkers, it is important to understand what signiﬁcance is to be attached to Collingwood’s identiﬁcation of philosophy with metaphysics. All metaphysics, according to Collingwood, arises out of the recognition that there is an element in knowledge that is non-empirical. Such recognition can lead to two distinct conceptions of metaphysics. On the one hand, metaphysics can take the form of a theory that claims there exists a supra-sensory world of real entities which is the task of the metaphysician to investigate. Thus, conceived metaphysics takes the form of ontology, a study of what there is or what exists. On the other hand, metaphysics can take the form of an investigation into certain a priori principles, principles which are not derived from experience but which govern it. Thus conceived, metaphysics is a study of the presuppositions which govern the various areas of experience or, as Collingwood puts it, a metaphysics without ontology, and the task of the metaphysician is not to investigate what there is or what exists, but to bring these presuppositions to light, to

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make them explicit. In doing so the philosopher does not discover some ultimate truth about reality, but the principles that govern experience. Metaphysics, Collingwood says, has often been construed as ontology or as the science of what exists, but this understanding is, in fact, a misunderstanding of what metaphysics truly is. Appropriately understood, metaphysics looks for the non-empirical element within knowledge not in a supra-sensory realm but in the conceptual organisation of experience. Art, natural science, history, etc., for Collingwood, are sciences in the Latin sense of the term scientia meaning a systematic body of knowledge with a particular method and about a particular subject matter, rather than sciences in the slang sense of term science, employed to mean ‘natural science’ in the way in which the term ‘drink’ is used as slang for ‘alcoholic drink’ (EM, 4). The subdivision of experience into artistic, scientiﬁc, historical experience, like the subdivision of the concept of the good into the expedient, the pleasant and the right does not cut nature at the joints; it is a mere conceptual distinction, an internal differentiation of the concept ‘being’, in the way in which the pleasant, the expedient and the right are not empirical concepts or classes but internal differentiations of the concept ‘good’. Understood in this way the concept ‘being’ is not the most general empirical concept whose extension is equal to the sum total of the instances which fall under its subordinate classes, it is rather the most abstract concept there is. Whereas in empirical science in moving from speciﬁc classes to their superordinate class we increase the number of instances which fall under the genus (there are more vertebrates than mammals and more animals than vertebrates), philosophically speaking in moving from speciﬁc classes to their genus we decrease the internal differentiations of concepts until we reach a concept, that of ‘being’, which, lacking any internal determinations, is unable to provide any description of what there is. Hence Collingwood says that there can be no science of pure being and that ontology, the science of what there is or what exists is possible only as metaphysics, in his particular sense of the term, i.e. as a conceptual map of experience or as a metaphysics without ontology. It is this conceptual inquiry that Collingwood calls ‘metaphysics’. Collingwood’s anti-realist metaphysics is far-reaching: on Collingwood’s conception of philosophy even the description of an object by reference to its ontological substratum, such as, for instance, its molecular structure, ultimately depends on the concept of the object employed, i.e. its place within the conceptual map of experience. However, although Collingwood’s idealism is far-reaching it is not naïve, for it does not reduce objects to the object of thought or to mental entities. He clearly distinguished between the idea of particulars being subsumed under concepts (as in the statement ‘x is a mammal’) and the idea of concepts being subsumed under other concepts (as in the statement ‘mammals are vertebrates’). He did not, consequently, hold that the existence of an object is dependent upon its being thought, but only that any object, in order to be

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identiﬁed as something must be located within the conceptual map of experience. Collingwood identiﬁed philosophy with metaphysics, understood as a metaphysics of experience or as a metaphysics without ontology, in the attempt to account for the possible co-existence of the different departments of knowledge and he regarded any attempt by one area of knowledge or experience to colonise the rest as arising out of a failure to acknowledge its own place within the conceptual mapping of reality. The anti-realist metaphysics that underpins Collingwood’s writing in the philosophy of art, science and history is therefore not an idealist excrescence that can be removed or easily dismissed, but the necessary context in which his reﬂections on art, natural science and history are to be understood. In developing an anti-realist metaphysics, understood as a metaphysics without ontology, Collingwood gave philosophy a foundational role. Philosophy, for Collingwood, is not foundational in the sense that it provides indubitable principles known through the light of reason upon which the ediﬁce of knowledge can be built. The task of philosophy is not to prepare the ground for the acquisition of empirical knowledge by securing principles from which synthetic or substantive knowledge of the world can be achieved through step-by-step deduction, but to clarify the presuppositions that the practitioners of any area of knowledge make, however covertly or implicitly. Given that metaphysics is a logical enterprise without any ontological commitments, the knowledge that it can provide is not empirical. It is knowledge of the presuppositions on which thought rests, or as Collingwood puts it, it is self-knowledge. It is this conception of metaphysics that underpins Collingwood’s distinction between the subject matter of history, or ‘actions’, and the subject matter of natural science, or ‘events’. The concept of an action, for Collingwood, is tied to a particular use of the term ‘cause’ which he outlines in EM. Here Collingwood distinguishes between three senses of the word ‘cause’. First, the word cause is used (sense I) in the historical sciences, where ‘that which is caused is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and causing him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it’ (EM, 285). The word is used in sense I in expressions such as ‘Mr Baldwin’s speech compelled the speaker to adjourn the house’ or ‘a solicitor’s letter causes a man to pay his debt’. The term cause in sense I is made up of two elements, the causa quod and the causa ut. The causa quod is not merely the situation preceding the act or an antecedent state of affairs, but an antecedent state of affairs known or believed by the agent in question to exist. The causa ut is a purpose. Neither, according to Collingwood, affords a motive independently of the other. Second, the term cause is also used (sense II) in expressions such as ‘the cause of malaria is the bite of a mosquito’ or ‘the cause of a boat sinking is its being overloaded’ or ‘the cause of books going mouldy is their being in a damp room’. This is the sense in which the word cause is employed in the practical sciences of nature, such as medicine and

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engineering, where ‘that which is caused is an event in nature and its cause is an event or state of things by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause is said to be’ (EM, 296–297). The term cause is, ﬁnally, also employed (sense III) in the theoretical sciences of nature where that which is caused is an event or state of things, and its cause is another event or state of things [such that] (a) if the cause happens or exists, the effect must happen or exist, even if no further conditions are fulﬁlled, (b) the effect cannot happen or exist unless the cause happens or exists . . . (EM, 285–286) What occurs in moving from sense I to sense III is a progressive removal of a teleological framework of explanation. The main difference between sense II and sense III of the term is that whereas in the practical sciences of nature the cause of an event is an antecedent state of affairs considered from the point of view of an interest in controlling and manipulating the natural environment, in the theoretical sciences of nature the causes of natural events are viewed independently of any impact that agents can have on the natural environment: a cause in sense III is unconditional. The main difference between sense I, on the one hand, and senses II and III, on the other, is that whereas the practical and theoretical sciences of nature explain the occurrence of events by appealing to empirical regularities, the historical sciences explain actions by ascribing reasons to agents. The natural sciences are concerned with empirical or external relations between events, while the historical sciences are concerned with internal, non-empirical relations between actions and the motives/beliefs they express. Collingwood arrives at an understanding of sense I of the term cause by means of an analysis of one of our uses of the term and what he shows is that the use of the term cause in sense I presupposes the notion of a practical argument in which the premises function not as antecedent conditions of the action, but as their logical ground. To have the concept of an action, for Collingwood, is to understand how the term cause is employed in sense I.6 Collingwood’s analysis of the three senses of the term cause shows that there is a difference in the a priori principles that govern the use of this term in different disciplines. IH is concerned with the a priori principles underpinning history understood as a non-naturalistic study of the past. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the subject matter of IH from the subject matter of an applied historiography. Practising historians are concerned with the domain of human affairs, with phenomena of a social and political nature rather than with natural phenomena such as hurricanes, volcanic explosions, ﬂooding and the like. The subject matter of IH, on the other hand, is the presuppositions that practising

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historians must make in order to provide appropriately historical explanations. In so far as Collingwood is primarily concerned with the presuppositions which govern the kind of judgements made in the historical and the natural sciences, the distinction between the concept of an action and the concept of an event is not an empirical distinction, or a distinction between the types of objects which instantiate either concepts, but rather a distinction between the kind of judgements that are used in rational and causal explanations. If the distinction between the presuppositions of the historical and natural sciences reﬂected the empirical classiﬁcation of events into, e.g. ﬂooding, volcanic explosions, etc. and of actions into, e.g. rebellions, revolutions, conquests, etc., there could be no cross-over between the class of objects investigated by the historical and the natural sciences, there could be no overlap in the extension of the concept ‘event’ and the extension of the concept ‘action’. This would imply, in turn, that the historical and the natural sciences not only provide different types of explanations that reﬂect different lines of inquiry, but that they are actually investigating distinct classes of objects. This is a conclusion that Collingwood would not accept, because his claim is not that what human beings do cannot be investigated by applying the methods of natural science to the domain of human affairs, but that in order to understand a human doing as an action we must understand it as an expression of thought. This discussion of Collingwood’s conception of philosophy and philosophical method clearly shows that Collingwood’s metaphysics is a ‘metaphysics of experience’ or a ‘descriptive metaphysics’, to use expressions that have been coined respectively by Paton,7 to describe Kant’s metaphysics and by Strawson, to describe his own, Kantian-inspired metaphysics.8 Collingwood’s metaphysics is a descriptive metaphysics or metaphysics of experience because it is concerned not with the structure of things but with the concepts that structure our experience of things. Metaphysics, for Collingwood, takes the form of categorial analysis, i.e. of a reﬂection on the concepts or categories that structure our experience of reality. I will consider the Kantian heritage of Collingwood’s metaphysics of experience in detail in the next chapter; for the moment, however, we may note that Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics as a form of categorial analysis shares a number of important features with Kantianinspired metaphysics. Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics as categorial analysis shares with Kantian-inspired metaphysics a certain view of the relationship between the starting point and the end point of philosophical analysis, according to which the end point of philosophical analysis is implicit in the starting point and the goal of philosophical analysis is to render explicit what is implicit. Metaphysical analysis, for this reason, yields a kind of knowledge that although not empirical, is not trivially analytic or tautological. The kind of a priori but non-trivial knowledge that metaphysical

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analysis yields is comparable to the kind of knowledge that the native speakers of a language acquire when they learn the grammatical rules of their language. In learning such rules they do not acquire new knowledge (they do not, for instance, expand their vocabulary) but learn that they are employing certain rules. Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics is Kantian in another important respect. For Collingwood there is an important link between the categories or concepts that are the object of metaphysical analysis and the kind of judgements we employ in thinking and talking about reality. Collingwood, for instance, thought that the concept of mind is embedded in the kind of judgements we make when we describe what happens in rational rather than causal terms. Although Collingwood did not share Kant’s urge to provide an exhaustive table of categories from an exhaustive list of the forms of judgement, he did, like Kant, believe that the kind of judgements we make about reality provide the clue to the concepts that structure different domains of inquiry. The conceptual distinctions with which the metaphysician is concerned, as we have seen, are those which determine the boundaries between domains of inquiry, i.e. concepts that signal the use of different forms of inference. There is, therefore, for Collingwood, an important interplay between logic (the study of inference), epistemology (the study of knowledge) and ontology (the study of what there is). The kind of inferences we make (deductive/inductive) determine the kind of knowledge we have (empirical/a priori) and the ontology we commit ourselves to (mind/matter). Finally, and most importantly, Collingwood shares with Kantianinspired conceptions of metaphysics the profoundly anti-naturalist assumption that not all concepts can be either empirically derived or empirically reduced. The distinction between empirical concepts and the kind of concepts with which philosophy is concerned is beautifully illustrated in the 1929 Introduction to the ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’9 where Collingwood claims that different empirical concepts are ‘not only different conceptions but (also) conceptions of different things’. For this reason it is possible to learn how to distinguish between two empirical concepts by observing their exemplars. For instance, we learn the distinction between the concepts of crystalline and sedimentary rocks by looking at instances of them. By contrast, since the kind of concepts with which metaphysics is concerned, e.g. the concept of action and the concept of event, coincide in their instances, it is not possible to acquire the distinction between such concepts by pointing to objects that instantiate them. We learn to distinguish between such concepts, not empirically, by taking notice of observable differences between objects, but a priori, by reﬂecting on the way in which we describe and speak about the objects of our experience. Having elucidated Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics, I now wish to consider a number of questions that may arise in relation to it.

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The ﬁrst question concerns the relationship holding between metaphysics understood as a form of categorial analysis and metaphysics traditionally understood as the study of the ultimate structure of reality or of things-inthemselves. The second concerns the relationship of metaphysics as a form of categorial analysis and the ambitions of science to deliver knowledge of reality as it is in itself. The third concerns the conception of the philosophical task that is entailed by Collingwood’s understanding of metaphysics as categorial analysis. Let us begin by considering the relationship in which metaphysics as categorial analysis stands to metaphysics construed as the study of things-in-themselves. There are two ways in which this relationship can be construed. On the one hand, categorial analysis may be understood as a form of inquiry that complements metaphysics traditionally understood. In this case there is a clear division of tasks between the descriptive and traditional metaphysician: the role of the descriptive metaphysician is to analyse the structure of knowledge, whereas the role of the traditional metaphysician is to inquire into the structure of things. On the other hand, metaphysics as categorial analysis may be understood as a form of inquiry that aims to replace rather than complement metaphysics traditionally understood. Although some of Collingwood’s remarks, especially his claim, in EM, to be practising metaphysics without ontology, may suggest that he conceived of categorial analysis as a form of conceptual inquiry that would happily co-exist alongside traditional ontological inquiry, it is the second, more robust, conception of metaphysics as categorial analysis that more closely reﬂects Collingwood’s philosophical ambitions. Collingwood saw himself as being engaged in a reform of the old metaphysics and as such he believed that categorial analysis ought to take the place occupied by traditional metaphysics. Collingwood’s reasons for believing that categorial analysis should replace rather than complement traditional metaphysics have to do with his belief that there cannot be a study of pure being, that it is not possible for there to be a pure ontology untainted by any epistemological assumptions. Being is known or experienced theoretically, morally or aesthetically, via the presuppositions of the sciences that study nature, conduct and beauty. There is, however, no knowledge or experience of pure being and hence no ‘science’ corresponding to it (no such thing as metaphysics traditionally understood). Collingwood’s robust conception of categorial analysis is born out of the idealist insight that epistemology determines ontology, that the presuppositions we make determine the kind of ontology we have. This robust conception of categorial analysis, unlike its weaker counterpart, is incompatible with metaphysical realism since it subsumes ontology under epistemology, the study of what there is under the study of the presuppositions that we bring to experience. Collingwood’s claim to be practising metaphysics without ontology, therefore, should be read as putting forward the rather strong claim that there can be no presuppositionless inquiry into reality rather than as stating the rather weaker

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claim that descriptive metaphysicians should limit themselves to an examination of our ways of thinking and speaking about the world. A second question that may arise in conjunction with Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics concerns the relationship in which the project of categorial analysis stands to the ambitions of natural science to take over the role once occupied by metaphysics, i.e. to assume for itself the role of the science of pure being. The relationship between Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics as categorial analysis and the project of scientiﬁc inquiry into the ultimate structure of reality does not resemble the way in which, say, Lockean secondary qualities stand to primary properties. Categorial analysis, for Collingwood, is not an inquiry into epiphenomena. His views concerning the logical priority of epistemology over ontology entail that there is no explanatory level that is ontologically basic. Since there is no level of explanation that is ontologically basic, not even natural science can take the place once occupied by metaphysics. A ﬁnal question that may arise in relation to Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics as categorial analysis concerns the conception of philosophy that is entailed by it. An important part of the philosophical task, for Collingwood, consists in clarifying conceptual confusions that arise when we carry out classiﬁcations across categories: the task of philosophy is to make explicit the fundamental principles that govern domains of inquiry, to monitor their employment and to expose any errors that may arise from the exportation of principles and investigative methods beyond their appropriate sphere of application. To the extent that the philosopher’s task is to disentangle conceptual knots that arise when there is a mismatch between an investigative method and the domain of inquiry to which it is applied, the task of the philosopher is curative. Collingwood’s conception of the task of philosophy is, however, much less negative than suggested by the analogy of the therapist. For Collingwood, the recurrence of certain philosophical problems throughout the history of philosophy is not due simply to philosophical errors and confusions. Problems such as the relationship between mind and matter, freedom and determinism, etc., keep on recurring because they are grounded in our ability to distinguish between concepts such as that of the person and that of the automaton, of action and knee-jerk reaction. As long as such conceptual distinctions will remain part of our ways of describing and speaking about the world, such problems will recur again and again. There is no suggestion, in Collingwood’s work, that once the appropriate therapy is applied, the so-called basic problems of philosophy will disappear. From Collingwood’s perspective, therefore, the history of philosophy is not so much a catalogue of errors as a series of attempts to tackle with those philosophical concepts and distinctions that structure our experience of reality.

2

The Kantian heritage of Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics

Collingwood’s name is usually associated with his work in the philosophy of history: most professional philosophers are likely to be acquainted with Collingwood’s defence of history as an autonomous discipline with a distinct method and subject matter, either through ﬁrst-hand acquaintance with The Idea of History (IH), or via Collingwood-inspired clariﬁcations of the distinction between ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’. However, in spite of the fact that a great part of Collingwood’s work was intended as a reﬂection on the method and task of philosophy and explicitly presented as an attempt to re-think what metaphysics is, Collingwood’s name rarely features in discussions of the fate of metaphysics in twentieth-century thought and, in particular, in European philosophy after Kant. When Collingwood’s name appears in histories of philosophy it is usually under the heading of ‘The British Idealists’, a heading which, although not inappropriate, tends to suggest that he is a relatively minor ﬁgure, a member of a school, which is itself more worthy of attention than his own contribution to it. There has, in other words, been relatively little interest in Collingwood’s work as a valuable addition to that ongoing dialogue that is the history of philosophy. It is not easy to identify the reasons for this neglect. It could be because Collingwood was writing at the tail end of an idealist tradition which was increasingly regarded as largely anachronistic. Or it could be because Collingwood chose to describe his project as an attempt to reform metaphysics, rather than criticise it, at a time when both the emerging traditions of the philosophy of language in the AngloAmerican world and that of phenomenology in continental Europe preferred to describe themselves in opposition to, rather than as an extension of, the metaphysics of the past. In this chapter I attempt to do two things. My immediate goal is to explore the reform of metaphysics in Collingwood’s work with an eye to highlighting its Kantian heritage. My ultimate, but more crucial goal, is to emphasise how central some of Collingwood’s concerns are to that very history of philosophy which has often neglected him. I am aware that comparative analyses are often treacherous1 and always at risk of being shallow; yet it is only in relation to the ongoing dialogue in the history of philosophy that a thinker’s achievements can be

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understood. The chapter is divided in two sections. In the ﬁrst I will highlight the main Kantian themes and Kantian-inspired arguments in Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics.2 In the second I will focus on the differences between Kant’s and Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics in order to explain why Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics may be understood as a radicalisation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy.

I Let us begin by outlining four Kantian themes in Collingwood.3 First, both Kant and Collingwood saw themselves not only as critics but also as reformers of metaphysics. On the one hand, Kant’s transcendental philosophy was put forward as an explicit critique of the rationalist metaphysics of Leibniz and Wolff. Kant thought that rationalist metaphysicians had failed clearly to distinguish between concepts and intuitions and had therefore believed that an analysis of our concepts would yield knowledge of things-in-themselves. On the other hand, in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), when introducing the idea of a Copernican turn, Kant claimed that we should ‘make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge’.4 Within the terms of reference of the Copernican revolution the task of metaphysics is to analyse, not the structure of reality, but the structure of experience: unlike rationalist metaphysics, the new metaphysics did not seek to uncover the ultimate structure of reality or of things-inthemselves by an analysis of concepts. Kant believed nonetheless that this new project still deserved the name of metaphysics. Collingwood also thought that metaphysics stood in need of both critique and reform: metaphysics cannot take the form of a study of pure being, but must rather be a study of the absolute presuppositions which govern different domains of inquiry, such as religion, natural science, history or art. Kant and Collingwood appear to have similar reasons for holding an epistemological inquiry into either the structure of cognition in general, or into the absolute presuppositions which govern different disciplines, still deserves to be named metaphysics. The need for metaphysics, for both Kant and Collingwood, arises out of the realisation that there is an element in knowledge or experience that is not empirical. As we saw, the recognition of this non-empirical element in knowledge can give rise to two very distinct conceptions of the task of metaphysics. On the one hand, metaphysics can take the form of a study of a supra-sensory realm of real entities. On the other hand, metaphysics can seek the non-empirical element within knowledge in a set of a priori concepts or principles which cannot be justiﬁed empirically, but which nonetheless explain how knowledge or experience is possible. So conceived, metaphysics takes the form of an inquiry into the a priori element within knowledge or experience and it is in this sense that both Kant and Collingwood thought themselves to be justiﬁed in

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calling what appears to be primarily an epistemological inquiry, ‘metaphysics’. It goes without saying that whereas Kant had to defend the need for metaphysics against the early empiricism of Locke, who described the empiricist thesis primarily in genetic rather than veriﬁcationist terms, as a theory concerning the origin of knowledge rather than its mode of justiﬁcation, Collingwood, on the other hand, had to defend metaphysics against logical positivism which presented itself as a thesis concerned not with the origin of knowledge but with its mode of justiﬁcation. It was primarily in an attempt to awaken the logical positivists to the need for metaphysics that Collingwood developed his account of absolute presuppositions and insisted on the claim that such presuppositions are meaningful, but neither true nor false, i.e. incapable of being empirically veriﬁable, thereby challenging the logical positivists’ tenet that all propositions are either empirically veriﬁable or meaningless. Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions is developed in An Essay on Metaphysics (EM), where he illustrates what is meant by an absolute presupposition by considering the different explanatory principles employed in the historical sciences and in the practical and theoretical sciences of nature.5 Collingwood, like Kant, thought that the absolute presuppositions which govern the historical and the natural sciences cannot be empirically veriﬁed. Kant had claimed that the categories of the understanding stood in need of a transcendental deduction, since an empirical deduction cannot be provided in their case.6 Analogously Collingwood thought that the absolute presuppositions which govern certain domains of inquiry cannot be veriﬁed empirically precisely because they are the preconditions for making empirically true or false statements, and identiﬁed the study of this a priori element in knowledge with metaphysics. Second, both Kant and Collingwood saw their work as standing in a complex relationship to the idealist tradition. Kant referred to his idealism as ‘transcendental’, to distinguish it from the ontological or metaphysical idealism of Berkeley, and Collingwood went so far as to refuse the label ‘idealist’ altogether. In both Kant’s and Collingwood’s case, what makes their relationship to idealism complex is that they both wished to distinguish between epistemological issues, or issues pertaining to the order of knowledge, and ontological issues, or issues pertaining to the order of existence. Whereas Kant signalled that his idealism was of an epistemic rather than an ontological nature by calling his idealism transcendental, Collingwood preferred to express the epistemological nature of his project by saying (in the vocabulary of An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM)) that a philosophical distinction is a distinction to which there corresponds no empirical difference or (in the vocabulary of EM) that a metaphysics of absolute presuppositions is effectively a metaphysics without ontology.7 Third, both Kant and Collingwood saw the project of enquiring into the structure of experience as that of uncovering the logical rather than

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the psychological conditions of knowledge. Like his empiricist predecessor, Locke, Kant thought that to determine the extent and limits of knowledge, it was necessary to carry out an inquiry into the cognitive faculties8 but, unlike Locke, he did not offer an empirical psychology. Whereas Locke deﬁned ideas as whatever is present in the mind when a man thinks, Kant did not identify concepts with consciously entertained thought processes. Second, Kant did not offer an account of how knowledge is acquired: he was interested in providing a validation or justiﬁcation of knowledge, not a genetic account of how it is arrived at. Collingwood shared Kant’s critique of psychologism: he clearly distinguished, for instance, between presuppositions and assumptions. ‘Presuppositions’ is the name Collingwood gives to logical presumptions, ‘assumptions’ the name he gives to psychological presumptions. According to Collingwood, presuppositions need not be self-consciously entertained; the practitioners of a given discipline need not be aware of the principles which underpin their activities. Consequently, presuppositions do not entail the presence of true beliefs: an accomplished artist invited to provide some reﬂections on the nature of artistic value may reveal himself to be a poor art critic; it is because presuppositions are of a logical rather than psychological nature that it is possible for there to be a mismatch between what the practitioners of a particular discipline believe themselves to be doing and what they ought to believe about the nature of their subject matter. Fourth, Collingwood’s notion of philosophical method may be said to bear many similarities to Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant’s method, in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), is to proceed from a fact of experience to the conditions of its possibility. Hence, for instance, in the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant argues that space is a necessary epistemic condition for representing objects as distinct from the subject and as numerically distinguishable from other objects: if the representation of space were not presupposed, Kant argues, it would not be possible to distinguish numerically between qualitatively identical objects.9 The same argumentative strategy is employed by Kant in the Transcendental Analytic in the context of his discussion of causality in the second analogy.10 Here Kant argues that we are justiﬁed in employing the concept of cause, or that the employment of the concept of cause is legitimate, in so far as the category of causality must be presupposed if we are to be capable of distinguishing between changes in our representations (subjective changes) and representations of change (objective changes). The method of proceeding from a fact of experience to its logical ground has been described by Karl Ameriks as regressive,11 and is to be contrasted with the progressive method which is employed in deductive arguments which proceed from independently established premises to the conclusions. Whereas the progressive method is not circular (in a deductive argument the truth of the premises is established independently of the truth of the

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conclusion), the regressive method is circular in that the truth of the premises is not established independently of the conclusion of the argument: regressive arguments begin, so to speak, from the conclusion (e.g. the experience of objects which are qualitatively identical and yet numerically distinct) and show the premises (e.g. the representation of space) to be true if the conclusion is true.12 Collingwood’s notion of philosophical method may be said to be Kantian in origin because Collingwood thought that the absolute presuppositions which structure certain domains of inquiry must be defended by their success in explaining our experience (EPM, 174). The method by which the philosopher uncovers the basic principles which structure certain areas of experience or domains of inquiry is not deductive because the absolute presuppositions which structure a given domain of inquiry do not have the status of intuitively true Cartesian ﬁrst principles which are known through the light of reason and from which the ediﬁce of knowledge can be built through careful step-by-step deductive inferences. The geometrical method which inspired Cartesian rationalism is unsuitable for uncovering absolute presuppositions because such principles must be defended by their success in explaining our experience, rather than being independently established by means of intellectual intuition. Unlike the deductive sciences, philosophical method cannot merely presuppose the principles which lie at the basis of the various areas of knowledge or experience; it must ‘verify’ them by checking or comparing them with the kind of experience or knowledge which they make possible. The demand that philosophy should justify its starting point, however, for Collingwood, does not entail that every philosophical system should proceed, as Descartes did, by inquiring into the principles that make knowledge possible independently of an investigation of knowledge. The demand that philosophy should justify its starting point cannot mean that there must be a preliminary philosophy charged with the task of justifying its principles. That would be to support the world on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise: a procedure which, as Kant came to see, is not adequately explained by calling the elephant metaphysics and the tortoise a Critical or Transcendental Propaedeutic. If the ﬁrst principles of philosophy are to be justiﬁed, they must be justiﬁed by that philosophy itself. (EPM, 160) It is clear from Collingwood’s account of how philosophical arguments differ from those employed (paradigmatically) in the exact sciences, that he was critical of the idea that an examination of the principles on which knowledge rests could be carried out independently of the knowledge that they make possible.13 Collingwood’s understanding of philosophical method resembles Kant

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because Collingwood, like Kant, sought a mode of justiﬁcation which was neither narrowly analytic (e.g. by appeal to the principle of non-contradiction) nor purely empirical (through the checking of a concept against its alleged instance). Where Kant spoke of the need for a transcendental deduction of the forms of thought or the categories of the understanding, in contrast with a merely empirical or a posteriori justiﬁcation for the legitimate employment of such concepts, Collingwood claimed that philosophical method follows the Socratic principle ‘that philosophical reasoning leads to no conclusions that we did not in some sense know already’ (EPM, 161). Collingwood believed that whereas the principles which lie at the basis of experience or knowledge are not analytically true or necessary in the sense that their denial involves a contradiction, they are necessary to the extent that they must be appealed to in any attempt to account for how a certain kind or knowledge or experience is possible. Both Kant and Collingwood, therefore, looked for a notion of non-analytic necessity which found its expression respectively in Kant’s attempt to provide a non-empirical or transcendental justiﬁcation for the a priori forms of knowledge and in Collingwood’s claim that the absolute presuppositions which lie at the basis of different areas of knowledge or experience are to be validated not empirically but by assessing their ability to clarify, explain and account for the possibility of religion, art, natural science and history. Collingwood’s work, therefore, may be said to be Kantian in four important respects: both Kant and Collingwood articulated their project as one of reform rather than mere critique of metaphysics; unlike dogmatic rationalist metaphysicians they both distinguished between epistemological and existential issues; they shared a critique of psychologism; and they both looked for a notion of ‘veriﬁcation’ which was neither empiricist, nor narrowly analytic. As mentioned earlier, however, Collingwood’s work is best understood as a radicalisation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. To explain why this is the case we must consider a number of aspects in which Collingwood’s thought appears to diverge from Kant’s.

II Kant’s inﬂuence on Collingwood is not always straightforward. In the following I will outline four main differences between Kant’s and Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics. There is ﬁrst of all the issue of the relationship in which their respective philosophical systems stand to the question of scepticism: are they intended as straightforward refutations of scepticism? If so, are they successful? Kant did, at least at times, suggest that transcendental idealism was advanced as a solution to the kind of sceptical questions raised in the ﬁrst of the Cartesian Meditations. In the preface to the Critique, for instance, Kant stated:

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Kantian heritage of Collingwood’s metaphysics It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us (from which we derive the whole material of knowledge, even for our inner sense) must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof. (CPR, Bxl)

Statements such as these suggest that a proof for the existence of the external world is forthcoming in transcendental idealism or, at the very least, that attempting to provide such a proof is a worthwhile philosophical undertaking. On the other hand, Kant also seemed to suggest that transcendental idealism was devised in answer to a rather different concern, that of explaining the possible and peaceful co-existence of theoretical and practical reason. He claimed therefore that he had ‘found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith’ (CPR, Bxxxi, p. 29). It is when conceived as an answer to the antinomies of pure reason or the contradictions inherent in the claim that things-in-themselves are both causally determined and free, that transcendental idealism seems to have exercised a more direct inﬂuence on Collingwood. Collingwood believed the various forms of knowledge or experience to be attitudes of mind which provide not mutually exclusive accounts of what exists, but complementary explanatory principles on the basis of which what is or exists can be described. Collingwood’s main concern was to account for the possible co-existence of the various areas of knowledge or experience rather than provide a refutation of sceptical doubts concerning the existence of the external world. A second aspect in which Kant’s inﬂuence on Collingwood is ambivalent concerns the very nature of transcendental arguments. Kant scholarship is divided on this issue. We can perhaps generalise that those who do not regard Kant’s transcendental philosophy as an attempt to answer scepticism are much more willing to accept the thesis that Kant’s transcendental idealism offers (in Gardner’s words) ‘metaphysically neutral but epistemologically forceful arguments’.14 Whereas those who believe transcendental idealism was devised as an answer to external world scepticism tend to regard transcendental arguments as attempting (but not necessarily successfully) to establish ontological conclusions on the basis of purely epistemic premises. Barry Stroud is perhaps the best representative of the view that Kant sought to defeat external world scepticism but also failed to do so because the kind of transcendental arguments often attributed to Kant are powerless against the sceptic. External world scepticism, according to Stroud, is not affected by the consideration that there are criteria for distinguishing between merely subjective representations, such as dreams or hallucinations, and objective representations, i.e. representations of objects that exist independently of the self. The sceptic is not affected by

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such considerations because what he questions is not the existence of any such criteria, but knowledge of whether they are correctly applied. It is precisely this knowledge that the sceptic claims is lacking (as is well illustrated by the introduction of the dream argument in the ﬁrst Cartesian Meditation).15 To understand how the kind of arguments which are sometimes attributed to Kant may fail to deliver weightier ontological conclusions, one may consider, once again, Kant’s anti-Leibnizian point in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant’s ﬁrst argument for the necessity of the representation of space is that space is the condition of the possibility for experiencing qualitatively identical objects as numerically distinct. It would be invalid to argue from such an epistemological premise to the ontological conclusion that there are objects which exist independently of the self, even if this is the very conclusion needed to defeat external world scepticism. To argue from the epistemological consideration that space must be presupposed in order to represent objects as numerically distinct, to the ontological conclusion that there are objects which exist independently of the self (and that external world scepticism is, consequently, false), would be tantamount to arguing, by analogy, that (i) since we regard agents to be morally responsible and that (ii) since freedom of will is the condition of the possibility for ascribing moral responsibility to agents, metaphysical determinism is false. To establish the latter claim one would have to know not only what an agent is (i.e. have conceptual knowledge or knowledge of the conceptual distinction between agents and things) but to have correctly identiﬁed one. I do not wish here to try to settle the question whether Kant’s concern was purely conceptual, whether he was concerned purely with the question of establishing the criteria for distinguishing between inner and outer representations, or whether it was also his intention to provide a theory of knowledge which would refute external world scepticism. Whatever stance one takes on the issue of the relationship between transcendental idealism and scepticism, it is clear that Collingwood’s metaphysics of absolute presuppositions is quite explicitly a purely conceptual inquiry. Collingwood’s defence of metaphysics, as we have seen, consisted primarily in showing that the kind of propositions which the logical positivists would have regarded as meaningless are the conditions for the possibility of making empirically true and false claims, i.e. of applying the veriﬁcationist principle. Collingwood’s question is ‘What is art?; What is science?; What is history?’ not whether there exist, metaphysically speaking (in the nonCollingwoodian sense of the word) art products, events or actions. Such a conceptual enterprise, which consists in outlining the absolute presuppositions that lie at the basis of the various areas of knowledge, is not meant to provide an answer to scepticism. Collingwood’s interest was in uncovering the criteria for making the kind of statements which are made by, e.g. historians and natural scientists, rather than showing that absolute presuppositions have validity beyond the experience whose possibility they account for. If demonstrating the validity of absolute presuppositions

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beyond the limits of the form of experience or knowledge which they make possible is what it takes to satisfy external world scepticism, then Collingwood’s metaphysics of absolute presuppositions does not constitute a reply to it; at best Collingwood shows that doubt makes sense only against the background of certain presuppositions. A third aspect in which Kant’s inﬂuence on Collingwood is unclear concerns their understanding of conceptual knowledge. In the ﬁrst Critique Kant saw his task as that of defending the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. The meaning of Kant’s notion of the synthetic a priori, however, is as ambiguous as his notion of transcendental arguments. It is not completely clear whether by synthetic a priori judgements Kant meant judgements which are existential and necessary in some non-logical (metaphysical) sense or judgements which are necessary in a much weaker (purely explanatory) sense. In other words, it is unclear whether the notion of non-analytic necessity that Kant was seeking was metaphysical or epistemic. Kant deﬁned synthetic judgements as judgements which are ampliative, i.e. as judgements in which the predicate is not contained in the concept of the subject.16 Such a negative deﬁnition, however, leaves open at least two possibilities. The ﬁrst is that synthetic judgements are ampliative in the rather weak sense that they are not judgements of identity such as ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’. In this rather weak sense of the term ampliative, synthetic a priori judgements could still be clariﬁcatory, that is, conceptual judgements. The second possibility is that what makes a judgement synthetic is the fact that it predicates a concept not of another concept but of an extra-conceptual, intuitive element. According to this second possibility, synthetic a priori judgements are ampliative in the much stronger sense that they are not explicative or clariﬁcatory and consequently they ‘expand’ the concept of the subject in virtue of the fact that they are existential.17 Kant’s second deﬁnition of analyticity does not dispel the ambiguity of his understanding of the synthetic a priori. This second deﬁnition, according to which analytic judgements are judgements which are true by the principle of non-contradiction,18 identiﬁes analytic knowledge with self-evident truths thereby leaving open the possibility that synthetic a priori judgements may ‘expand’ the concept of the subject not because they are existential (i.e. relate a predicate to an object rather than to another concept) but simply because they are not judgements of identity.19 In contrast to Kant, Collingwood is clear that philosophy does not, in any way enlarge or expand our knowledge.20 Like Kant, Collingwood thought that the absolute presuppositions which structure the various areas of experience are not analytically true, but unlike Kant, he did not attempt to explain the a priori but non-analytical nature of absolute presuppositions by claiming that such knowledge is not conceptual, i.e. not clariﬁcatory but ampliative. Collingwood occasionally described absolute presuppositions as being synthetic a priori 21 but it is clear that the notion of the synthetic a priori here involves a notion of purely explanatory neces-

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sity. In EPM Collingwood claimed that there are not, as the empiricists and logical positivists claimed, only two kinds of propositions, propositions which are hypothetical and universal (propositions about relations of ideas which are necessarily true and cannot be denied without contradiction) and propositions which are categorical and particular (propositions about matters of fact which are contingently true and can be denied without contradiction). According to the traditional empiricist classiﬁcation of propositions into relations of ideas and matters of fact, only propositions which are hypothetical, i.e. propositions which do not predicate existence, can be universal. Examples of such propositions are ‘triangles are three-sided ﬁgures’ or ‘bachelors are unmarried men’ which could be paraphrased as ‘if triangles exist, they have three sides’ and ‘if bachelors exist, they are unmarried men’. Conversely, propositions which are concerned with existing things, or which relate a concept to spatio-temporal objects, such as ‘all the books on the shelves have a hard cover’ are categorical (or existential) rather than hypothetical, but not necessarily true or true in virtue of the laws of logic. Against Hume’s fork Collingwood argued that there is a third class of propositions. To this third class, according to Collingwood, there belong propositions which are deﬁnitive of domains of inquiry, propositions which Collingwood refers to as philosophical propositions.22 Philosophical propositions are deﬁnitive of any given domain of inquiry in the sense that they express the kind of explanations which are employed by the practitioners of different disciplines. So, for instance, the domain of inquiry of the historical sciences, for Collingwood, is ‘mind’, because explanations in the historical sciences make use of a teleological or purposive notion of causality, whereas the domain of inquiry of the natural sciences is said to be ‘matter’ because in the natural sciences the cause of an event is not a purpose but an antecedent state of affairs. Collingwood’s reasons for arguing that there is a third class of propositions which are neither hypothetical and universal nor categorical and particular is that philosophical propositions are not propositions about matters of fact arrived at on the basis of observation and empirical generalisations. The claim that actions are expressions of thought or mind, for instance, is the kind of non-empirical generalisation that makes history possible as an autonomous domain of inquiry with a method and subject matter distinct from that of the natural sciences. Philosophical propositions, therefore, for Collingwood, are synthetic a priori not in the weighty ontological sense that they are necessary existential propositions but in the weaker epistemic sense that they are explanatorily necessary. Another important difference between Kant and Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics concerns their understanding of ‘being’. Kant identiﬁed being with existence and famously stated that ‘being is not a real predicate’.23 This statement occurs in the context of Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument or of any a priori proof for the existence of God

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which attempts to demonstrate the existence of God by arguing that existence is a mark of its concept, thereby effectively deﬁning God into existence. Kant argued that being is not a real predicate because it is ‘merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves’. In other words, to say of a concept that it has being is merely to say that the concept is instantiated. Whereas Kant identiﬁed being with a concept’s instantiation or extension, Collingwood identiﬁed being with a concept having maximal intension or containing within itself an inﬁnite number of marks. Any concept, he says unites within itself two distinct kinds of plurality: ﬁrst the plurality of its individual instances, and secondly, the plurality of its speciﬁc differentiations. Thus the concept colour unites all the individual colours of all the individual coloured things into a class of which they are members; but it also unites the speciﬁc colours red, orange, green and so forth into a genus of which they are species. It may be convenient to refer to the former uniﬁcation by saying that the concept is general, to the latter by saying that it is generic. (EPM, 27–28) Being, for Collingwood, is the most abstract concept, a concept so abstract that is unable to have any descriptive power. In EM, he states that metaphysics, traditionally conceived, is the study of pure being or ontology. He adds also that there cannot be a science of pure being. Collingwood explains why metaphysics, understood as a science of pure being or ontology, is impossible, by saying that the science of pure being is a science without a subject matter. The concept of pure being is obtained when the abstractive process is pushed to its utmost limit; when this happens, there remains nothing determinate to investigate. Collingwood claims: There is no science except when two conditions are fulﬁlled. There must be orderly and systematic thinking, and there must be a deﬁnite subject-matter to think about. In the ‘science of pure being’, however admirably the ﬁrst condition is fulﬁlled, the second cannot be. In the case of every other science there is a deﬁnite subject matter whose peculiarities differentiate it from the subject-matter of every other science. But the science of pure being would have a subject matter entirely devoid of peculiarities; a subject-matter, therefore, containing nothing to differentiate it from anything else, or from nothing at all. (EM, 14) The concept of pure being, as the end point of the abstractive process, has no determinate content: the error of traditional metaphysics was to believe that there could be a presuppositionless study of pure being or epistemically unconditioned knowledge of reality, that the study of what

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there is, ontology, could be carried out independently of the study of how what there is, is known, i.e. epistemology. Given the impossibility of a study of pure being, metaphysics for Collingwood, must take the form of an inquiry into the absolute presuppositions which govern any given domain of inquiry.24 Given these discrepancies between Kant and Collingwood’s philosophical projects, what is the relationship between Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics and Kant’s transcendental philosophy? As we have seen, both Kant and Collingwood believed that, in order to be reformed, metaphysics had to be subjected to a critique: they both agreed that the metaphysics of the past was naïve or dogmatic and that a reformed metaphysics had to take into account the distinction between the order of knowledge and the order of existence, a distinction overlooked by those scholastic philosophers who took the structure of knowledge to be a sure guide to the nature of things. Writing in the aftermath of the newly drawn distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, a distinction which was meant to undermine the possibility of acquiring knowledge of nature a priori, Kant accepted the empiricist notion of being as existence and remained sceptical about the possibility of knowing the ultimate nature of reality. Whereas Kant, having endorsed an empiricist or materialist conception of being, was driven to establish a synthetic, non-conceptual connection between concepts and existing things, Collingwood, having identiﬁed being not with existence but with the summit of conceptual abstraction, proceeded to provide, in a quasi-Aristotelian fashion, a catalogue raisonné of the various forms of knowledge and of the explanatory principles to which they appeal. Further, Collingwood’s understanding of the subdivision of experience in terms of internal differentiations of the concept of being disrupts Kant’s distinction between constitutive and regulative concepts and with it the idea that whereas theoretical judgements have existential import, moral judgements do not. For Collingwood, our experience of the world, whether theoretical, as in the natural sciences, or practical, as in the historical sciences, is a manifestation of being qua natural and qua historical.25 Finally, whereas Kant, having identiﬁed being with existence, declared the ultimate nature of existing things to be epistemically opaque, Collingwood, having identiﬁed being not with existence but with the lack of conceptual distinctions or determinations, stated that reality as it is in-itself is not so much epistemically opaque or unknown to us, but that it is rather, in principle, unknowable. For Collingwood, there cannot be a science of pure being because such a science would lack a determinate subject matter: metaphysics consequently must take the form of an inquiry into the absolute presuppositions of art, natural science, history, etc. Like Kant, Collingwood acknowledged the need to distinguish between the order of knowledge and the order of existence and the need to subject the metaphysics of the past to a critique for failing to acknowledge the distinction between ontological and

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Kantian heritage of Collingwood’s metaphysics

epistemological issues. Collingwood, on the other hand, did not agree with Kant that some form of epistemological scepticism would be the necessary price to pay for subjecting traditional metaphysics to a critique. Perhaps more in line with twentieth-century attitudes towards the problem of scepticism, Collingwood sought to provide a demonstration not of the falsity but of the futility of epistemological scepticism i.e. the futility of positing an Archimedean or transcendent standpoint beyond experience. According to Collingwood, outside the conceptual articulation of being, there is not real (i.e. epistemically unconditioned) knowledge, but no knowledge at all. In providing a catalogue raisonné of the various forms of experience, Collingwood did not assume, like the metaphysicians of the past, that the structure of thought mirrors the nature of reality; yet, unlike the transcendental idealist, he ruled out there was any sense in speaking of an unknowable residue beyond the sphere of conscious experience.26

3

Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

In this chapter I wish to discuss the nature of Collingwood’s anti-realism. My goal is to establish, ﬁrst, what are Collingwood’s reasons for rejecting realism and, second, what the exact nature of his anti-realism is. The chapter is divided in three sections. In the ﬁrst I outline the realist claim. In the second I discuss the signiﬁcance of Collingwood’s identiﬁcation of realism with the claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known and attempt to show that Collingwood’s anti-realism amounts not to a denial of the existence of a mind-independent world, but to a denial of the possibility of cognising things as they are in-themselves. In the third section I seek to clarify further the nature of Collingwood’s anti-realism. My primary concern, in this section, is to show that whereas Collingwood’s anti-realism certainly entails the rejection of the traditional theory of truth as correspondence (adaequatio intellectus et rei), his speciﬁc brand of antirealism neither advocates the end of philosophy nor entails the dissolution of certain recurring philosophical problems such as the relationship between mind and body, freedom and determinism, theoretical and practical reason. In order to show that Collingwood’s rejection of the correspondence theory of truth is not meant to usher in a post-philosophical age, I contrast Collingwood’s anti-realism with the pragmatists’ rejection of the notion of truth as correspondence and argue that there are crucial differences between Collingwood’s and the pragmatic rejection of realism. I argue, ﬁrst, that whereas the pragmatists seek to dissolve traditional philosophical problems, Collingwood seeks to rethink them within a new framework. I argue, second, that whereas the pragmatic rejection of the correspondence theory of truth leads, at least in some cases, to an abandonment of philosophy understood as a normative activity, Collingwood’s speciﬁc brand of anti-realism seeks to defend the idea of philosophy as a normative or, as he puts it, ‘criteriological’ science.

I In An Autobiography (AA),1 Collingwood refers disparagingly to realism as the claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known.2 He then

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Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

proceeds to provide a concise but important criticism of this thesis. My purpose is to elucidate the meaning that this claim has for Collingwood and the signiﬁcance of his criticism of it. Given that Collingwood identiﬁes this claim with a crucial tenet of realism, I will begin by saying something about the position that Collingwood sees himself as undermining. At the turn of the century much of Oxford philosophy was dominated by idealism. It was in this climate that philosophers such as Cook-Wilson, Prichard and Joseph, sometime referred to collectively as the Oxford realists,3 developed a philosophical system that was conceived quite explicitly in opposition to the idealist philosophy prevalent at the time. My purpose, in the following, is not to delve in the intricacies of their respective philosophical positions, but to provide a general outline of the basic tenets of realist philosophy. In doing so I will draw primarily on Prichard’s work, in particular on his book Kant’s Theory of Knowledge.4 Kant’s Theory of Knowledge is a commentary on Kant’s theoretical philosophy that is concerned to establish, via a critical reading of transcendental philosophy, Prichard’s own views on the non-relational character of knowledge and the object of knowledge (the thesis that Collingwood describes as the claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known). Prichard’s realism involves three different claims: a claim concerning the theory of perception, an epistemological claim and a claim of an ontological or metaphysical nature. As far as the theory of perception is concerned, Prichard is an anti-representationalist who rejects the view that objects are perceived via the mediation of a tertium quid. Prichard objects to the so-called ‘veil of perception’ thesis as exempliﬁed in Locke’s claim that the mind perceives objects only indirectly via the mediation of ideas. Prichard’s main reasons for rejecting the mediation of a tertium quid intervening between the act and the object of knowledge is that any such approach is likely to lead to sceptical problems. Prichard’s realism also involves an ontological or metaphysical claim about the object of perception. The object of perception, for Prichard, is not ideal but real, i.e. it exists independently of the mind and would continue to exist even if there were no minds to perceive it. The combination of Prichard’s antirepresentationalism in the theory of perception and his claim concerning the ontological independence of the object of knowledge makes him a direct realist. He is a realist because, unlike Berkeley, he believes that objects do not depend on the mind for their existence; he is a direct realist because, unlike Locke, he rejects the veil of perception theory. Prichard’s position is complicated by the fact that his realism involves more than an ontological or metaphysical claim, according to which objects exist independently of the mind, and a claim in the theory of perception, according to which objects are perceived directly rather than via the mediation of ideas. Prichard also makes an epistemological claim, i.e. he asserts not only (i) that there are objects which exist independently of the mind and (ii) that we directly perceive objects that exist indepen-

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dently of the mind, but also (iii) that we know these objects as they really are. In short, on this reconstruction, Prichard claims (i) that there are objects that exist independently of the mind; (ii) that we perceive them directly; and (iii) that we know them. That Prichard’s realism also involves an epistemological claim is not always very clear from the text. This is partly due to the fact that Prichard often fails to distinguish between epistemological and ontological claims. This failure to distinguish between ontological and epistemological issues manifests itself in two ways. First, the terminology ‘things-in-themselves’ is often used interchangeably (and confusingly) to refer both to the existence of objects independently of the mind and to the possibility of cognising objects that exist independently of the mind as they are ‘in themselves’. Second, Prichard does not clearly distinguish between idealism of an ontological nature (idealism akin to Berkeleyan immaterialism) and idealism of an epistemological nature (more akin to Kant’s transcendental idealism). All idealism, for Prichard, appears to be idealism of an ontological or metaphysical nature. Prichard’s realism sets itself in opposition to Locke’s indirect realism in so far as it denies the veil of perception thesis; it sets itself in opposition to Berkeleyan idealism in so far as it asserts that objects exist independently of being perceived by any mind whatsoever. Finally, it also sets itself in opposition to Kant’s transcendental idealism in so far as it asserts the possibility of knowing mind-independent objects in their mind-independence or as they are in themselves. Given this brief description of Prichard’s realism and the three claims which it (even if surreptitiously) involves, I would now like to consider Prichard’s attempt to defend the nonrelational character of knowledge and its object, the very thesis that Collingwood attacks in the Autobiography. In order to vindicate realism Prichard needs, ﬁrst of all, an argument to establish that the correct position to hold in the theory of perception is a form of anti-representationalism according to which reality, not ideas, is the direct object of perception. An attempt to provide such an argument is to be found in a chapter entitled ‘Phenomena and Things-inthemselves’. Here Prichard takes himself to be arguing against Kant’s transcendental idealism, although the position that he attacks is probably best described as a form of Lockean indirect realism. Prichard considers a number of assertions concerning the primary qualities of things (qualities that relate to a thing’s spatial properties), assertions stating e.g. that a certain stick immersed in water appears bent or that parallel lines disappearing into the horizon convergent.5 Prichard argues that although one of the main reasons for endorsing indirect realism is that the introduction of a tertium quid appears to be a convenient stratagem for explaining the phenomenon of perceptual illusions, the very assertions that e.g. the lines look convergent or the stick appears bent, entail that ‘convergent’ and ‘bent’ are predicates of the things, not of their appearances i.e. of the tertium quid.

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Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

Prichard also needs to argue the case for realism in the theory of being and of knowledge, i.e. he needs to establish both that things exist independently of the mind and that they can be cognised as they are in themselves. Prichard, however, singularly fails to distinguish between idealism of an ontological and idealism of an epistemological nature and, as a result, offers one argument in reply to two very distinct problems. Consider, for instance, the following argument against idealism to be found in the chapter of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge entitled ‘Knowledge and Reality’. Here Prichard sets out to show that ‘idealism’ is wrong in making reality dependent on the mind. Prichard argues that the idealists assume the relationship between knowledge and reality to be analogous to that holding between terms such as ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’ whereas, in fact, the relationship between knowledge and reality is more akin to that holding between a doctor and a sick man. Prichard’s point is the following: the concepts of doctor and patient are reciprocal concepts; they entail each other. To be a doctor is to care for patients and to be a patient is to be cared for by a doctor. In other words, the concept of a doctor stands to that of a patient rather like the concepts of morality/moral responsibility stand to the concept of freedom: we ascribe moral responsibility only to agents that we believe capable of acting freely and we hold free agents to be morally responsible for what they do. Having noted the special relationship holding between the concept of ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’, Prichard proceeds to argue that knowledge and reality do not stand in this kind of relation. The relationship between knowledge and reality is more akin to the relationship holding between a doctor and a sick man. Prichard concludes that the concept of knowledge does not entail the existence of objects just as the concept of doctors does not entail that there are sick men. Just as the reciprocity holding between the concepts of morality/moral responsibility and freedom does not entail that there are any free agents, the reciprocity holding between the concepts of ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’ does not entail that there are any sick men. Since knowledge stands to reality as the concept of ‘doctor’ stands to that of ‘sick men’, knowledge does not entail reality or existence and vice versa. Things can exist in themselves without being known and Prichard’s case against idealism is made.6 What is interesting about this argument is that it is both a good argument against Berkeleyan or ontological idealism and a bad argument against epistemological or Kantian idealism. It is a good argument against the former because it establishes that objects are not dependent on the mind for their existence. It is a bad argument against the kind of idealism that is closer to a Kantian position because it does not show that the object as known (the intentional object) is independent of the mind. For the epistemic/conceptual idealist, objects as known are mind-dependent because we cannot cognise/know an object as it is in itself or independently of the concepts and categories that the mind employs to describe it.

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In other words, for the Kantian idealist the relationship between knowledge and its object is indeed akin to the relationship holding between ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’ but this does not imply an illegitimate conﬂation of conceptual knowledge with real existence, as Prichard suggests.7 The failure to accurately distinguish epistemological from ontological issues is also at work in Prichard’s main argument against idealism. This argument is based on the claim that idealism fails to distinguish between creation and production: Knowledge unconditionally presupposes that the reality known exists independently of the knowledge of it, and that we know it as it exists in this independence. It is simply impossible to think that any reality depends upon our knowledge of it, or upon any knowledge of it. If there is to be knowledge, there must ﬁrst be something to be known. In other words, knowledge is essentially discovery, or the ﬁnding of what already is. If a reality could only be or come to be in virtue of some activity or process on the part of the mind, that activity or process would not be ‘knowing’ but ‘making’ or ‘creating’, and to make and to know must in the end be admitted to be mutually exclusive.8 Here Prichard appears to be claiming not only that objects exist independently of the mind but also that they can be known ‘in this independence’. Prichard, in other words, appears to commit himself not only to realism in the theory of perception but also to realism in the theory of knowledge. It is the claim according to which we can know things as they are in themselves, that constitutes the bone of contention between Prichard and Collingwood. It is this claim that Collingwood describes as the realist thesis that knowledge makes no difference to what is known. Prichard’s failure to distinguish between ontological and epistemological issues may result from his tendency to read Kant’s transcendental idealism as a complicated instance of Lockean indirect realism. For Prichard, for instance, Kant’s argument for the transcendental ideality of space establishes that space is an appearance in the derogatory sense of the very tertium quid that Prichard’s theory of perception wanted to eliminate. Prichard failed to see that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not hypostatise the mental (as Locke’s philosophy might have done) because it is advanced not as a claim in empirical psychology but as a conceptual argument which aims to establish that the representation of space is a necessary condition of experience: without the representation of space, for Kant, it would be impossible to account for the distinction between qualitative and numerical identity, i.e. without the representation of space we would not have the conceptual tools to distinguish numerically objects that are qualitatively identical. It is because Prichard interprets Kant’s idealism as a Lockean psychological thesis that he fails to engage seriously

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Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

with the challenge that idealism of a Kantian, i.e. epistemological or conceptual nature, poses to realism. Prichard’s argument against idealism is probably much more complex and subtle than this brief reconstruction may suggest. Without doubt, the interpretation of Prichard’s argument is complicated by the fact that his attack on idealism is developed in the context of a critical commentary on Kant’s theoretical philosophy that presupposes a psychologistic reading of transcendental idealism. I hope, however, that the threefold distinction made between opposing claims in the theory of perception, in the theory of being or ontology and in the theory of knowledge, will help to clarify Collingwood’s anti-realism.

II Collingwood’s most explicit attack on realism occurs in the Autobiography where he describes the realist thesis in disparaging terms as the claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known. Here Collingwood claims that those who uphold this view presuppose the possibility of knowing things as they are in themselves (as they are independently of the concepts and categories through which they are cognised) and that this presupposition is paradoxical. He unpacks the fallacious reasoning he believes to be involved in the claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known as follows: For if you know that no difference is made to a thing θ by the presence or absence of a certain condition c, you know what θ is like with c, and also what θ is like without c, and on comparing the two ﬁnd no difference. This involves knowing what θ is like without c; in the present case, knowing what you deﬁned as the unknown.9 Collingwood’s argument may be reconstructed as follows: 1 2

3 4 5

The realists claim that objects exist independently of the mind. To say that objects exist independently of the mind is not to bring them under any epistemic description, i.e. to ascribe any real predicates to them. As existence is not a real (i.e. epistemic) predicate, it is not a predicate that enables one to describe an object in any way. Therefore: objects of which no attribute, other than existence, is predicated are unknown. One can compare an object as known with another object as known (for instance I can compare my old/slow/heavy-drinking Volkswagen Jetta with my neighbour’s new/fast/fuel-efﬁcient Nissan Micra) but one cannot compare something known with something unknown, i.e. I cannot compare my car with an x I do not know.

Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate 6

7

8

9

43

In order to claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known, the realists must presuppose that they can compare objects described in some ways (as e.g. new/fast/fuel-efﬁcient or old/slow/heavy-drinking) with things as they are in themselves, i.e. with objects of which no attribute, other than existence, is predicated. In order to compare objects as known with things as they are in themselves, one must presuppose knowledge of things as they are in themselves. 7 contradicts 4. The possibility of comparing objects as known and as they are in themselves rests on two contradictory premises: 4 (objects as merely existing are unknown) and 7 (things as they are in themselves are known). Therefore: realists cannot consistently claim to know things as they are in themselves.10

Collingwood’s argument is clearly of an epistemological rather than ontological nature. It is an argument directed against the possibility of cognising things as they are in themselves which aims to establish that the description of objects, not their existence, is dependent upon the mind. Collingwood’s argument against realism is directed only against one of the three claims outlined earlier. Therefore, his anti-realism is best understood neither as a claim in the theory of perception, nor as a claim in the theory of being, but as an epistemological claim. In order to understand the nature of Collingwood’s anti-realism, however, it is necessary to go beyond the conﬁnes of the brief, even if interesting, criticism of realism that he provides in AA. Collingwood’s anti-realism was devised primarily as a response to certain problems that arise if one adopts a realist epistemology, i.e. if one assumes that the justiﬁcation for the concepts and categories that we adopt has to be anchored in the nature of things as they are in themselves. Collingwood, like Kant, thought that a realist epistemology would ultimately be unable to account for the possible co-existence of theoretical and practical reason, that it would ultimately be unable to explain how the world can be experienced from the radically different perspectives of the knower and the agent. Kant had claimed that certain unresolvable antinomies or contradictions, such as that of freedom and determinism, arise when we project the categories and concepts through which we describe moral consciousness on the one hand, and natural phenomena on the other, onto the things themselves. Similarly, Collingwood saw that, on realist assumptions, the different explanations that are employed in the natural sciences and history (or the social sciences at large), would have to be seen as providing competing explanations of the same thing rather than as complementary explanatory principles which apply to different domains of inquiry. Collingwood’s anti-realism, therefore, arose in an attempt to re-articulate perennial philosophical problems such as the

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Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

relationship between mind and body, freedom and determinism, theoretical and practical reason. Collingwood’s anti-realism is thus not of a Berkeleyan or ontological nature because what Collingwood denies is not the existence of mindindependent objects, but the claim that such objects have any role to play in the justiﬁcation of certain foundational or basic beliefs, such as the natural scientist’s commitment to the uniformity of nature, and the historian’s commitment to freedom. The historian’s belief in metaphysical freedom, and the natural scientist’s belief in the uniformity of nature, are foundational in the sense that they are basic beliefs on which the possibility of causal and rational explanations respectively, are based; they are not foundational in the sense that they can be justiﬁed independently of any other beliefs with which they are connected, either by means of intellectual intuition or by some supposed correspondence with the ultimate nature of things. For Collingwood, such ‘foundational’ beliefs (foundational only in the sense that they are more basic) are justiﬁed to the extent that they are necessary to explain how certain forms of experience, theoretical, aesthetic, religious or historical, are possible. Collingwood’s antirealism, therefore, is not of an ontological or Berkeleyan kind because his rejection of the correspondence theory of truth involves only the denial that mind-independent objects have any role to play when it comes to the problem of justifying foundational beliefs. It is important to point out, however, that although Collingwood’s idealism is not of an ontological kind, he is not hugely concerned with the sceptical problems that might arise as a result of the denial of Berkeley’s Esse est percipi principle. There is, for instance, in the whole of Collingwood’s corpus, no reference to things like bent sticks, dreams, demons, brains in vats and the whole battery of arguments usually employed to generate doubts about the existence of the external world. This may be due to the fact that Collingwood’s philosophical project is concerned with establishing the conditions of the possibility of knowledge in general rather than establishing whether those conditions apply in any given case. For this reason he may have thought that there is no need to engage with the standard arguments aimed at engendering doubt about the existence of external objects since these do not affect claims concerning the conditions of the possibility of knowledge. It is much more difﬁcult to locate where Collingwood stands with respect to issues in the theory of perception. As already mentioned, he has nothing to say about perceptual illusions and external world scepticism. But it seems clear that although he does make a distinction between intentional objects (the object of knowledge) and real objects, such a distinction is not drawn along the lines of, say, Locke’s empirical psychology. For Collingwood there is not a twofold distinction to be made between (i) the psychological act of thought and (ii) the thing in the external world to which the idea refers, but a threefold distinction between (i) the psycho-

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logical act of thought (this may indeed coincide with what Locke refers to as ideas); (ii) the object or content of thought (what thought is about in the semantic rather than ostensive sense of ‘aboutness’) and (iii) the real object (this may again coincide with the Lockean notion of what ideas refer to in the real world). Collingwood, in other words, appears to be working with a notion of intentional objects that was unavailable to Locke and indeed to Prichard, as the latter’s failure to distinguish between idealism of Berkeleyan/ontological and of a Kantian/conceptual nature appears to suggest. There is no explicit mention of intentionality in Collingwood, but there are passages that suggest that Collingwood was indeed working with a notion of intentional objects. One such passage is to be found in Speculum Mentis (SM):11 When I call a thing subjective I mean that it is or pertains to a subject or conscious mind. When I call it objective I mean that it is or pertains to the object of which such a mind is conscious. I do not call a real rose objective and an imaginary one subjective, or the molecules in it objective and the beauty of it subjective. A real rose I call real and an imaginary rose I call imaginary; and I call them both objective because they are the objects of a perceiving and imagining mind respectively.12 By ‘subjective’ Collingwood does not mean existing in the mind (rather than in the real world) and by ‘objective’ Collingwood does not mean existing independently of the mind, which is roughly how Locke construed the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The expression ‘the object of thought’ for Collingwood, signiﬁes the object as intended by the mind irrespective of whether such intentional object is real (is instantiated in the real world, as roses might be) or is merely ideal (is not instantiated, as ﬂying saucers, unicorns, etc.).13 The reason why it is difﬁcult to locate Collingwood’s position within the debate in the theory of perception is that Collingwood is singularly uninterested either in investigating psychological processes (his goal is not to provide an empirical psychology) or in defeating scepticism about the existence of an external world. He is primarily, if not exclusively, interested in intentional objects, objects as known. It is the notion of an intentional object that is crucial to idealism of a conceptual or epistemological (rather than ontological) variety. Yet, the notion of an intentional object cannot be accommodated within the theory of perception that operates with a Lockean distinction between ideas and things. Collingwood’s anti-realism is best described as an epistemological thesis directed against the correspondence theory of truth, according to which we have knowledge if the object as cognised reﬂects the object as it is in itself. It is important to point out that although Collingwood’s attack on the claim that knowledge makes no difference to what is known is an

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Collingwood and the realism/anti-realism debate

attack on the correspondence theory of truth, it may be misleading to describe Collingwood’s anti-realism as a form of idealism, even if one of an epistemic nature. The term epistemic idealism, in fact, suggests that the concepts and categories through which reality is cognised are not features of the objects as they are in themselves. This is not exactly the form that Collingwood’s anti-realism takes. He does not claim that the concepts and categories through which reality is cognised are ideal, i.e. that they are not features of the objects as they are in themselves but only of how we experience them. What he claims, rather, is that it does not make sense to speak of a comparison between objects as they are for us (as they appear through the concepts and categories through which they are known) and objects as they are in themselves. This observation is important because it entails that Collingwood’s anti-realism is not a consequence of epistemological defeatism. Collingwood, in other words, does not claim that we ought to reject the correspondence theory of truth because things are known to us only through the concepts and categories through which we cognise them and hence are not accessible to us as they are in themselves. What he claims is that the reasoning on which the possibility of such a comparison rests is fallacious. The paradox involved in the possibility of knowing things as they are in themselves is also brought out in An Essay on Metaphysics (EM), where Collingwood claims that whereas metaphysics is possible as a science of absolute presuppositions, it is not possible as a science of pure being.14 A science, for Collingwood, is a systematic body of knowledge with a particular method of investigation, subject matter and heuristic principles. History, for instance, is the science whose subject matter is mind, whose method of inquiry is rational reconstruction and whose heuristic principle is the possibility of metaphysical freedom. Natural science is the study of matter, its method is experimental and the uniformity of nature is its guiding presupposition. Whereas there can be a science of mind or a science of matter, there cannot be a science of pure being for a presuppositionless science would be a science without a subject matter. Being or reality, for Collingwood can only be studied under some epistemic description, such as matter, mind, art, religion, etc. If this reconstruction of Collingwood’s anti-realism is correct, we should conclude that whereas he had very little to say about ontological scepticism, he did have something to say about epistemological scepticism. Whereas scepticism of an ontological nature problematises the existence of the external world, scepticism of an epistemological nature may be described as the view that there is a kind of knowledge which we do not have, but that it would be desirable to have, namely epistemically unconditioned knowledge or knowledge of objects as they are in themselves. Collingwood’s anti-realism does make an effort to address this kind of (epistemological) scepticism in so far as it shows that knowledge of things as they are in themselves is not a kind of knowledge. It is not so much the

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case that things in themselves are unknown to us; the point is rather that it does not make sense to speak of knowing them.

III In this section I wish to explore further the nature of Collingwood’s antirealism by delving deeper into the implications of his rejection of the correspondence theory of truth. In doing so I will be particularly eager to distinguish between the pragmatic rejection of the correspondence theory of truth and Collingwood’s rejection of it. I will argue, ﬁrst, that whereas the pragmatist critique of the correspondence theory of truth is motivated by the desire to dissolve perennial philosophical problems, Collingwood’s project is both to criticise the metaphysical tradition and revitalise it, by rethinking old problems in a new framework. I will argue, second, that whereas Collingwood abandons the idea that ultimate reality may have any role to play in the justiﬁcation of knowledge claims, he is much more reluctant than many pragmatists to relinquish the notion of philosophy as a normative enterprise. Pragmatism deﬁnes itself in terms of a rejection of the traditional notion of truth as correspondence. It does so in the conviction that many standard philosophical problems such as the relationship between mind and matter, freedom and determinism, theoretical and practical reason, cannot be resolved on the assumption that truth consists in the agreement, and falsity in the disagreement, of some of our ideas with reality.15 There is, for instance, as James put it, no solution, from the theoretical point of view, to the question as to whether reality is determined or infected with contingency16 or to the question as to whether reality is a material or a spiritual substance.17 For the pragmatist, the motivation for the rejection of the traditional theory of truth springs from the realisation that it offers no solutions to traditional philosophical problems. Pragmatism also deﬁnes itself in terms of an alternative criterion for deciding between competing claims. This alternative criterion is obtained by redeﬁning truth in instrumentalist or consequentialist terms. In James’ words, ‘the true is the name of whatsoever proves itself to be good in the way of belief ’.18 For the pragmatist, a metaphysical debate is genuine only if it has palpable consequences: ‘in every genuine metaphysical debate some practical issue, however conjectural and remote, is involved’. An important corollary of the pragmatic redeﬁnition of truth in instrumentalist terms is that metaphysical debates that revolve around contrasting concepts or principles, the adoption of which makes no instrumental difference, are debates about pseudo-problems. The effect that the adoption of the pragmatic conception of truth has on traditional metaphysical problems is arguably analogous to the effect that the adoption of a consequentialist criterion of the good in moral philosophy has on debates concerning what ethical principles should guide moral conduct. Just as for a

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consequentialist (or ethical instrumentalist), there is no choice to be made between ethical principles such as truthfulness, benevolence, autonomy, etc. (the choice is not between principles of action but between actions which are more or less enhancing of overall happiness), so for the pragmatist in the way of belief there is no genuine choice to be made between the competing concepts of mind and matter, freedom and determinism, etc. The pragmatist redeﬁnition of truth in instrumentalist terms renders any discussion concerning metaphysical maxims (such as the claim that there exist ﬁrst causes or prime movers or the claim that everything that happens is determined by causal laws) superﬂuous. Similarly for the consequentialist in ethics, a discussion concerning ethical principles is redundant to the decision-making process concerning moral action. Pragmatism also deﬁnes itself in terms of a speciﬁc philosophy of history. When applied to an account of the historical development of knowledge, the instrumentalist conception of truth results in a kind of ‘Darwinism of the epistemic realm’.19 For Darwin, among the natural species which emerge, only those which are most suited to adapt to existing geographical and climatic conditions, survive. So for pragmatists such as Rorty, among the epistemic views which have emerged historically, it is those which are most suited to serve human needs that stand the test of time.20 Since there is no ultimate reality with which to compare competing knowledge claims, the latter cannot be judged to be true or false but only more or less suitable to existing social conditions. Philosophers such as Rorty present this evolutionary theory of knowledge in explicit opposition to the kind of teleological world-view often associated with Hegel. According to the latter, cultural changes are progressive in so far as they display a development towards a ﬁnal goal or telos and they can be evaluated on the basis of the extent to which they realise or actualise this ﬁnal goal. According to Rorty, once this teleological view of cultural transformation is abandoned, epistemic views can no longer be regarded as a necessary progression from a lower to a higher stage of development. The emergence of epistemic views, like that of natural species, is a matter of contingency and their survival, as indeed that of natural species, is a question of adaptability to the environment, whether natural or social. On Rorty’s Darwinian, anti-teleological view of cultural development, epistemic formations cannot be judged for their relative merits and demerits: they simply exist and become extinct when the conditions are no longer favourable to their existence. Consequently, it would be as ludicrous to argue for the superiority of certain beliefs over others, as it would be to argue for the moral superiority of one natural species over another. Just as natural species are not intrinsically better or worse, but only better or worse suited to the climatic and geographic environment in which they have appeared, so too epistemic views are neither better nor worse in themselves, but only better or worse suited to fulﬁl human needs. Rorty’s intention is clearly to cleanse epistemology of any normative commitments. His pragmatism is

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therefore utterly opposed to the traditional philosophical quest for justiﬁcation. The way in which the instrumentalist criterion for truth makes the philosophical quest for justiﬁcation redundant may be further elucidated by considering an application of the pragmatic notion of truth to political discourse: Burke’s defence of conservatism.21 Burke’s defence of conservatism is based on the view that institutions that have existed from time immemorial are the most suited to human needs. Their ‘survival’ is an expression of their suitability. Burke also saw himself as a critic of the social contract tradition. In spite of their differences, traditional social contract theorists, such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, saw themselves as providing a justiﬁcation for political authority, as asking and attempting to provide an answer to the question ‘Under what conditions is political authority legitimate?’ They all thought that political authority stands in need of philosophical justiﬁcation. Burke, by contrast, completely ignores the issue of justiﬁcation since he identiﬁes (or rather conﬂates) the success of an institution with its right to govern. For the pragmatist (in political theory as much as in the theory of knowledge) the important question is not one of legitimacy (epistemic or political) but of success. The pragmatist in the way of belief evades the question of justiﬁcation by equating epistemic success with truth just as Burke evaded the issue of institutions’ political legitimacy. Having outlined the nature of the pragmatic rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, I now wish to discuss the nature of Collingwood’s own version of anti-realism. I hope to show that Collingwood’s redeﬁnition of the metaphysical task in terms of an inquiry into the fundamental principles that structure domains of inquiry entails not a rejection of traditional philosophical problems, but a novel approach to them. Whereas the pragmatist wishes to argue that metaphysical disputes are based on pseudo-problems, that there really is nothing deep and meaningful about such debates, nothing that cannot be dealt with on consequentialist or instrumentalist grounds, Collingwood does not dismiss perennial philosophical problems simply as pseudo-problems. Although he certainly thinks that the metaphysical tradition mishandled certain questions, such as that of the relationship between mind and matter, he also thinks that there is something deep and meaningful involved in such unresolved metaphysical disputes. According to Collingwood, for instance, the relationship between mind and body should not be interpreted as a relationship between two substances but as a relationship between two sciences, their respective domains of inquiry, heuristic principles and methods of investigation. History, for Collingwood, is the science of mind; it is a science of mind not because it investigates a peculiar kind of substance, the soul, but because its domain of inquiry are actions (rational conduct), its method of investigation is that of rational reconstruction, and the possibility of metaphysical freedom is one of its heuristic

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principles. Analogously, natural science is the study of matter, not because it studies a speciﬁc kind of substance (material rather than immaterial), but because its domain of inquiry is factual, its method of investigation is experimental and the uniformity of nature is one of its heuristic principles.22 Collingwood’s relationship to the tradition of philosophy, a relationship of reform as much as critique, may be illustrated by considering his engagement with two metaphysicians, one ancient and one modern: Plato and Descartes. Collingwood’s critique of Platonic metaphysics is conducted in a spirit that is altogether different from that of the positivist attack on the metaphysical tradition. The positivist attack on Plato’s theory of forms is both an attack on the existence of transcendent metaphysical entities and on the role that Platonic forms play as ideal standards or norms that inform either epistemic or moral positions and commitments. The positivists wished to deny not only the existence of transcendent entities, but also that of non-empirical norms, whether of an epistemic of moral nature. By contrast, whereas Collingwood rejects the existence of transcendent metaphysical entities, he still wishes to defend the role that Platonic forms fulﬁl in Plato’s metaphysics, by emphasising the need for and role of a priori concepts in philosophical discourse. Collingwood thus re-articulates Platonic metaphysics within a Kantian framework in which certain a priori concepts play a role analogous to that of transcendent metaphysical entities in Plato’s metaphysics. Collingwood’s ambiguous stance with respect to the metaphysical tradition may also be illustrated by considering his engagement with Descartes. There is, no doubt, a critique of Descartes implicit in Collingwood’s project. Collingwood is no Cartesian dualist, at least if by Cartesian dualism one means ontological dualism. In what appears to be an explicit critique of Cartesian mind–body dualism, Collingwood claims that the relationship between the mind and the body is not a relationship between two substances but a relationship between two sciences that has to be ﬂeshed out in terms of the employment of distinctive methods and presuppositions. Collingwood’s critique of Descartes, however, like his criticism of Plato, is one that aims to preserve a fundamental insight. This emerges clearly if one compares Collingwood’s critique of Descartes with that of contemporary behaviourists. Whereas the behaviourist critique of Cartesian dualism seeks to overcome the problems of Descartes’ dual ontology by reducing the mental to the behavioural, Collingwood’s critique of Cartesian metaphysics retains the idea of the autonomy of the mental, even if Collingwood, unlike Descartes, believes that the latter cannot be defended by arguing for the existence of an immaterial substance. For Collingwood, unlike the pragmatists, terms such as ‘the inner’ and ‘the outer’ are not simply symptomatic of a (metaphysical) way of thinking that is anachronistic and bankrupt. Whereas Collingwood would not identify the inner with the soul, as Descartes did, he does not believe

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that in distinguishing between mind and matter Descartes was simply guilty of some crass philosophical error. Collingwood’s engagement with the metaphysics of Plato and Descartes suggests that his goal was not to dissolve standard philosophical problems but to show that their persistent recurrence in the history of philosophy arises from the fact that the various dualisms (mind and matter, freedom and determinism, theoretical and practical reason) are grounded in the nature of philosophical reasoning, in the ability to make conceptual distinctions to which there correspond no empirical differences. Collingwood’s project differs from that of the pragmatists in another important respect. Whereas the pragmatic conception of truth is supposed to usher in a post-philosophical age or a form of discourse that is cleansed of all norms by reference to which both thought and conduct may be judged to be either good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, Collingwood believes philosophy to be an intrinsically normative or, as he puts it, ‘criteriological’ activity. To understand the correct approach in philosophy, therefore, one must look at normative or criteriological sciences such as ethics or logic. Ethics is a normative science because it studies not how we act but how we ought to act: moral science is not simply the study of action but of right and wrong action.23 Criteriological sciences such as ethics differ from the empirical sciences because the latter are descriptive rather than normative. Sociology, for instance, is an empirical rather than normative or criteriological science because it studies action itself rather than action that is either right or wrong in accordance with certain ethical norms or standards. Equally, natural science is an empirical rather than a criteriological science because it describes regularities in nature rather than prescribe standards that natural events ought to follow: moral laws, unlike natural laws, are not regularities in observed behaviour but principles that state how one ought to behave or act. As a criteriological science of thought, philosophy is not simply concerned with thinking but with thinking well or thinking badly. Philosophy, therefore, stands to empirical or descriptive sciences of thought, such as psychology, as moral philosophy (the science of how we ought to act) stands to sociology (the study of how human beings act). The normative or criteriological aspect of philosophy is exempliﬁed in the way in which the philosopher assesses whether the practitioners of a certain discipline conform or fail to conform to the principles that deﬁne their domains of inquiry and whether the explanations they provide are appropriate to the principles that regulate a particular domain of knowledge. Just as moral principles function as standards to discriminate between moral and immoral conduct, so the principles that deﬁne the various domains of inquiry provide standards on the basis of which the practices of historians and natural scientists can be judged. Collingwood’s anti-realism, therefore, seeks to maintain, within the framework of a metaphysics of principles, the normative role that transcendent entities played

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in Platonic metaphysics. In this respect Collingwood’s philosophical approach differs drastically from that of pragmatism. In rejecting traditional dualisms and in attempting to dissolve traditional metaphysical problems, the pragmatists also denied that thought and practice should be guided by principles or norms. In contrast, Collingwood attempts to rearticulate the project of metaphysics within the framework of an inquiry into the heuristic principles that govern different areas of experience, and thus explicitly defends a conception of philosophy as a normative or criteriological science.

4

Collingwood’s anti-naturalism

Collingwood’s philosophical project was elaborated against the background of two philosophical views of which he was equally critical: realism and naturalism. Collingwood thus assumed the difﬁcult role of criticising metaphysics against the realists while defending it against the naturalists. He performed this delicate balancing act by pursuing a critical reform of the metaphysical tradition. Collingwood, in other words, reformed metaphysics by recasting it in an epistemological key, i.e. through the elaboration of a descriptive metaphysics or metaphysics of experience. It is this recasting of the metaphysical task that allows Collingwood to present himself both as a critic of (dogmatic) metaphysics against the realists and a supporter of (descriptive) metaphysics against the naturalists. This chapter focuses on one horn of Collingwood’s dual critique, namely on his critical engagement with the philosophical naturalism exempliﬁed by the neo-empiricist revival of the early and mid-twentieth century. Let me begin by providing a brief deﬁnition of what I take naturalism and anti-naturalism to mean. Negatively speaking, philosophical naturalism may be described as a critique of transcendentalism or as the denial of any form of transcendence. Anti-naturalism, by contrast, is, in the broadest sense, a defence of the notion of transcendence. Such a defence can take two forms. Anti-naturalism can be of an ontological or of an epistemic nature. Theism and Platonic metaphysics are instances of the former in so far as they defend, respectively, the existence of a transcendent deity and the existence of entities in a supersensible realm. Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics is antinaturalism of an epistemic rather than ontological nature. As anti-naturalism of an epistemological nature, it takes the form of a defence not of the existence of transcendent entities but of different domains of inquiry, with distinctive goals, methods and subject-matters: philosophical analysis, for Collingwood, is concerned with, say, Goodness or Beauty, not as Platonic forms, but as the subject matter of morality and aesthetics. The chapter is divided in two sections. I consider Collingwood’s engagement with naturalism in An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM) in the ﬁrst section and his engagement with naturalism in An Essay on Metaphysics (EM) in the second.

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I EPM was published in 1933 at the tail end of an idealist tradition that was increasingly perceived as obscurantist and anachronistic. In 1933 the intellectual climate was such that, whereas several established academics remained sympathetic to the idealist school, the most promising new philosophical blood was overtly hostile to the tradition of German Idealism and deﬁned itself in opposition to it. By the time of the publication of EPM, metaphysics, understood as an inquiry into a super-sensible realm of transcendent entities, had been declared dead and, its pursuit, by generations of philosophers, ascribed to errors concerning the structure of language. Russell, for instance, had unequivocally condemned metaphysics by claiming that ‘practically all traditional metaphysics is ﬁlled with mistakes due to bad grammar’ and that ‘all the traditional problems of metaphysics . . . are due to a failure to make the kind of distinctions in what we may call philosophical grammar’.1 The neo-empiricist revival was motivated by the desire to distinguish genuine scientiﬁc hypotheses from untestable metaphysical claims and was carried out much in the spirit of Locke’s critique of innate metaphysical principles in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.2 Further, although in the neo-empiricism of the twentieth century there are no traces of Locke’s psychological account of meaning, the old and new empiricism share the view that many philosophical errors have their origins in what Locke referred to as ‘the abuse of words’.3 For Russell the belief in transcendent entities was due, by and large, to the assumption that if a word occupies the position of the grammatical subject in a sentence, it must be a symbol, i.e. name an entity. For instance, from the fact that the term ‘Beauty’ occupies the subject position in statements such as ‘Beauty is what handsome objects have in common’, it was inferred that Beauty is an entity. Traditional metaphysicians were lured into such errors by a failure to distinguish between words that have the grammatical appearance of the subject because they occupy the position of the subject in a sentence, and names, i.e. words that not only occupy the subject position but also symbolise an object.4 Russell thought that by taking note of the differences between surface and deep grammar it would be possible to avoid the unnecessary multiplication of entities to which traditional metaphysicians were committed. By paying attention to the function that words occupy within sentences, one could avoid the temptation to reify universals thereby adding an extra entity (the one allegedly standing for Beauty or Goodness) to the inventory of the world. To resist this temptation one should place only names in the position of the grammatical subject so that the relationship between the grammatical subject and the grammatical predicate expresses the relationship between an object and its properties. Concepts should occupy the position of the grammatical predicate to indicate that they are not things but properties of things. Hence talk about humanity should translate into

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‘x is human’, about mortality into ‘x is mortal’, etc.5 Analogously, claims concerning the existence of universals should be rephrased extensionally by stating e.g. that ‘x is human’ or ‘x is mortal’ is satisﬁed by so and so many values of x. Having denied the need for resorting to metaphysical entities in order to explain what it is that all good/beautiful things, etc., have in common, Russell advanced a very simple explanation about the nature of universals. It is not the case that two things exist, particulars and universals, teaspoons and the Teaspoon. Talk about the (form of the) Teaspoon is just another way of referring to a collection of particulars, i.e. to the class of teaspoons. The solution to the question concerning the ontological status of universals was found by accomplishing a complete reduction of concepts to empirical classes.6 This extensionalist understanding of concepts is, as we shall see, totally incompatible with Collingwood’s doctrine of the overlap of classes. It is important to recognise the intellectual climate during the 1930s since it is difﬁcult to glean, from a reading of EPM alone, that it was written at a time when the philosophical world was in turmoil, when a new form of empiricism was delivering the ﬁnal blows to rationalist metaphysics, as it had survived in the work of the British idealists. EPM has the tranquil quality of a classical masterpiece and lacks the characteristics of a work that aims to make a polemical intervention in a contemporary debate.7 In spite of appearances, however, EPM contains a thoroughgoing, if covert critique of the neo-empiricist revival. One of the most important claims made in EPM concerns the doctrine of the overlap of classes. According to this claim, in their philosophical employment, concepts must allow for full extensional equivalence, i.e. the instances which fall under a species of a philosophical genus are such that they could, in principle, be (numerically) the same as the instances which fall under another species of the same philosophical genus. To illustrate the doctrine of the overlap of classes Collingwood considers the classiﬁcation of actions into pleasant, expedient and right. The concept of the pleasant, the expedient and the right are not mutually exclusive classes: an act could be both expedient, right and pleasant. Whereas in practice it may be the case that what is expedient is not right, it is possible, at least in principle, for philosophical concepts to coincide in their instances, and for there to be philosophical distinctions to which there correspond no empirical differences. The various branches of philosophy, for Collingwood, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, of art and of history, are a case in point. The natural and the historical sciences study the same thing but they study it in different ways: a bodily movement would be described by a natural scientist as an event to be explained by appealing to causal laws and by a historian as an action to be explained as an expression of thought or rational process. The philosophical use of concepts is contrasted with concepts as they are employed in the natural sciences. Collingwood claims that the

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concepts employed in natural science, such as, for instance, the concepts of crystalline and sedimentary rocks, are not only different concepts, but also concepts of different objects.8 To illustrate: consider on the one hand, the distinction between the concept of a rational and of a nonrational being and, on the other, the distinction between the concept of a human being and that of a chimpanzee. When we distinguish between rational and non-rational beings we ignore the empirical differences through which we distinguish a human from other mammals. For this reason whereas a very clever chimpanzee, an intelligent parrot (if it existed) and a human being, could be described as rational, a baby and a senile human may not, in spite of the fact that they belong to the same biological species and hence the same empirical class. The concept of a rational being and the distinction between a rational and a non-rational being are instances of what Collingwood would refer to as a philosophical concept and a philosophical distinction. The concept of a rational being is an a priori not an empirical concept and the distinction between a rational and non-rational being is a purely conceptual distinction that cuts across natural classiﬁcations. Matters are quite different if we consider the distinction between the concept of the human being and the concept of the chimpanzee. Here we have a conceptual distinction to which there corresponds an empirical one. As a consequence no chimpanzee can be said to be a human being in the way in which a chimpanzee can be said to be rational. Classiﬁcations in the natural sciences, unlike philosophical distinctions, effectively exclude the possibility of extensional equivalence or empirical overlap. The reason for this asymmetry between philosophical distinctions and classiﬁcations in the natural sciences arises from the fact that whereas the distinction between human beings and chimpanzees is a distinction that we observe to exist in nature, the distinction between a rational and a non-rational being is one that we have to bring to nature. In order to make the distinction between philosophical and empirical classiﬁcations clearer, let us consider one of Collingwood’s own examples: the concept of action and the distinction between actions and events. The concept of action, for Collingwood, is not an empirical but a philosophical concept and the distinction between actions and events is not an empirical classiﬁcation but a philosophical distinction. The concept of action is linked not to the concept of the human being but to the idea of rational agency. It is rational agents that, strictly speaking, act. Further, the concept of rational agency (to which Collingwood refers in different ways as mind, rational processes, etc.), unlike the concept of the human being, is not an empirical concept: we understand the behaviour of human beings as actions to the extent that we possess the non-empirical concept of rational agency, not vice versa, i.e. we cannot derive the concept of action from the empirical concept ‘human being’. This rather important point is reﬂected in Collingwood’s discussion of the subject matter of history in The Idea of History (IH). Historians, Colling-

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wood says, claim that they are concerned with phenomena of a social and political nature, such as battles and conquests, rather than with natural phenomena, such as hurricanes and volcanic explosions. They say, in other words, that the subject matter of history is, broadly, what goes under the name of the ‘domain of human affairs’. Historians, however, also readily grant that not all human actions are appropriate subject matter for history. The reason why historians feel that they are entitled to exclude some human deeds from their object of investigation is connected with the fact that the concept that deﬁnes the subject matter of history, i.e. the concept of action, is not an empirical but a philosophical concept and, therefore, cuts across natural classiﬁcations.9 Since not all human deeds are rational, not all human deeds are actions. The exclusion of some human deeds, from the object of investigation of history, however, is possible only if the concept that deﬁnes the subject matter of history is a nonempirical, a priori concept.10 According to Collingwood, as the distinctions with which philosophy deals cut across natural classiﬁcations, it is not possible for the philosopher to proceed by adopting the method of natural science. He makes this point by contrasting the study of morality with that of an empirical science, such as geology. The concepts with which the moral philosopher works, such as the concept of good and evil, are not concepts that can be taught by pointing to instances of good and instances of evil in the way in which one can teach the concept of a crystalline rock, and the distinction between crystalline and sedimentary rocks, by pointing to instances of both. Such a procedure is not available in philosophy because the method of inquiry employed in the natural sciences relies ‘for its efﬁcacy on the fact that the conceptions of crystalline rock and sedimentary rock are not only different conceptions but conceptions of different things’.11 Unlike the empirical scientist, the moral philosopher cannot point to an object in order to illustrate the concept it exempliﬁes. As Kant knew very well in Groundwork,12 it is not possible to explain the concept of duty simply by pointing to an action that appears to exemplify the motive of duty, as actions that externally conform to duty may in fact be motivated by selfinterest and therefore exemplify not the principle of duty but that of expediency. The philosopher, unlike the empirical scientist, cannot expect the conceptual distinctions of philosophy to coincide with empirical distinctions: whereas no rock could be both sedimentary and crystalline, one and the same action could be both expedient and right. The point that Collingwood makes here can be easily applied to the concept of action. The philosopher of history cannot explain the concept of action by pointing to an instance of it in the way in which the geologist can teach what a crystalline rock is by pointing to exemplars of that rock. Whereas we can acquire the concept of the human being from experience, we cannot derive the concept of action from experience. This is a concept that we do not ﬁnd in nature; like the concept of a rational being and the

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distinction between rational and non-rational beings, it is a concept that we bring to nature. Collingwood occasionally refers to philosophical concepts as ‘transcendentals’. The meaning of a transcendental concept, he says: cannot be conveyed by producing instances of it. This is because everything is an instance of every transcendental; and, therefore, if in the endeavour to explain the meaning of a certain transcendental, we cite a certain particular thing as an instance of it, there can be no way of knowing which it is, of all the transcendental conceptions exempliﬁed by this thing, that we are meant to observe.13 In sum, then, Collingwood’s doctrine of the overlap of classes states that, at least in their philosophical employment, concepts are not empirical classes. Philosophical distinctions cut across natural classiﬁcations and philosophical concepts are such that they may in principle allow for full extensional equivalence. We are now in a position to clarify the source of conﬂict between Collingwood and Russellian neo-empiricism. Collingwood thought philosophy was concerned with concepts understood as epistemic tools, and he was interested in how objects are described and classiﬁed through the use of concepts rather than in how objects are classiﬁed in accordance with empirical properties. To clarify: there are two ways in which we may speak of concepts. On the one hand, by concepts one can mean the empirical properties that objects have in common. For instance, the primroses in front of me all have the property of being yellow. In this sense the property of being yellow is understood as a trope (an individual property or a property that this and that object have) and concepts are understood extensionally as empirical classes. On the other hand, by concepts one can mean ways of seeing, i.e. ways of describing and classifying objects. In this second sense, the property of being yellow is not a trope and the concept ‘yellowness’ is not captured by the empirical class of yellow objects. In this second sense ‘being yellow’ is something that in the broad sense may be referred to as a feature of mind, as the way in which objects are described.14 Collingwood, in other words, wished to resist the reduction of concepts to empirical classes and defend the notion of a normative rather than descriptive employment of concepts. As normative concepts do not describe features that objects have been observed to have (as in the case of the yellowness of the primroses) but rather spell out the concept of an object and therefore tell us what characteristics objects ought to have in order to be described in a certain way, e.g. as beautiful, good, etc. The concept of action, for instance, is a normative concept and when the philosopher of history says: ‘actions are expressions of thought’, he means to spell out criteria on the basis of which a human action may be described as an action (as opposed to, say, a knee-jerk reaction or an

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event) rather than simply provide an empirical list or classiﬁcation of human deeds. Hence, for the philosopher of history, if something is an action, it must be an expression of thought. It is simply not possible that an action could lack that thought-expressing feature and still be an action. Much of EPM is taken up by an attempt to resist the reduction of philosophical concepts and distinctions to empirical concepts and classiﬁcations. The conﬂation of philosophical with empirical concepts, according to Collingwood, tends to occur when certain concepts are used equivocally to refer both to (i) a domain of inquiry and (ii) the empirical class of objects that fall under that domain of inquiry. Collingwood claims that a non-philosophical concept ‘observes the rules of classiﬁcation, its instances forming a class separate from other classes’, whereas a philosophical concept ‘breaks these rules, and the class of its instances overlaps those of its coordinate species’ (EPM, 35).15 Consider, for instance, the concept of ‘action’ in its philosophical and non-philosophical employment. In its non-philosophical employment it captures a limited class of objects, i.e. human actions, and excludes all non-human actions. In its philosophical employment it is a way of seeing or characterising what is or exists in accordance with mentalistic explanations. The same could be said about the concept of an event. In its non-philosophical employment it is used to refer to a subset of occurrences, such as ﬂooding, volcanic explosions, lightning, etc.; in its philosophical employment it refers to the structure of scientiﬁc explanation.16 An important disclaimer should be made with respect to Collingwood’s defence of concepts as universals rather than empirical classes: Collingwood did not fall into the trap in which, according to Russell, traditional metaphysicians fell, namely that of assuming that if a word occupies the position of the grammatical subject in a sentence, it is a name in the technical sense, i.e. it signiﬁes or symbolises. According to Collingwood, the fact that concepts can occur in the position of the grammatical subject does not have any ontological or metaphysical signiﬁcance. For instance, it does not follow from the claim that ‘(all) actions are expressions of thought’ that there are actions, any more than it follows from the claim that ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ that there are trespassers. Collingwood is not guilty of reifying universals thereby unnecessarily adding an extra entity (e.g. Beauty, Goodness, etc.) to the empirical class of beautiful objects and good deeds. To the extent that Collingwood is interested in the normative rather than descriptive use of concepts, his understanding of universals does have something in common with Plato’s theory of forms, understood as ideal standards against which particulars are compared. However, although there is a Platonic element in Collingwood’s understanding of universals, Russell’s mocking observation that metaphysicians are committed to the view that there are more things on heaven and earth than philosophers dream about does not apply to Collingwood. According to Collingwood, philosophical concepts and

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distinctions do not add anything to the world. The fact, for instance, that we distinguish human beings from mussels on the one hand, and rational from non-rational beings on the other, does not entail that there are four kinds of beings, human beings, mussels, rational and non-rational beings. Whereas if an empirical concept, such as ‘red’ or ‘blue’, is instantiated, this entails the addition of some extra entities to those already existing (there would indeed be more things on heaven and earth if the concept of ‘ﬂying pig’ had an extension), the same is not true of philosophical concepts and distinctions. To say that there are or exist rational beings, or actions, does not entail adding anything to what already exists. To say that there are actions is just a way of describing the same thing in a different way, i.e. as an expression of thought rather than, say, as a mechanical movement. As philosophical distinctions do not add anything to the world, it may be more appropriate to speak of philosophical concepts as being exempliﬁed rather than instantiated, i.e. it may be less misleading to refer to the objects that they describe as illustrations of basic conceptual distinctions (exempliﬁcations) rather than as instances (members of a class). The exempliﬁcation of philosophical concepts, in other words, entails not the existence of an empirical entity, but its description or redescription. This is something that follows from Collingwood’s distinction between philosophical and empirical concepts. As we have seen, for Collingwood, empirical concepts, are not just distinct concepts; they are also concepts of different objects. For instance, it is both the case that the empirical concept ‘cat’ differs from the empirical concept ‘dog’, and that the class of objects which falls under the concept ‘cat’ is not numerically the same as the class of objects which falls under the concept ‘dog’. Philosophical concepts differ from empirical concepts in that they are concepts to which there corresponds no given empirical class. As philosophical concepts have no given set of corresponding empirical objects, they differ from one another only with respect to their intension: the concept of ‘action’, for instance, does not differ from the concept of an ‘event’ because the class of objects which instantiates one concept differs numerically from the class of objects which instantiates the other, but because they have different meanings. The neo-empiricist critique of metaphysics entails the denial of both an ontological and epistemic notion of transcendence. It entails the denial of an ontological notion of transcendence to the extent that it attempts to eliminate transcendent entities or Platonic forms. It also entails the denial of an epistemic notion of transcendence to the extent that it denies the epistemological distinction between domains of inquiry. Collingwood’s rehabilitation of metaphysics is exclusively focused on an attempt to defend an epistemological notion of transcendence, which is required to delineate the domains of inquiry of different disciplines. For Collingwood philosophical concepts and distinctions delineate the subject matter of

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the various forms of knowledge such as natural science and history. The lesson that EPM teaches is that the right to co-exist of different sciences is premised on the view that there are concepts and distinctions (philosophical concepts and distinctions) which cannot be captured on an extensional basis because, unlike empirical concepts, philosophical concepts overlap in their instances. The right to co-exist of different sciences, therefore, is premised on the acceptance of the doctrine of the overlap of classes.

II When EPM appeared, A. J. Ayer was still in the course of writing Language, Truth and Logic.17 By the time Collingwood was writing EM, Language, Truth and Logic had been published and the neo-empiricism of Russell had found full expression in the school of logical positivism. As the anti-metaphysical movement became more and more established and gained credibility in academic circles, Collingwood felt the need to intervene in contemporary debates to defend his conception of philosophy. In EM, much more than in any other work, Collingwood made an explicit attempt to employ a terminology that would be comprehensible to those contemporaries, such as Ayer, who saw themselves as unsparing critics of metaphysics. EM is, at least at one level, an explicit polemic against the positivists’ criterion of meaning. In the following I hope to illustrate the nature of Collingwood’s critique of logical positivism in EM. To this end I will begin by explaining why logical positivism constituted a threat for Collingwood’s conception of philosophical inquiry. The main tool employed by the logical positivists18 in their attack on the metaphysical tradition is the principle of veriﬁcation.19 In its most general formulation the principle states that the meaning of a proposition is its mode of veriﬁcation. Such a general formulation of the principle could be understood simply as stating that the meaning of a proposition depends on how one veriﬁes it and vice versa, i.e. that the mode of veriﬁcation one employs determines what the proposition means. To illustrate: if the proposition ‘all swans are white’ is presented as an analytic statement, it should be veriﬁed by analysing the meaning of the words involved in it, but if the same proposition is put forward as an empirical statement, it should be veriﬁed by comparing it with existing swans. Conversely, if the proposition is veriﬁed by reﬂecting on the meaning of the terms involved, it is treated as an analytic statement, but if it is veriﬁed by means of observation, it is treated as an empirical statement. Understood in this way the veriﬁcation principle provides not a criterion for distinguishing meaningful from meaningless propositions, but a criterion for distinguishing between different types of (meaningful) propositions in accordance with their differing methods of veriﬁcation. In actual fact the logical positivists prioritised empirical veriﬁcation over any other mode of veriﬁcation: in

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the hands of the logical positivists, therefore, the principle of veriﬁcation became a tool not only for distinguishing factual from non-factual or a priori statements, but for ruling out any a priori non-factual statements, other than tautologies, as meaningless. In the following I will refer to the principle of veriﬁcation qua criterion for distinguishing between different types of propositions as the principle of veriﬁcation in the wide sense. I will refer to the principle of veriﬁcation qua criterion for distinguishing meaningful from meaningless propositions as the principle in the narrow sense. The principle in the wide sense does not prescribe any given method of veriﬁcation and therefore does not function as a criterion for distinguishing meaningful from meaningless propositions. The principle in the narrow sense privileges empirical veriﬁcation, and can, therefore, be used as a criterion for distinguishing meaningful from meaningless propositions. In the narrow sense the principle of veriﬁcation would rule out as meaningless all nonempirical propositions, including propositions about relations of ideas, but the logical positivists tended to make an exception for analytic propositions. Like pre-Kantian empiricists, the logical positivists recognised only two kinds of propositions: analytic propositions whose truth is known through reﬂection on the meaning of words and propositions about matters of fact whose truth is known empirically or a posteriori. But, unlike classical empiricists such as Locke, the logical positivists did not tend to consider a priori knowledge to be a genuine kind of knowledge and for this reason often referred to analytic propositions as tautological.20 Understood in the narrow sense, the principle of veriﬁcation casts doubt on all statements containing generalisations of a non-empirical nature that are non-tautological. The distinction between generalisations of an empirical and non-empirical nature may be illustrated as follows. Consider the claim ‘All men are mortal’. This can mean: ‘All observed men are mortal’. In this case the claim is put forward as an empirical generalisation that lacks genuine universality and makes no claim for unobserved cases. In spite of the presence of the word ‘all’ at the beginning of the sentence, the statement means only that ‘some’ men, namely observed men, are mortal. On the other hand the claim ‘All men are mortal’ may be offered as a generalisation making a genuinely universal statement about all cases, whether observed or unobserved. If so, the proposition cannot be about matters of fact since empirical generalisations cannot be conclusively veriﬁed. For the logical positivists genuinely universal statements cannot be generalisations of an empirical nature, and must therefore either be trivially true, i.e. tautologies such as ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’, or nonsense. If we adopt the following nomenclature, and call propositions which have the form ‘x is mortal’ singular, propositions which have the form ‘some x s are mortal’ or ‘all (observed) x s are mortal’ particular, and propositions which have the form ‘(all) x s are

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mortal’ universal, we may say that the logical positivists ruled out all universal propositions which are not tautologies as nonsense. The kind of generalisations that are ruled out by the logical positivists are precisely the kind of non-empirical concepts or generalisations that are, for Collingwood, crucial to philosophical thought. Consider, once again, the concept of action and its employment in the proposition ‘(all) actions are expressions of thought’. The concept of action is the subject matter of the philosophy of history, which, alongside the philosophy of science, constitutes one of the branches of Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics. Actions, for the philosopher of history, are expressions of thought; they are what historians study, because they are concerned with the past not as a natural phenomenon but as a rational process. When the philosopher of history says that ‘(all) actions are expressions of thought’, he does not present this claim as a statement about observed human behaviour: the claim that ‘(all) actions are expressions of thought’ is presented as a genuinely universal statement, rather than as a statement that has the grammatical appearance or surface structure of a universal claim but expresses a proposition which is particular in its logical form. For the philosopher of history, the claim that ‘(all) actions are expressions of thought’ does not mean: ‘some actions, i.e. human actions, are expressions of thought’ or ‘all (observed) human actions are expressions of thought’. Since the proposition ‘(all) actions are expressions of thought’ is neither an analytic statement nor an enumerative proposition about matters of fact, it is the kind of proposition that the logical positivists would regard as meaningless.21 Collingwood was well aware that the principle of veriﬁcation threatened the very notion of philosophy as an inquiry into the fundamental categories that structure different domains of inquiry or areas of experience. The principle of veriﬁcation constitutes a threat to philosophical inquiry so conceived because the propositions that lie at the basis of different domains of inquiry are neither empirically nor analytically veriﬁable. As such, they are ruled out by the principle of veriﬁcation (at least to the extent that it is narrowly construed) as meaningless metaphysical statements. In articulating his defence of descriptive metaphysics against the onslaught of the logical positivists Collingwood chose his terminology speciﬁcally in order to be understood by his philosophical opponents. Following the linguistic conventions employed by the neo-empiricist movement, he reserved the term ‘proposition’ for statements that can be either true or false (in the narrow sense of veriﬁability reserved by the logical positivists for a posteriori or empirical veriﬁcation). Having reserved the term propositions for claims that can be veriﬁed a posteriori, Collingwood then referred to metaphysical principles or maxims as ‘absolute presuppositions’ and claimed that philosophical analysis is concerned with the latter.

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Collingwood thus adopts the terminology of the logical positivists while being very careful not to endorse the principle of veriﬁcation as a criterion of meaning: Collingwood does not claim that absolute presuppositions are meaningless because they are not empirically veriﬁable but that, since absolute presuppositions are not propositions at all, they do not need to be veriﬁable a posteriori or empirically. To illustrate and justify the distinction between propositions and absolute presuppositions Collingwood developed ‘the logic of question and answer’. According to the logic of question and answer every proposition (i.e. every statement which is capable of being true or false) is an answer to a question. For instance, the proposition ‘the cat is on the mat’ is an answer to the question ‘Where is the cat?’ The kind of maxims with which metaphysical analysis is concerned, i.e. absolute presuppositions, differ from propositions because they are not answers to any questions, but constitute the condition of the possibility of providing empirically true/false answers in propositional form. Metaphysical principles/ maxims, i.e. absolute presuppositions, should not be confused with different kinds of presuppositions, i.e. relative presuppositions. Presuppositions are relative if they are themselves propositions or answers to further questions. For instance, the statement ‘there is a household cat’ is both a presupposition and a proposition. It is a presupposition because it is the condition of the possibility for asking the question ‘Where is the cat?’ It is a relative presupposition because it is itself a proposition that can be offered in answer to other questions such as ‘Are there cats?’ or ‘Is the concept of cat instantiated?’ Presuppositions are absolute if they are not answers to further questions, i.e. if they cannot be offered as empirically true or false propositions. The statement that there is a world of external objects would be an absolute presupposition because it is the condition of the possibility for asking further questions, i.e. questions concerning the existence of speciﬁc things and their spatial location to which true and false answers can be given. On the basis of the logic of question and answer Collingwood concludes, against the logical positivists, that there are statements which, although neither analytically nor empirically veriﬁable, are meaningful because they are the conditions of the possibility for asking the sort of questions that can be answered in propositional form. It is perhaps important to point out that for Collingwood a presupposition is not absolute simply because it cannot be put in an interrogative form; a presupposition is absolute in so far as ‘an afﬁrmative answer to the question must be presupposed if a certain kind of inquiry is to be possible’. For instance, nothing stops us from turning the statement that there is a world of external objects in an interrogative form and ask: ‘Is there an external world?’ But whereas such a question is grammatically possible, it is not the kind of question to which either an afﬁrmative or a negative answer can be given: it is a question that we can only answer in the afﬁrmative, at least if we are to be able to get on with the daily business

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of asking more mundane questions such as ‘Where is the pepper grinder?’ Collingwood’s view, therefore, is not that absolute presuppositions cannot be put in an interrogative form, but that they are not questions to which genuine yes and no answers can be given. To use another example: the proposition ‘There is a God’ or ‘God exists’ is an absolute presupposition of religious experience. As such, for Collingwood, it is not an answer to a question but the condition of the possibility for answering certain questions such as ‘Who is the son of God?’ When Collingwood says that absolute presuppositions are not answers to questions, he does not mean that we cannot ask for instance: ‘Does God exist?’ Although such questions are grammatically possible, they are not questions that can be asked from the point of view of religious experience: that there is a God is a presupposition of religious belief. Further clariﬁcation may also be required with respect to Collingwood’s claim that absolute presuppositions are not empirically veriﬁable, but are the preconditions for asking questions to which empirically veriﬁable answers can be given. Although he concedes to the logical positivists that absolute presuppositions are not empirically veriﬁable, he does not hold the view, occasionally attributed to him, according to which absolute presuppositions are not veriﬁable in any way whatsoever. Collingwood’s view is that absolute presuppositions require a different mode of veriﬁcation. They are veriﬁed by assessing whether they are true to the kind of experience or knowledge that they make possible. When Collingwood claims that absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false he does so because he is using the terms ‘true’ and ‘false’ as the logical positivists did, in order to be understood by them. His claim that absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false, therefore, entails not that they are meaningless because they are empirically unveriﬁable, but that, since absolute presuppositions are not empirical propositions, they require another method of veriﬁcation. In spite of terminological differences, Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions in EM closely maps onto his account of philosophical concepts in EPM. In EPM the emphasis is on concepts and on the distinction between philosophical and empirical classiﬁcations. In EM, by contrast, the emphasis is on presuppositions and the distinction between propositions and absolute presuppositions. Absolute presuppositions (the terminology of EM), like philosophical concepts (the terminology employed in EPM) or ‘transcendentals’ (the terminology employed in ‘The Lectures on Moral Philosophy’), are empirically unveriﬁable and yet must necessarily be postulated if certain forms of inquiry are to be possible. I will return to a discussion of absolute presuppositions in Chapter 7. For the moment, however, we may conclude that the issue at stake in EPM and EM is essentially the same. In EPM Collingwood claimed that the ability to distinguish between different domains of inquiry requires the employment of concepts and distinctions that cannot be empirically

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derived and/or justiﬁed. The moral philosopher, as we have seen, can neither derive nor justify the employment of concepts such as that of duty and utility by pointing to acts in which such concepts are instantiated since philosophical concepts can overlap in their instances. Analogously, in EM, Collingwood claims that different forms of inquiry are based on different absolute presuppositions. As philosophical concepts, absolute presuppositions cannot be veriﬁed empirically yet they structure the mode of inquiry of ﬁrst-order sciences. In both EPM and EM, therefore, Collingwood wishes to defend a notion of epistemological transcendence, the idea that there are certain philosophical concepts and/or absolute presuppositions that have normative import and guide our judgements in theoretical, practical and aesthetic matters. It is in the defence of such an epistemological notion of transcendence against any attempt to reduce all concepts to empirical classes and all meaningful propositions to empirical propositions, that Collingwood’s reform of metaphysics consists.

5

Collingwood’s ‘rehabilitation’ of the ontological proof

In this chapter I would like to consider a lively debate that took place between Collingwood and Ryle in the aftermath of the publication of An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM). The debate was prompted by Collingwood’s reappropriation of the ontological argument in Chapter 6 of EPM where he defended what he regarded as a neglected kernel of truth in the traditional proof. Ryle launched a ﬁerce attack on Collingwood’s attempted rehabilitation of the ontological argument in the pages of Mind,1 where he accused Collingwood of ignoring crucial philosophical developments which had occurred in the last two hundred years, in particular the thesis that all existential propositions are knowable a posteriori and the corollary that there can be no necessary existential judgements. Collingwood never took up Ryle’s challenge publicly, but did attempt to clarify his own position in a number of private letters.2 It was Errol Harris who replied to Ryle publicly on Collingwood’s behalf ,3 locating Collingwood’s defence of the ontological argument in the tradition of Hegel’s objective or speculative idealism, thereby adding further fuel to the controversy. As a result of Harris’s reply on behalf of Collingwood and the private exchange with Collingwood himself Ryle responded with a further article4 aimed at reasserting his original position that there can be no necessary existential propositions. Ryle’s attack on Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological proof was closely focused on the question as to whether there can be necessary existential propositions, something that he vehemently denied, protesting that all judgements of experience are propositions about matters of fact and therefore contingent.5 Ryle did not explore the implications of Collingwood’s endorsement of the ontological proof for Collingwood’s more general philosophical project, the project of revitalising metaphysics. Perhaps Ryle simply assumed that if it could be shown that the ontological proof had failed, this would inevitably cast doubt on the viability of Collingwood’s attempt to revitalise the metaphysical tradition. It is important to point out that Collingwood’s reappropriation of the ontological proof constitutes a problem or a puzzle not only for those who, like Ryle, have no interest in Collingwood’s overall project, but also

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for those who believe that there is something worthwhile in Collingwood’s attempted reform of metaphysics.6 When Collingwood’s metaphysics is defended against its detractors, it is usually argued that Collingwood’s revitalisation of metaphysics does not take the form of a study of things-inthemselves or the ultimate nature of reality. What Collingwood offers is not a metaphysics proper but a study of the absolute presuppositions7 that govern different kinds of inquiry, natural science, history, art, etc. Collingwood, in other words, is seen as providing epistemologically compelling but ontologically neutral arguments.8 Yet this purely epistemological inquiry, which Collingwood calls metaphysics, is, it would seem, rather more difﬁcult to square with Collingwood’s allegiance to the ontological proof. In the following I would like to address a cluster of issues raised by Collingwood’s appropriation of the ontological proof. We must ask, ﬁrst, whether Collingwood’s appropriation of the ontological argument entails that the metaphysics he intends to rehabilitate is a substantive metaphysics or, to use a Kantian expression, a pre-critical metaphysics. Second, if we assume that the metaphysics Collingwood intends to rehabilitate is a purely descriptive metaphysics, we must ask whether such a descriptive metaphysics or metaphysics of experience can be squared with his endorsement of the ontological argument. Finally, and on the assumption that Collingwood’s combined defence of descriptive metaphysics and rehabilitation of the ontological proof is not self-defeating, we must try to determine what the signiﬁcance of Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological argument is. It may be appropriate to begin a discussion of the Collingwood–Ryle exchange by reminding ourselves of a couple of key points which govern the discussion. First, the bone of contention is the viability of the ontological proof. The ontological proof is an a priori argument for the existence of God whose aim is to demonstrate that there is at least one necessary being, namely God. It is mostly to St Anselm’s formulation of the ontological proof in the Proslogion9 that Collingwood refers.10 According to Anselm’s formulation, God is the greatest of all beings and since existence is a perfection (it is better to exist than not to exist), God necessarily exists. Anselm’s demonstration, in other words, consists in showing that our concept or notion of God includes its existence. However, although Collingwood refers primarily to Anselm’s proof, not much hangs on any given formulation of the argument. What is crucial is the claim, implicit in most versions of the ontological argument, that God’s essence entails his existence. Second, neither Collingwood nor Ryle is concerned with the theological implications of the ontological proof; their interest, and indeed the bone of contention between them, lies exclusively with the metaphysical import of the argument, i.e. whether there is any case, whether of God or of any other entity, in which essence entails existence. Understood in this way the Collingwood–Ryle debate is a debate about the

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possibility of metaphysical inquiry. The implications of accepting or rejecting Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological proof, therefore, reach further than one might expect: in accepting or rejecting the ontological proof one does not simply take up a position in a debate strictly conﬁned to rationalist theology; rather, one positions oneself as a friend or foe of all metaphysical inquiry. Indeed, Ryle seemed to think that in accepting or rejecting the ontological proof one positions oneself vis-à-vis the history of philosophy as either a dogmatic rationalist metaphysician or as an enlightened post-Humean philosopher who, having acknowledged the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, denies that there can be existential propositions which are necessary. It was Ryle’s belief that in accepting the ontological proof Collingwood failed to acknowledge Hume’s fork, thereby betraying his allegiance to a form of dogmatic rationalist metaphysics. Having spelled out the far-reaching implications of settling what might have appeared to be a debate conﬁned to rationalist theology, we may proceed to say something about the kernel of truth implicit in the ontological proof which Collingwood wishes to defend. Collingwood claims that the ontological proof applies in one case only; the case of the object of philosophical thought: My own view of the Ontological proof is that there is ‘something in it’ as we say . . . but that its defect, in its traditional form, is that this something is often left vague, and that the term God (as anyone might indeed guess, who is familiar with the general drift of neoPlatonic and early medieval thought) has to be taken as standing for ‘that which we are thinking about when we are thinking philosophically’. When this matter is made clear, it is to me also clear that the traditional Ontological proof will have to be revised to bring it, so to speak, up to date; and this is what I have tried to do.11 Philosophy, for Collingwood, is a second-order activity that is concerned with the domains of inquiry of different disciplines. According to Collingwood, the object of philosophical thought, the subject matter of philosophy, is the paradigmatic case in which essence entails existence. As an example of the object of philosophical thought Collingwood cites propositions which delineate the domains of inquiry of different areas of knowledge or experience such as natural science and history. History, for instance, is the study of mind, whereas the natural sciences study matter, and philosophical propositions are propositions such as ‘matter exists’ or ‘mind exists’. Propositions of this kind, according to Collingwood, have two features. First, they are universal rather than particular, i.e. they have the form ‘all x s are . . .’ (universal) rather than ‘some x s are . . .’ (particular). Particular propositions, for Collingwood are enumerative, i.e. they are the sum total of singular propositions about matters of fact. It is

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important to point out that when Collingwood says that philosophical propositions are universal rather than particular he means not only that they begin with ‘all’ rather than ‘some’ but, more crucially, that universal propositions are not empirical generalisations. Whereas there are particular propositions that look superﬁcially like universal ones, such as, for instance, ‘all dogs in the kennel have dark fur’, propositions such as this are not universal despite their grammatical form; they are not universal but particular, because they express empirical generalisations arrived at by adding up singular propositions about matters of fact. Second, according to Collingwood, philosophical propositions are categorical rather than hypothetical propositions, i.e. they are not indifferent to the existence of their subject matter. In this respect propositions such as ‘mind exists’ differ from statements such as ‘triangles have three sides’ which, being hypothetical, rather than categorical, can be restated as follows: if triangles exist, they have three sides. What are Ryle’s objections to Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological argument? Ryle acknowledges that Collingwood’s interest lies with the metaphysical rather than theological implications of the ontological proof but still rejects his conclusions. Ryle’s objections may be summarised as follows: there are no propositions which are both categorical and universal. If a proposition is categorical rather than hypothetical, it must be enumerative rather than universal. Conversely, if a proposition is genuinely universal (rather than merely an enumerative proposition), it is hypothetical, not categorical in its logical form. In other words, propositions have two logical forms, they are either universal and hypothetical, such as ‘all triangles have three sides’, or they are categorical and enumerative, such as ‘all dogs in the kennel have dark fur’. The former are necessarily true and cannot be denied without contradiction; the latter are only contingently true and can be denied without contradiction. There are, therefore only two kinds of propositions: propositions about relations of ideas or analytic statements (which are universal and hypothetical) and propositions about matters of fact (which are categorical and enumerative). There are not, as Collingwood claims, three kinds of propositions, propositions which are categorical and enumerative (propositions about matters of fact), hypothetical and universal (propositions about relations of ideas) and categorical and universal (philosophical propositions such as ‘mind exists’ or ‘matter exists’). According to Ryle, propositions such as ‘mind exists’ or ‘matter exists’ (which Collingwood claims are categorical and universal) can be paraphrased as ‘some things have minds’ or ‘some things sometimes think, feel, will’12 and when paraphrased thus it is clear that they are propositions about matters of fact: for Ryle, Collingwood has been misled by a slight grammatical difference to assume that propositions such as ‘matter exists’ or ‘mind exists’ are different in logical form from what are easily recognizable propositions about matters of fact such as ‘something is xish’. General propositions such as ‘mind exists’ are not

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genuinely universal but summative or enumerative propositions no different in logical form from propositions such as ‘all men in the room are Etonians’, which is equal to ‘A is an Etonian and is in the room, B is an Etonian and is in the room and no one else is in the room’.13 How does Collingwood react to Ryle’s challenge? In the unpublished correspondence he claims that the bone of contention between himself and Ryle concerns the status of universals. According to Collingwood, Ryle’s claim that all categorical propositions are enumerative (a conjunction of propositions about matters of fact), suggests that Ryle thinks of universals as the sum total of things or instances of a class rather than as what the instances of a class have in common. As Collingwood says: I am disposed to think that what makes a number of things instances of a class is the common possession of some nature, and that this common nature (the so-called universal) is thus the ratio essendi of the class as such. Instead of resolving the theory of universals into the theory of classes, I should therefore be inclined to take the opposite line, of resolving the theory of classes into the theory of universals . . . This difference would tend to produce the result that, when you speak of some kind of thing as existing, you would analyse your statement into something like this: ‘The class of x s, viz x1, x2, x3 . . . exist’; whereas I, using the same language, would have to analyse it somehow more like this: ‘the universal xness exists and is instantiated in various x s, x1, x2, x3 . . .’14 Collingwood’s point may be explained as follows. First, philosophical propositions are propositions about domains of inquiry. Second, two domains of inquiry are distinct, not if the class of objects which falls under one differs from the class of objects which falls under the other, but if they describe objects in different ways. Third, for Collingwood the notion of a domain of inquiry cannot be reduced to the sum total of its empirical instances, and consequently philosophical propositions concerning any such disciplines as natural science and history, whose respective domains of inquiry are matter and mind, cannot be enumerative propositions about matters of fact; they cannot be paraphrased in the way Ryle claims and must, consequently have a distinct logical form. The proposition ‘actions are expressions of thought’, as we have seen, is not an enumerative proposition; it is a non-empirical generalisation which makes history possible as an autonomous domain of inquiry with a distinct method and subject matter. Given that, for Collingwood, to say that mind exists is altogether different from saying that there are some x s which are minded or have minds, mind or matter must exist in some other sense of ‘exist’ to which we must now turn. One way of interpreting what Collingwood means when he says that the term God within the ontological argument should be understood as ‘that

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which we are thinking about when we are thinking philosophically’ is to say that since philosophy is a second-order activity which is concerned with the domains of inquiry of ﬁrst-order disciplines, the object of philosophical thought is necessarily present in the disciplines which it examines. The kind of statements which are made by historians, for instance, are such that they make use of or embody mental rather than physicalist explanations. In order to illustrate what a mental rather than a physicalist explanation looks like, the philosopher must point to the kind of statements that are paradigmatically made by historians because such statements embody the view that e.g. ‘all actions are expressions of mind’. Mind or matter, therefore, do not exist, for Collingwood, in the sense that the concept of mind or the concept of matter are empirically instantiated: to say that mind exists is not analogous to stating that the moon exists, i.e. that there is something which instantiates the concept ‘moon’ or ‘satellite of Earth’. Nor do propositions such as ‘mind exists’ or ‘matter exists’ mean that mind or matter exist as Platonic forms. The concept of mind and the concept of matter exist rather as logical forms which govern the kind of statements made within distinct areas of experience or knowledge. When for instance historians say that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in order to quell rebellions on the other side of the river, they employ the concept of mind in the context of what is often described as a rational rather than causal explanation. Undoubtedly this becomes much more explicit in Collingwood’s later work and especially in An Essay on Metaphysics (EM), where he deﬁnes metaphysics as a study of the absolute presuppositions which govern different areas of experience. But even from the perspective of EPM and the private correspondence, it is clear that Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological argument is rather unorthodox: the kernel of truth which is worth preserving within the ontological proof is the view that certain logical forms are necessarily expressed by the kind of statements that are paradigmatically made by, for example, historians and natural scientists. The ontological proof applies to the object of philosophical thought only in the rather weak sense that the logical forms which structure a given domain of inquiry and which are the object of philosophical study are implicit in the statements of, for example, historians and natural scientists. Collingwood expounds this rather weak sense of existence when he considers the case of moral philosophy. He says that if moral philosophy were purely descriptive it would content itself with giving an account of how people act independently of any consideration as to whether such behaviour conforms or fails to conform to moral ideas. On the other hand, if moral philosophy were purely normative it would ignore all questions of how people actually behave and address the question of how they ought to behave. As Collingwood explicitly uses this illustration to support the claim that the ontological argument applies to philosophy I would like to quote this passage in full. Moral philosophy, Collingwood says, is best deﬁned as

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an account of how people think they ought to behave. Here the facts and the ideals of conduct are alike included in the subject-matter; but the ideals might seem to be reduced to a mere new kind or order of facts. To correct this, it must be borne in mind that the question how people think is not in any philosophical science separable from the question whether they think rightly or they think wrongly; and thus moral philosophy has to face the responsibility either of holding that people are always right when they think they ought to do some act, or of instituting some kind of comparison or criticism of moral judgements. In the ﬁrst alternative, the view is taken that the moral ideal already exists as an idea in the minds of all moral agents; in the second, that it partially so exists, and more completely as (with or without help from moral philosophy) they try to think out more clearly what they believe their duties to be. In either case, the science is both normative and descriptive; it describes, not actions as opposed to ideas about actions, but the moral consciousness; and this it is forced to describe as already being in some sense what it ought to be. This in turn will affect the account which it gives of action; for no theory of moral ideals is conceivable which does not admit that to some extent moral ideas affect action. Quite apart, then, from any argument which might be directed to showing, perhaps legitimately, that the moral philosopher, in describing virtue must himself, in his work as a thinker, display some at least of the virtues he describes . . . it is clear that the moral ideal, which it is his business to conceive, cannot be conceived as a mere thought wholly divorced from existence. Here too the Ontological Proof holds good: the subject-matter of ethical thought must be conceived as something whose essence involves existence. (EPM 132–133) Not everyone may agree with Collingwood’s understanding of moral philosophy. Many might object that this conception of moral philosophy is far too descriptive and not sufﬁciently normative, or that Collingwood’s conception of normativity is too weak. The important point for our purposes, however, is the way in which Collingwood’s claim that essence entails existence in the case of the object of philosophical thought should be read. It seems clear from passages such as this that Collingwood was not in any way stating that moral ideas exist in any weighty ontological sense. What Collingwood says about moral ideas is that they are exemplified in moral consciousness, in the ordinary or commonsense understanding of morality which is the job of the moral philosopher to reflect upon: within moral philosophy essence entails existence in the rather weak sense that moral ideas ‘exist’ within the moral consciousness. In sum: Ryle’s criticism of Collingwood seems to be premised on the

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assumption that anybody who endorses the ontological argument does so because they are committed to the view that it is possible to provide an a priori argument for the existence of God. This possibility Ryle denies, not because he objects to the theological implications of the argument but on the grounds that all existential propositions are propositions about matters of fact and therefore contingent. Such objections, I have tried to suggest, miss the point because for Collingwood the only sense in which the objects of philosophical thought exist (concepts such as that of ‘mind’ or ‘matter’), is as logical forms which are expressed in the statements made by the practitioners of different disciplines. Collingwood’s claim is not so much that the statements ‘mind exists’ or ‘matter exists’ are logically necessary and cannot be denied without contradiction, but rather that, as the presuppositions of certain domains of inquiry (history/natural science), they cannot be denied without renouncing the kind of activity which they make possible.15 Consequently, when Ryle assumes that anybody who defends the ontological argument must stand committed to a kind of pre-Humean rationalist metaphysics that failed to acknowledge the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, he is guilty of an unfair generalisation. Collingwood, like Hume and Kant before him, is well aware of the distinction, but unlike Hume and Ryle, he wants to defend the thesis that there is another class of propositions (philosophical propositions) which are neither analytic nor empirical; they are propositions which structure certain areas of knowledge or experience and are necessary not in the strong sense that they cannot be denied without contradiction but in the weak sense that they explain how, for example, history or natural science is possible. Ryle repeatedly fails to understand why the ontological proof applies to the objects of philosophical thought because he is unwilling to accept the existence of synthetic a priori propositions.16 In the light of this discussion of the Collingwood–Ryle correspondence I would now like to return to the three questions raised at the very beginning of this chapter: ‘Is the metaphysics that Collingwood attempted to rehabilitate a substantive or pre-critical metaphysics?’; ‘Is Collingwood’s defence of the ontological argument compatible with a purely descriptive metaphysics?’; ‘What signiﬁcance is to be attached to Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological proof ?’. First, it is clear from the above that Collingwood has absolutely no desire to rehabilitate a substantive or pre-Humean metaphysics. Whereas pre-Humean rationalist or dogmatic metaphysics held that conceptual relations are also real relations, metaphysics, as revised by Collingwood, states only that the ability to make empirically true and false statements about existing things requires a prior categorial or conceptual articulation of their being or essence.17 Collingwood thought that metaphysics must take the form of an analysis or reﬂection on the structure of knowledge or experience and that philosophical knowledge is consequently to be under-

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stood as a form of reﬂexive knowledge or self-knowledge, not in the sense that it is knowledge of one’s own self but in the sense that what it discloses is not the structure of reality but the structure of thought. Second, Collingwood’s defence of the ontological argument is rather unorthodox as Collingwood’s reappropriation reduces much of the weight traditionally attached to it: Collingwood never endorsed the view that certain truths about the ultimate nature of things can be established by reason alone. He clearly distinguished between the order of knowledge and the order of existence, and excluded the possibility that an analysis of the concepts and categories through which experience is structured could yield knowledge of the ultimate structure of reality. Not only is Collingwood not interested in the theological implications of the argument, he is not using it either to establish the metaphysical (in the nonCollingwoodian use of the term) conclusion that, for example, the concept of mind exists in the sense that the concept is instantiated or that it has an extension. His claim that the ontological proof applies in the case of the object of philosophical thought vindicates only the much less controversial claim that, for example, moral ideas ‘exist’ within moral consciousness or that the concept of mind is implicit in action-oriented explanations. In this respect, Collingwood’s joint rehabilitation of descriptive metaphysics and of the ontological argument is not paradoxical. Collingwood thought that metaphysics could be salvaged by transforming it from a study of the ultimate structure of reality to a study of experience and consequently he could not, on pain of blatant contradiction, have endorsed the ontological proof if he believed its signiﬁcance to lie in establishing truths about the nature of things by an analysis of our concepts. It is because, on Collingwood’s interpretation, the ontological proof is innocent of strong ontological implications that it is compatible with his reformed or descriptive metaphysics. Ryle’s objection to Collingwood’s endorsement of the ontological proof was that there is no such thing as a class of propositions which are both necessary and existential, propositions which are sometimes referred to as synthetic a priori. However, Collingwood’s goal was not to establish that there are synthetic a priori propositions in the sense that there is an additional set of propositions which are necessary and existential.18 What he intended to establish is that there are synthetic a priori propositions in the much more minimal sense that there is a set of concepts or categories which are explanatorily necessary or required to explain how a given area of knowledge or experience is possible. Having established that there is no contradiction in Collingwood’s attempt to provide an epistemological reform of metaphysics and to rehabilitate the ontological proof, we may now turn to consider what Collingwood thought the signiﬁcance of the ontological argument, its kernel of truth, to be. In his view, as we have seen, the ontological proof has no value either as an argument intent on establishing ontological truths such

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as ‘mind exists’, ‘matter exists’, etc.; its value lies in the fact that it tells us something about what the true subject matter of philosophy is, or what it is that we think about when we think philosophically. Philosophy is not concerned with the particular but with the general; it is concerned not with classes but with concepts. The philosopher of history, to give an example, is not concerned with particular actions, but with the concept of action and the concept of action is not reducible to an empirical class. It is an a priori concept or category in virtue of which historical or mentalistic explanations are possible. Philosophical thought, therefore, does not deal in particulars but in universals. In this respect philosophy resembles exact sciences, such as geometry, that study not existing triangles or instances of the concept of a triangle, but the concept or idea of a triangle: when we think philosophically (very much like when we engage in a geometrical proof ), we are concerned with concepts not in so far as they are instantiated but with the concepts themselves. For this reason in philosophy, as indeed in geometry, there is no gap between the ideal and the real (essence and existence coincide). The ontological proof, for Collingwood, tells us what the true subject matter of philosophy is because it captures this very idea (that essence and existence coincide) in the claim that the concept of God entails its existence. For Collingwood, of course, essence and existence coincide in philosophical thought not because philosophical concepts (like the concept of the deity in traditional versions of the ontological proof) entail their own existence, but rather because since the subject matter of philosophy is the concepts themselves, not their instances, the distinction between essence and existence is not a philosophical distinction, i.e. it is not a distinction of which one can avail oneself when thinking philosophically. Ultimately the reason why Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological proof is so difﬁcult to interpret may have to do with the fact that Collingwood chose to express the view that the subject matter of philosophy is general or universal rather than particular, by saying that in philosophical thought essence and existence coincide rather than claiming that philosophical thought is not about speciﬁc instances. These reﬂections on the signiﬁcance of the ontological proof may still leave a number of questions unresolved. Even in the light of such a clariﬁcation one may still want to ask why Collingwood was unwilling to expose the ontological argument as a mere logical trick and, like Kant, to dismiss it as a piece of specious reasoning. It is hard to resist the thought that Collingwood could have said everything he had to say without bringing the ontological proof into play: if his arguments are of a purely epistemological nature and indeed metaphysically neutral and if the ontological proof, as appropriated by Collingwood, is cleansed of much of its traditional force, why refer to it at all? One answer might be that Collingwood’s favourable assessment of the ontological proof essentially goes hand in hand with his reappropriation or defence of metaphysics and has to be understood in

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that context. Because Collingwood saw his own philosophy as building upon the achievements of the past, he preferred to speak of a reform of metaphysics rather than a critique of it, and analogously, in the case of the ontological proof, he preferred to focus on what he believed to be its kernel of truth. There are, of course, some crucial distinctions between Collingwood’s own reformed metaphysics and the older dogmatic version. The most glaring difference between rationalist and Collingwoodian metaphysics is that whereas the former assumed that an analysis of concepts would reveal something about the nature of things, Collingwood thought that it would reveal something about the nature of the presuppositions of religious, scientiﬁc, and historical experience. However, although Collingwood did not share the rationalist, pre-Humean or dogmatic metaphysician’s view that ontological conclusions can be reached by a mere analysis of concepts, he does share with the rationalist metaphysician the view that philosophy is an a priori activity, whose task is to clarify the nature of knowledge or experience. Philosophy must proceed via an analysis of experience, of, for example, natural scientists’ and historians’ conception of reality, as indeed St Anselm did, i.e. via an analysis of the concept of the deity. In this respect it does not seem to be implausible to characterise his philosophical project as providing a defence or reform rather than a critique of metaphysics. Admittedly, Collingwood’s desire to highlight the kernel of truth in the ontological proof occasionally leads him to endorse rather improbable interpretations of Anselm’s argument. In an EM, for instance, Collingwood goes so far as to say that the ontological proof, in Anselm’s formulation, is innocent of ontological implications because What [Anselm] proves is not that because our idea of God is an idea of id quo maius cogitari nequit, therefore God exists, but that because our idea of God is an idea of id quo maius cogitari nequit, we stand committed to belief in God’s existence. (EM, 190) Understood in this way Anselm’s argument proves something not about the existence of God but about the nature of our ontological or metaphysical commitments and as such is much closer to the kind of project in which Collingwood saw himself to be engaged, namely that of bringing to light certain fundamental assumptions that govern our experience, whether religious, scientiﬁc or historical. Whereas Collingwood may be legitimately accused of over-stretching the principle of interpretative charity when he claims that Anselm’s argument proves something not about the existence of God but about the nature of our ontological or metaphysical commitments, his favourable assessment of the ontological proof has to be understood in the wider context of his attempt to provide a reform rather than a critique of metaphysics. Those who may be unwilling to take Collingwood’s suggestion seriously that he is doing

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metaphysics on the grounds that any inquiry which deserves that name must make claims about the nature of things rather than the structure of thought, may be equally reluctant to identify the ontological proof with an argument which has no existential import. On the other hand, those who are willing to accept Collingwood’s self-understanding as a reformer rather than as a critic of metaphysics may be much more willing to focus on the similarities rather than differences in Anselm’s and Collingwood’s endorsement of the ontological argument. Collingwood’s unorthodox reappropriation of the ontological argument, therefore, will only be as convincing as his claim to have reformed rather than simply repudiated metaphysics.

6

Collingwood and the radical conversion hypothesis

In the following I would like to return to a question which seems to remain a constant problem within Collingwood’s scholarship: the relationship between Collingwood’s early and late work and in particular between his major treatises in theoretical philosophy: An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM) and An Essay on Metaphysics (EM). The distinction between an ‘early’ and a ‘late’ Collingwood was ﬁrst proposed by Malcom Knox in his ‘Introduction’ to the posthumously published The Idea of History (IH) and has subsequently been endorsed by commentators such as Donagan,1 Rotenstreich2 and Toulmin.3 Common to these commentators is the assumption that Collingwood’s late work veered in an historicist and relativist direction that was not implicit in his earlier work. It may not be an unfair generalisation to say that those who accept the existence of a rift between Collingwood’s early and late thought also claim that the late Collingwood abandoned appropriately philosophical ways of conducting an argument in favour of historical and sociological considerations that are philosophically disreputable or irrelevant. We may also fairly say that those commentators like Connelly, Modood, Martin and Oldﬁeld,4 who deny the presence of any vicious relativism in Collingwood’s later thought, also tend to underplay the differences between the early and the late work and to emphasise the continuities in Collingwood’s philosophical project from Speculum Mentis (SM) to EM via EPM. The question as to whether or not Collingwood was an historicist or historical relativist is therefore closely related to the question as to whether or not it is justiﬁable to follow Knox and speak of an early and a late Collingwood.5 In the following I will use the terms ‘historicism’, ‘relativism’ and ‘historical relativism’ interchangeably to signify the thesis that knowledge is relative to circumstances of time and place. Understood in this way historicism is a thesis in the sociology of knowledge according to which the conditions in which knowledge originates determine both the content of knowledge (what is believed) and the epistemic validity of knowledge claims (whether what is believed is true). It is not my intention to argue that this is the only appropriate way in which the term ‘historicism’ should be used. In using the term in this way I am simply following the way in

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which it was employed by those commentators who have criticised the later Collingwood for abandoning appropriately philosophical ways of conducting an argument. What lies at the basis of the accusation of historicism and historical relativism is the view that, in his later work, Collingwood gave up fundamental epistemic notions such as the idea of a belief being justiﬁed or rationally acceptable in favour of a genetic inquiry into the origins of belief. The accusation of historicism and historical relativism is of great contemporary importance because, as Hilary Putnam has emphasised, ‘cultural relativism . . . is one of the most inﬂuential – perhaps the most inﬂuential – forms of naturalised epistemology extant’.6 My purpose in this chapter is to show that the accusation of historicism and relativism levelled against the late Collingwood is the result of the endorsement of the so-called ‘radical conversion’7 thesis and that once it is understood that Collingwood underwent no such radical conversion, the charge loses much of its credibility. I claim that whereas there is certainly development from the early to the late work, it is inappropriate to speak of a radical change of direction. I argue that, in spite of terminological differences, Collingwood’s conception of the task, subject matter and method of philosophical inquiry is fundamentally the same in EPM and EM. Having stressed the essential continuity in Collingwood’s understanding of philosophical inquiry, I then engage in an exercise in philosophical psychology aimed at explaining why sophisticated philosophers such as Donagan and Rotenstreich have endorsed the radical conversion thesis. Let us begin by considering Donagan’s and Rotenstreich’s understanding of the relationship between EPM and EM.8 According to Donagan, Collingwood’s historicist turn (in EM) coincides with an epistemological turn in Collingwood’s thought. Collingwood’s historicism, in other words, goes hand in hand with his project to reform metaphysics by turning it into a purely epistemological inquiry, a metaphysics of absolute presuppositions or a metaphysics without ontology.9 On Donagan’s reading, EPM is a rather traditional metaphysical treatise. It is only at the time of writing EM that Collingwood ceases to practise metaphysics proper and begins to engage in the purely epistemological inquiry that he refers to as ‘metaphysics without ontology’. What is characteristic of Donagan’s reading, therefore, is ﬁrst, the belief that Collingwood’s formulation of a purely epistemological inquiry is a rather late development in Collingwood’s philosophical career and, second, that Collingwood’s historicism is the result of his attempt to turn metaphysics into a purely conceptual inquiry. An analogous assessment of the relationship between the earlier work (SM, EPM) and later (EM) work is given by Rotenstreich. Rotenstreich believes that the development of Collingwood’s thought is best understood as consisting in the gradual weakening of Collingwood’s ontological commitments. Rotenstreich also seems to believe that Collingwood’s epis-

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temological reform of metaphysics is responsible for his trespassing in the area of the sociology of knowledge. As he puts it: What actually emerges from Collingwood’s An Essay on Metaphysics is a kind of cultural anthropology of metaphysics, a study of different world views entertained in the course of history by different individuals and by groups of individuals . . . His view is formulated both from the level of his own intentionality and from the level of a historical or cultural anthropology referring to views and revealing their disguised historicity. He is caught in the dilemma similar to that of the sociologists of knowledge who look at the mind as the function of a social reality and still assume the independence of mind by way of attributing it the capacity of detachment for the sake of analysis of the phenomena dealt with in the sociology of knowledge.10 It would be foolish to deny that there are passages in EM that appear to corroborate Donagan’s and Rotenstreich’s identiﬁcation of Collingwood’s epistemological reform of metaphysics with a historicist turn. In EM, for instance, Collingwood claims both (i) that a reformed metaphysics is a metaphysics without ontology and (ii) that a reformed metaphysics studies what people happen to believe at a particular moment in time.11 The combination of these two claims may certainly be taken as prima facie evidence for Donagan’s and Rotenstreich’s reading. However, whereas there are passages in EM that easily lend themselves to an historicist reading, it would be inappropriate to infer from these that EM is a radically different type of work from EPM and that there is a radical break in Collingwood’s conception of the task of philosophical inquiry and the nature of philosophical argument. The exegetical basis for this reading is, in fact, so inadequate as to lead me to assume that Donagan’s and indeed Rotenstreich’s condemnations of Collingwood’s later work as historicist and of his arguments as inappropriately sociological, have more to do with the philosophical prejudice that there is no substantive difference between the project of the sociology of knowledge and that of descriptive metaphysics than with the actual development of Collingwood’s philosophy. Donagan’s reading simply fails to acknowledge that EPM and EM share the same conception of the goal of philosophical inquiry, of the nature of philosophical arguments and of the subject matter of philosophy. Let me consider these three aspects in turn. First, in both EPM and EM the goal of philosophy is to be understood as a clariﬁcatory one: philosophy does not extend knowledge; it elucidates, explains, makes explicit what is implicit. This conception of the goal of philosophy is unambiguously stated in EPM where Collingwood says that philosophy does not, ‘unlike exact or empirical science, bring us to know things of which we were simply ignorant, but brings us to know in a different way things which we already knew in some way’ (EPM, 161).

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This conception of philosophy is also at work in EM where the task of philosophy is said to be that of bringing to light the presuppositions on which the practice of natural science, history, art, etc., rest. In EPM Collingwood called propositions which are deﬁnitive of domains of inquiry (propositions such as ‘mind exists’) ‘philosophical propositions’, whereas in EM he referred to these as absolute presuppositions, but such terminological change does not appear to be indicative of any substantive alteration in his conception of the goal of philosophical inquiry. Second, Collingwood’s conception of philosophical method seems, in essence, the same. In EPM Collingwood was at pains to distinguish philosophy both from the exact sciences, such as geometry and mathematics, and from the sciences of observation and experiment. Unlike the exact sciences, philosophical method does not proceed from self-evident or intuitively true principles or axioms to conclusions by means of logical inferences. In order to ﬁnd out what principles lie at the basis of different domains of inquiry the philosopher must begin from an analysis of knowledge or practice/conduct and ascend to the principles or presuppositions that make the latter possible. There does not seem to be any substantive change in his conception of philosophical arguments in EM: in EM, as in EPM, absolute presuppositions do not have the status of ﬁrst principles from which the philosopher proceeds to deduce items of knowledge by employing a quasi geometrical method. Absolute presuppositions are uncovered or made explicit by employing the logic of question and answer – that is, by asking what are the presuppositions that the practitioners of any given discipline make in the attempt to arrive at their most basic commitments. The way in which Collingwood chooses to illustrate the nature of philosophical arguments is rather different, but the point that Collingwood wishes to make is the same: philosophy is an a priori, reﬂective activity, but it is not deductive in nature. Third, EPM and EM also share the same conception of the subject matter of philosophy. EPM and EM both claim that philosophy is a second-order activity whose subject matter is the basic principles which structure the ﬁrst-order sciences. Philosophy, both in EPM and EM, stands in a mediated relationship to the objects of the ﬁrst-order sciences. Whereas, for instance, history studies the actions of historical individuals, philosophy is concerned with elucidating the concept of action and the nature of historical explanation; whereas the natural sciences study events, philosophy studies the concept of an event and the nature of scientiﬁc explanation. In EPM Collingwood expressed the second-order and purely conceptual nature of philosophical inquiry through the doctrine of the overlap of classes. According to this doctrine, the domains of inquiry of the ﬁrst-order sciences may be extensionally equivalent: one and the same empirical object can be studied from different points of view. Moreover, whereas the ﬁrst-order sciences are concerned with a certain class of empirical objects, philosophy is concerned not with empirical classes but

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with the a priori conceptual distinctions that enable us to delineate the domains of inquiry of the ﬁrst order sciences. The very same conception of metaphysics is to be found in EM in Collingwood’s discussion of the three senses of the word ‘cause’ (EM, 285). This discussion is meant to establish that there is an intrinsic relation between method and subject matter, that the kind of explanation one employs, determines or deﬁnes one’s subject matter. The subject matter of philosophy, therefore, is the same both in EM and EPM, as both works are concerned with the domain of inquiry of the ﬁrst-order sciences. Fourth, it may be worth noting that although Collingwood does occasionally claim that metaphysics studies the presuppositions that certain people have made at certain periods of time, by and large he tends to assume that metaphysics studies the presuppositions of disciplines rather than periods. Most of his examples of classiﬁcations across categories, for instance, concern the inappropriate application of concepts or presuppositions beyond their appropriate domain of inquiry. An interesting example of the use of a concept beyond its proper sphere of application is to be found in EM where Collingwood exposes the rather comical situation ensuing from the attempt to apply explanations that would be appropriate in the theoretical sciences of nature (explanations that make use of sense III of the term cause), such as physics, to a context requiring the kind of explanations employed in the practical sciences of nature (explanations that make use of sense II of term cause), sciences such as medicine or engineering: if my car fails to climb a steep hill, and I wonder why, I shall not consider my problem solved by a passer-by who tells me that the top of the hill is farther away from the earth’s centre than its bottom, and that consequently more power is needed to take the car uphill than to take her along the level. All this is quite true; what the passer-by has described is one of the conditions which together form . . . what I call the cause in sense III . . . But suppose an AA man comes along, opens the bonnet, holds up a loose high-tension lead and says: ‘Look here, sir, you’re running on three cylinders’. My problem is now solved . . . If I had been a person who could ﬂatten out hills by stamping on them the passer-by would have been right in calling my attention to the hill as the cause of the stoppage; not because the hill was a hill but because I was able to ﬂatten it out. (EM, 302–303) Examples such as this clearly show that Collingwood subscribed to the claim that explanation is relative to subject matter but did not, contrary to what his critics maintain, subscribe to historicism or historical relativism, i.e. to the rather different doctrine advocating the relativity of knowledge claims to historical periods.

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Finally, although Collingwood granted that certain beliefs are prevalent at certain periods of time, he did not espouse the thesis that no comparison of knowledge claims across time is rational. Collingwood often made comparisons across periods of time. In IH he traces the development of the concept of history from the Greek period to his own day and leaves the reader in no doubt about which, among the various conceptions of history which happened to be prevalent in different periods of time, is superior. He never claims, for instance that what he calls scientific history12 is ‘our’ way of thinking about history, the way in which we do things here and now, but rather that the description of history which is found in scientific history is the right way of thinking about history as such. Having provided a survey of conceptions of history, Collingwood proceeds to compare what he refers to as ‘common sense’, ‘scissors-and-paste’ and ‘scientific’ history13 on the basis of their ability to do justice to the goal of historical understanding: the different conceptions of these disciplines, therefore, are assessed on the basis of their ability to vouchsafe historical understanding and inadequate conceptions of history are discarded by following a procedure that is dialectical in nature.14 The only comparisons that, according to Collingwood, are not rational, are comparisons which contrast claims made across disciplines like the mechanic’s claim that a car failed to climb up a steep hill because it was running on three cylinders alone, compared with the physicist’s claim that the car failed to climb up the hill because the centre of earth is farther removed from the top of the hill than it is from the bottom. Given these striking similarities between EPM and EM, why did philosophers such as Knox, Donagan and Rotenstreich endorse the view that EPM was an essay in traditional metaphysics and claim that Collingwood’s epistemological turn occurred at a much later stage of his thought? First, they were misled by Collingwood’s use of terminology in EPM. They thought that if philosophical propositions are both universal and categorical, they must be metaphysical propositions. Although the epistemological nature of Collingwood’s philosophical project is probably better encapsulated by the terminology employed in EM (metaphysics without ontology/metaphysics of absolute presuppositions, etc.), it is clear, from Collingwood’s doctrine of the overlap of classes, that his intent in EPM was epistemological or purely conceptual; that in EPM, as much as in EM, he attempted to show how certain propositions, referred to as philosophical propositions, rather than absolute presuppositions, have to be invoked in any attempt to clarify the domain of inquiry of the ﬁrstorder sciences. Misled by Collingwood’s terminology (his claim that philosophical propositions are both categorical and universal), Donagan and Rotenstreich failed to acknowledge that philosophical propositions in EPM, like absolute presuppositions in EM, are explanatorily rather than

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metaphysically necessary. As a result, they concluded that EPM, unlike EM, is an essay in traditional metaphysics. Second, both Donagan and Rotenstreich found it hard to square Collingwood’s defence of the ontological proof with the project of the reform of metaphysics. Puzzled by Collingwood’s continuous endorsement of the ontological proof, in EM as much as in EPM, they go to great lengths to argue that Collingwood had changed his conception of the ontological proof from EPM to EM, rather than acknowledge that Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological proof was always rather unorthodox and that even in EPM it was not used in the fashion of precritical, scholastic metaphysicians. Rotenstreich observes, for instance, that although Collingwood’s interest in the ontological proof is evident both in EPM and EM, only in EPM is it used to provide a justiﬁcation of the existence of the subject matter of philosophy. In EM, Rotenstreich says: the ontological proof does not carry religion beyond its own realm, as in Speculum Mentis; neither is it a paradigmatic argument for metaphysical thinking, qua thinking where essence involves existence, as in An Essay on Philosophical Method. Here [in EM] the ontological proof presupposes a belief. The scholastic argument is a presupposition and has no independent validity. Instead of being a paradigm of the character of philosophical thinking, the ontological proof becomes an illustration of the dependence of thinking on changing presuppositions. This change occurs in history.15 Along similar lines Donagan claims that in Collingwood’s later thought ‘Metaphysics . . . is not an attempt to establish categorical universal propositions about Being itself, but categorical particular propositions about what this or that people at this or that time have believed’.16 Donagan is aware that this interpretation may be vulnerable to the objection that Collingwood renewed his support for the ontological proof even in EM, when he claimed to be doing metaphysics without ontology, but explains this oddity by saying that although in EM Collingwood ‘continued to recognise St Anselm’s ontological proof as a major philosophical achievement’ he had, by then, re-interpreted the proof ‘as a specimen of reformed metaphysics’.17 As some of the exegetical support for the radical conversion thesis revolves around the role of the ontological proof in these two works, it may be worth spending some time examining the claim that whereas in EPM the ontological proof is put forward as a paradigm of revisionary metaphysical thought, in EM the same proof establishes purely epistemic claims. In EPM Collingwood argued that the ontological proof applies in one case only. This case is not, as one might expect, that of God, but that of the objects of philosophical thought. The term God, in the ontological

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proof, should, for Collingwood, be understood as meaning ‘that which we are thinking about when we are thinking philosophically’.18 It is not, therefore, the proposition ‘God exists’ that is necessary, but propositions such as ‘mind exists’ or ‘matter exists’ or, in other words, propositions which, like absolute presuppositions, are deﬁnitive of domains of inquiry. Collingwood’s defence of the ontological proof is closely connected to his attempt to defend the possibility of a class of propositions which are neither relations of ideas nor matters of fact and which, as we have seen, Collingwood refers to as philosophical propositions. Donagan and Rotenstreich believe philosophical propositions share one feature with propositions about matters of fact and one feature with propositions about relations of ideas. Like propositions about matters of fact, philosophical propositions are synthetic or existential and like propositions about relations of ideas they are necessarily rather than contingently true. For this reason Donagan and Rotenstreich take EPM to be an essay in traditional or revisionary metaphysics whose goal is to establish that there are necessary existential claims. Whereas Donagan’s and Rotenstreich’s reading is prima facie plausible, given what is traditionally understood to be the goal of the ontological proof, it does not do justice to Collingwood. Collingwood certainly claims that ‘matter exists’ and ‘mind exists’ are philosophical propositions, but what he appears to mean by this is not that the concept of mind and the concept of matter exist in the sense that they are instantiated. Rather, mind and matter exist respectively for the historian and for the natural scientist in the sense that the concept of mind is necessarily appealed to in the kind of explanations which are given in the historical sciences (rational explanations) and the concept of matter is appealed to in naturalistic or causal explanations. The concept of mind and the concept of matter, therefore, exist as logical forms embedded in the judgements made by historians and natural scientists. When a historian states, for instance, that Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he intended to put down a rebellion on the other side of the river, the historian provides a rational rather than causal explanation and in doing so, he employs the concept of mind. Mind and matter, therefore, exist not as metaphysical entities but as logical forms which structure explanations in the historical and natural sciences and the propositions ‘mind exists’ and ‘matter exists’ are not necessary in the way in which analytic judgements or judgements about relations of ideas are said to be necessary; they are explanatorily necessary i.e. required to explain how rational or causal explanations are possible. Understood in this way, Collingwood appeals to the ontological proof to explain how the domains of inquiry of history/natural science are possible, rather than to establish a priori the existence of metaphysical entities. What we think about when we think philosophically is, for Collingwood, a series of a priori concepts that cannot be veriﬁed empir-

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ically and which are deﬁnitive of the domains of inquiry of the ﬁrst-order sciences. Understood in this way, the ontological proof has the same role in EM and EPM. It cannot be argued, therefore, as Donagan and Rotenstreich do, that Collingwood adjusted his understanding of the ontological proof in EM to suit his epistemological reform of metaphysics. The project of the reform of metaphysics, I have argued, pre-dates EM: Collingwood was practising metaphysics without ontology long before he coined the terminology characteristic of EM and it is thus inappropriate to speak of an early and late Collingwood in this regard. I have attempted to undermine the claim that it is legitimate to speak of an early and late Collingwood and shown that, despite terminological differences, there are crucial continuities between Collingwood’s two main theoretical treatises. To the extent that the radical conversion thesis essentially underlies the charge of historicism or historical relativism, revealing the fundamental continuities which link the early and the late work may remove certain grounds for labelling Collingwood a historicist and historical relativist. The rejection of the radical conversion thesis, however, cannot, by itself provide sufﬁcient reasons for rejecting the charge of historicism and historical relativism. For the continuity argument I have presented, according to which Collingwood was engaged in the project of a metaphysics without ontology long before EM, could be invoked not to remove the charge of relativism from the later work, but rather to extend it to the early work. If, as Donagan and Rotenstreich believe, Collingwood’s historicism goes hand in hand with his epistemological reform of metaphysics, the argument that Collingwood was engaged in the project of a metaphysics without ontology before EM may be invoked to show that the charge of historical relativism is applicable to the whole of Collingwood’s philosophy. Since the accusation of historicism and cultural relativism may have its roots in the philosophical prejudice that a purely epistemological inquiry devoid of all ontological commitments (Collingwood’s conception of a reformed or descriptive metaphysics), easily collapses into historicism and the sociology of knowledge, what is required, in order to meet fully Donagan’s and Rotenstreich’s objections, is an argument aimed at showing that Collingwood’s epistemological reform of metaphysics has not abandoned the notion of justiﬁcation and should not therefore be identiﬁed with the project of naturalised epistemology. This is the argument of the next chapter.

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This chapter aims to explain Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions as outlined in An Essay on Metaphysics (EM). In particular I wish to establish whether Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions is psychological in nature and whether EM can be described, in Donagan’s terms, as a kind of ‘depth psychology’.1 I will attempt to settle this question by considering the relationship in which Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions stands to the project of naturalised epistemology. This investigation of the relationship between Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics and the project of naturalised epistemology has been prompted by the fact that the most damaging charge levelled against EM, the charge of historicism or historical relativism, is based on the erroneous assumption that EM has abandoned the project of the justiﬁcation of knowledge claims in favour of a much more limited inquiry into the origins of belief. I wish to establish, ﬁrst, that Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions is based on a transcendental argument that is Kantian in provenance and, second, that to the extent that the doctrine of absolute presuppositions avails itself of a transcendental argument, it is concerned with the quid iuris, the question of our entitlement or justiﬁcation for holding certain beliefs, not the question of their origin. The chapter is divided in three sections. In the ﬁrst I contrast epistemological naturalism with epistemology traditionally understood and argue that they are two rather different kinds of enterprise: traditional epistemology is a normative inquiry concerned with the question of the justiﬁcation of beliefs, while naturalised epistemology is a genetic inquiry concerned with the origin of belief. In the second I clarify the notion of a transcendental argument. In the third section I outline Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions and argue, ﬁrst, that it is modelled on a transcendental argument which is Kantian in origin and, second that, to the extent that Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions is Kantian in inspiration, it belongs to the tradition of normative rather than naturalised epistemology.

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I Let me begin by explaining what I mean by ‘epistemological naturalism’. I will try to do so by brieﬂy explaining what is usually meant by ‘epistemology’. Epistemology is usually understood as an inquiry whose aim is to establish which among our beliefs are justiﬁed. The purpose of the Cartesian Meditations, for instance, is to provide criteria for discriminating between propositions that are worthy of belief and propositions that are not. Descartes asked what evidence one has for believing that one’s representations are representations of external objects rather than images conjured up by an evil demon. He sought (successfully or unsuccessfully) to provide criteria to discriminate representations that are true from representations that are not. Epistemology, thus conceived, is a normative enterprise because it seeks to provide criteria for justiﬁed belief. The search for justiﬁcation lies at the forefront of Cartesian epistemology and of epistemology traditionally understood. In what way does epistemological naturalism differ from the project of epistemology traditionally understood? The best-known attempt to naturalise epistemology is possibly Quine’s. Quine2 argued that epistemology is concerned with the way in which sensory stimulation leads to the formation of beliefs: the object of epistemological inquiry, as he understood it, is the relationship between sensory stimuli and epistemological output. Given Quine’s understanding of the object of epistemological inquiry, and how epistemology is traditionally understood, it may be fair to argue that the adjective ‘naturalised’ in the expression ‘naturalised epistemology’ does not qualify the noun in the way in which say, the adjectives ‘diesel’ or ‘petrol’ qualify the noun ‘car’. Whereas a diesel car is a kind of car, naturalised epistemology is not a kind of epistemology in the traditional sense of the word. There are at least two important respects in which traditional epistemology differs from naturalised epistemology. First, traditional epistemology is a normative inquiry concerned primarily with the question of justiﬁcation. Naturalised epistemology, on the other hand, is concerned not with the justiﬁcation but with the genesis of epistemic states: naturalised epistemology looks at how certain beliefs or epistemic states arise as a result of sensory inputs. We may illustrate the way in which naturalised epistemology stands to traditional epistemology by comparing it with the relationship between sociological explanation and moral justiﬁcation: the naturalised epistemologist looks at sensory inputs as the cause of epistemological beliefs in much the same way in which a sociologist looks at poverty as the cause of crime. The traditional epistemologist, on the other hand, seeks to justify our epistemic beliefs in the way in which a moral philosopher seeks to justify a moral concept. The moral philosopher might condemn theft and defend the idea of property by arguing, for instance, that there is an a priori link between the idea of property and that of personal autonomy. Just as poverty may count as an appropriate

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sociological explanation for crime, but not as an appropriate moral justiﬁcation for it, so sensory input may count as an appropriate explanation for our epistemic states by the cognitive psychologist but not by the traditional epistemologist who is concerned not with how our beliefs have come about but with whether they are justiﬁed.3 There is another important respect in which traditional epistemology differs from naturalised epistemology. Since traditional epistemology is a normative activity concerned with the issue of justiﬁcation, it is also an a priori activity concerned with linking certain beliefs with other beliefs rather than an empirical enterprise, investigating origins or causal relations. Descartes, for instance, justiﬁed our belief in the external world by connecting it with our belief in a benevolent, non-deceiving God. He did not think that it would be appropriate to determine whether our beliefs in the external world are justiﬁed by attaching a person’s brain to a machine capable of detecting whether a given belief is caused by an external object, by a dream or, in the most extreme of hypotheses, by an evil demon. Traditional epistemology is normative because it is an a priori inquiry looking not for causal but for conceptual relations. The normative nature of epistemology traditionally understood is, therefore, indelibly linked with the idea of epistemology as an a priori inquiry. The kind of naturalism to which Quine subscribes may be referred to as hard rather than soft naturalism.4 Hard naturalism differs from soft naturalism because the former seems to be premised on an endorsement of some form of physicalism, whereas the latter does not. Let me explain what is usually understood by soft naturalism. Hume’s anti-sceptical manoeuvres in the Treatise 5 are sometimes regarded as an example of soft naturalism. Hume argued that we are by nature inclined to believe in the existence of an external world and in inductively based expectations such as the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. He regarded external world scepticism and scepticism about induction to be idle, as our psychological make-up is such that we cannot help but believe that the world exists and that nature is uniform. Nature, Hume says, ‘determines us to judge as well as to breathe and feel’. It is pointless to ask whether our beliefs are justiﬁed if no rational argument could dissuade us from holding them. Hume, unlike Quine, construes the determining element in psychological rather than physiological terms. In spite of this, their explanations are structurally similar: what is common to both Hume’s soft and Quine’s hard naturalism (and this is why they are both a type of naturalism), is that they have both abandoned the quest for justiﬁcation which is characteristic of epistemological inquiry traditionally understood in favour of a genetic enterprise which seeks to answer not the quid iuris question: ‘What is our justiﬁcation for holding certain beliefs?’ but the genetic question: ‘What gives rise to/causes us to hold certain beliefs?’ What is the relevance of this excursus on soft and hard naturalism to Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions? This discussion is

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relevant because his metaphysics of absolute presuppositions has often been confused with a kind of epistemological naturalism. Of what kind of naturalism was Collingwood accused? He certainly was not accused of endorsing a kind of Quinean hard naturalism. As is well known, Collingwood thought that the issue of the relationship between the mind and the body was ultimately an issue concerning the relationship between the different kinds of explanations to be employed respectively in the natural and in the social sciences. The natural sciences study natural beings, including the human being. To the extent that they study human beings as natural beings they avail themselves of causal explanations. The social sciences, on the other hand, study rational beings and as such they avail themselves of different kinds of explanations, which are not causal but rational. Collingwood, therefore, did not think that the relationship between the mind and the body could be explicated in terms of the kind of questions with which Quine’s naturalistic epistemologist is concerned: ‘What environmental input causes/gives rise to this or that epistemic state?’ The distinction between mind and body, he would have argued, is a philosophical distinction to which there corresponds no empirical distinction and it is therefore somewhat nonsensical to ask ‘What physical state gives rise to what mental state?’ as if there were two things, mind and body, physical states and mental states.6 Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions, on the other hand, has often been construed as being premised on a kind of soft naturalism. The charge of soft naturalism usually takes the form of an accusation of historicism or historical relativism. It has often been claimed, for instance, that the task of Collingwood’s metaphysics of absolute presuppositions is to unearth what foundational beliefs people are compelled to hold not on account of nature (as Hume claimed) but of history. Donagan accuses Collingwood of such a soft naturalism when he describes EM as an exercise in depth psychology. Strawson also accuses Collingwood of soft naturalism when he says that Collingwood assigns to metaphysics a modest historical or historicist role.7 The charge of soft naturalism is probably best captured by Passmore’s claim that Collingwood ‘exempliﬁes that genetic approach to philosophical ideas which we noted in nineteenth-century thought. Whereas, however, genetic inquiry for the nineteenth century was psychological or biological, Collingwood takes the fundamental genetic science to be history’.8 My purpose in the following is to look at the charge of historicism or historical relativism purely as a version of the more general objection that, in his later philosophy, Collingwood gave up on the project of justiﬁcation that is characteristic of traditional epistemology as a normative discipline. My goal is to defend Collingwood by attempting to show that his doctrine of absolute presuppositions is based on a transcendental argument and consequently that he belongs amongst the defenders of normative rather than of naturalised epistemology. First, however, I need to clarify the very notion of a transcendental argument.

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II The literature on transcendental arguments is extensive and ﬁnding one’s way round it rather difﬁcult. Even when one leaves aside the question of exegetical accuracy or of truthfulness to Kant’s own project, there is little consensus as to the nature of Kantian-inspired transcendental arguments, if not Kant’s own arguments. In the following I cannot attempt to do justice to the debate on the nature of transcendental arguments. What I shall do, rather, is to look at the issues at stake and outline what I take a transcendental argument to be and to be capable of establishing even if, given the complexity of the debate, such an outline will not meet with universal acceptance. Transcendental arguments are usually said to be arguments concerned with the necessary conditions of experience. However, as experience is simply the subject matter to which transcendental arguments tend to be applied, they may be more generally deﬁned as arguments that look for the necessary conditions for making certain claims. Let me illustrate the argumentative strategy that transcendental arguments employ by considering one of Kant’s own examples in the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR). In the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant considers the question as to whether space is relational, as Leibniz held. Kant then proceeds to argue that it cannot be so. His argument roughly goes as follows. We are used to thinking that any two objects could be qualitatively identical and yet numerically distinct. We do not assume, in other words, that qualitatively identical objects are also numerically indistinguishable. We are entitled to the assumption that qualitatively identical objects can be distinguished numerically only if we assume, contrary to Leibniz, that space exists independently of the objects to which we ascribe spatial properties. Hence the representation of a non-relational space is a necessary condition for distinguishing numerically between qualitatively identical objects.9 In the following I would like to unpack the notion of a transcendental argument by attempting to answer three questions: ‘What is the scope of transcendental arguments?’; ‘Is the kind of necessity at stake in transcendental arguments causal or logical?’ and ‘In what way do transcendental arguments differ from other a priori arguments such as deductive ones?’ The question concerning the scope of transcendental arguments bears quite directly on the issue as to whether transcendental arguments have or lack anti-sceptical import. To illustrate: does Kant’s argument establish that the representation of space is a necessary condition for distinguishing numerically objects that are qualitatively identical, or does it establish that space exists independently of the objects to which spatial properties are ascribed? Some philosophers have thought that transcendental arguments have anti-sceptical import because they have construed them as establishing conclusions that go beyond the order of knowledge.10 Others, on the other hand, such as Stroud,11 have claimed that transcendental arguments

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do not have anti-sceptical import because whereas transcendental arguments do establish that certain concepts or categories need to be presupposed in order for experience to be possible, they cannot show whether such necessary concepts and categories are correctly applied in any given case. On the basis of such considerations they conclude that transcendental arguments fail to meet the sceptical challenge embedded in the argument from illusion.12 If there is precious little agreement on the issue of the scope of transcendental arguments and whether they have or lack anti-sceptical import, most would agree that what is distinctive about Kant’s transcendental arguments is that they seek to establish what assumptions we are compelled to make as a matter of logic rather than, as in Hume’s case, what assumptions we make in virtue of our nature or psychological make-up. Kant, unlike Hume, was not interested in the question of the origin of our beliefs: ‘Why is it that we think as we do?’ but in the question of their validity: ‘Are we justiﬁed in holding the beliefs that we do hold?’ Since the conclusions that transcendental arguments establish are logically rather than psychologically compelling, transcendental arguments do not belong to the tradition of naturalistic epistemology. Transcendental arguments are normative and as such not to be confused with a form of soft naturalism. Crucial to the idea of a transcendental argument is the need to provide validation for our beliefs and no causal or genetic account of why we hold certain beliefs can count as a justiﬁcation of them. The justiﬁcation or validation of belief is inevitably an a priori matter and hence a matter for philosophers rather than for cognitive psychologists. If the conclusions that transcendental arguments establish are conclusions that ought to be rationally endorsed rather than acquiesced in, i.e. if transcendental arguments compel as a matter of logic, is their power to compel the same as that of a deductive argument? If not, how do they differ from them? Transcendental arguments, like deductive arguments, are a priori: they compel us to accept certain conclusions as a matter of logic. They differ, however, in a number of important respects from deductive arguments. A deductive argument is said to be valid if the process of inference from premises to conclusions is correct. In addition, a deductive argument is said to be sound if the conclusions have been correctly inferred from true premises. Crucial to a deductive argument is the idea that the truth of the premises should be established independently of the truth of the conclusions, i.e. the premises of a deductive argument cannot be validated through that argument; they require, on the contrary, independent justiﬁcation. It is because the premises of a deductive argument require independent justiﬁcation that a deductive argument could be unsound, even if valid. A transcendental argument, by contrast, is one in which the premises are validated through the process of argument and have no independent

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justiﬁcation. The distinction between a valid and a sound argument, therefore, does not apply to a transcendental argument. Transcendental arguments, unlike deductive arguments, establish certain conclusions by accepting the interdependence of beliefs and the circularity of knowledge claims. An important distinction between deductive and transcendental arguments, therefore, has to do with the fact that whereas transcendental arguments accept and possibly exploit the interdependence of belief, deductive arguments do not. This might explain why deductive arguments feature in foundationalist philosophers, whereas transcendental arguments feature in anti-foundationalist philosophers. The difference between deductive and transcendental arguments may be illustrated by looking at the argumentative strategies employed respectively by Cartesian and Kantian epistemology. Descartes sought to validate our beliefs in the existence of an external world by deriving our entitlement to hold beliefs in the existence of material objects from two foundational ideas: the cogito and the existence of God. The cogito and God’s existence are the premises in a deductive argument aimed at demonstrating that our beliefs in the existence of the external world are justiﬁed. They express beliefs (in one’s own existence and the existence of God) that are foundational because they are not justiﬁed by making reference to any other beliefs. By contrast, Kantian epistemology seeks to justify our beliefs in, say, space or causation, by showing that they need to be presupposed in order to account for how experience is possible. Hence, in the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant argues that the representation of space needs to be presupposed if we are to account for the distinction between qualitative and numerical identity and in the Second Analogy he claims that the concept of causation needs to be presupposed if we are to account for the distinction between representations of change and changes in our representations.13 Unlike Cartesian ﬁrst principles, the representation of space and the concept of causation are not justiﬁed or validated independently of the experience that they make possible. Our entitlement to employ them is not established independently of the nonfoundational beliefs that they enable us to have. This is why the kind of inference one ﬁnds in transcendental deductions differs from the kind of inference which one ﬁnds in traditional deductive arguments although both deductive and transcendental arguments are a priori arguments. Having suggested the complexity of the issues involved in deﬁning a transcendental argument, I now wish to anticipate the kind of transcendental argument that underlies Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions. In considering the nature of transcendental arguments I raised three questions: (i) whether transcendental arguments establish ontological or epistemological conclusions and hence whether they have or lack anti-sceptical import; (ii) whether the kind of necessity at stake in transcendental arguments is causal or logical; (iii) whether the necessity at stake in transcendental arguments differs from the kind of necessity at

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stake in deductive arguments. I wish to argue, ﬁrst, that the kind of transcendental argument on which the doctrine of absolute presuppositions is based establishes purely epistemic conclusions. Collingwood is clear, throughout EM, that his metaphysics is, as he puts it, metaphysics without ontology. In this respect, the kind of transcendental argument that informs Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions may differ slightly from the employment of transcendental arguments in the contemporary context, as the doctrine of absolute presuppositions is not designed as an anti-sceptical argument. I wish to argue, second, that the necessity at stake in the kind of transcendental argument implicit in Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions is of a logical rather than causal nature. Collingwood is concerned with the issue of justiﬁcation and hence with the a priori relationship holding among certain claims. He is not concerned with a genetic question, or a question concerning the origins of our beliefs. Finally, I wish to argue that although the kind of transcendental argument implicit in the doctrine of absolute presuppositions is an a priori argument (and this indeed is what makes the argument of EM a philosophical argument rather than an argument in cognitive psychology or the sociology of knowledge), it differs in a number of important respects from deductive arguments.

III In the previous sections I have clariﬁed the notion of transcendental arguments and the distinction between normative and naturalised epistemology. In the following my task is to show that to the extent that Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions is modelled on a transcendental argument that is Kantian in origin, it belongs to the tradition of normative rather than naturalised epistemology. The obvious corollary of this claim is that Collingwood is no soft naturalist and hence, not an historicist or historical relativist. Let me begin by saying something about the doctrine of absolute presuppositions and their relationship to metaphysics, as Collingwood understood it. Metaphysics, Collingwood claimed, is not ontology: the task of metaphysics is not to investigate the ultimate structure of reality but to detect absolute presuppositions (EM, 40). In order to understand what Collingwood meant by metaphysical analysis we need to understand what he meant by a presupposition and in particular by an absolute presupposition. Collingwood claims, ﬁrst, that by the word ‘presupposition’ one should understand not the act of presupposing but ‘that which is presupposed’ (EM, 29). In other words, he is interested not in the act of thought but in its propositional content. Second, he claims that presuppositions have the power to give rise to questions, something that he refers to as their ‘logical efﬁcacy’ (EM, 27). The presupposition that x is late, for instance, gives rise

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to the question ‘Why is x late?’ Without the presupposition the question would not arise. He claims, further, that the relationship between a presupposition and the question to which it gives rise is a relation of logical rather than temporal priority. Metaphysics is concerned not with the temporal priority of the act of presupposing, but the logical priority of the presupposition, i.e. with how the content of the presupposition determines the kind of question that it makes sense to ask. Third, Collingwood distinguishes between two kinds of presuppositions, relative and absolute. Both relative and absolute presuppositions regulate the way in which we conduct our enquiries and the kind of questions we ask. As Collingwood says, every question arises because of some presupposition that we make.14 There are, however, two crucial differences between absolute and relative presuppositions. First, whereas differences in relative presuppositions give rise to different questions within the same mode of inquiry, differences in absolute presuppositions give rise to differences in modes of inquiry. To illustrate: a doctor who enquires in the causes of an illness will make certain presuppositions and these presuppositions will determine the kind of questions he asks the patient. For instance, a doctor who is presented with a complaint about a stomach-ache might presuppose that the pain is caused by indigestion or food poisoning. Such a presupposition will lead the doctor to ask the patient whether s/he has eaten anything unusual recently, how long after eating it s/he has been feeling ill, etc. On the other hand, a doctor who suspects the patient to be in the early stages of stomach cancer is likely to ask different kinds of questions. For Collingwood the presuppositions that the stomach-ache is caused by indigestion, and that it is caused by a tumour, are both relative presuppositions because they do not determine the nature or kind of explanation in which doctors are engaged; they simply determine different possibilities within the kind of explanations that medical doctors seek for. Absolute presuppositions, by contrast, determine the kind or mode of inquiry that one engages in. Collingwood outlines a further aspect that singles out absolute from relative presuppositions. He says that whereas relative presuppositions are answers to questions, absolute presuppositions, while giving rise to questions, are not themselves answers to any questions. An implication of this claim is that whereas relative presuppositions can be true or false, absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false. For instance, whereas the presupposition that a patient’s complaint is caused by indigestion could be either true or false, the presupposition that structures the practical sciences of nature, according to which a cause is ‘an event by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be’, is an absolute presupposition. As such, it is neither true nor false, i.e. it lies beyond (empirical) veriﬁcation. Collingwood illustrates the claim concerning the empirical unveriﬁability of absolute presuppositions by considering the willingness of the practitioners of a science to verify

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hypotheses that are internal to that science and their corresponding unwillingness to verify their absolute presuppositions: a pathologist who is asked why he presupposes x to be the cause of a certain disease, will justify the diagnosis by providing a string of reasons which are based on other presuppositions. However, if questioned about why he presupposes there are causes at all, Collingwood says, the pathologist is likely to resent this line of questioning as inappropriate on the grounds that the claim that every event has a cause is something that is simply taken for granted in his line of inquiry. In the light of this brief exposition of Collingwood’s account of absolute presupposition we may now seek to clarify his understanding of the metaphysician as a special kind of detective who goes in search of absolute presuppositions. It is clear from Collingwood’s account of what a presupposition is and of the relationship between a presupposition and the questions to which it gives rise, that metaphysical analysis is a logical inquiry that is concerned with tracing the a priori logical links connecting presuppositions and the questions to which they give rise. As a logical inquiry, metaphysics has a normative element because in uncovering a presupposition the metaphysician detects what one ought to believe as a matter of logic, i.e. to presuppose, rather than what one does believe as a matter of psychological or historical fact. A presupposition, for Collingwood, is not the act of thinking but the propositional content of thought and the relationship between a presupposition and the questions to which it gives rise is a logical relation. In order to look for a presupposition the metaphysician must ask himself not, ‘What did such and such a person believe before (temporal priority) asking that question?’ but ‘What must such and such a person assume (logical priority) in order to ask that question?’ It is in the nature of presuppositions, rather than beliefs, to be logically connected to the questions to which they give rise and this is why presuppositions can be detected through metaphysical analysis whereas beliefs cannot. Collingwood illustrates the distinction between a presupposition and a belief as follows: A man (or at any rate an intelligent man) need not regard himself as insulted if someone who has paid him a sum of money asks him for a receipt, or if the family of a lady whom he is about to marry proposes that a marriage settlement should be drawn up. He knows that the request or proposal is based on the assumption that he is capable, or will one day become capable, of acting dishonourably; but though he knows people assume this he does not necessarily think they believe it. He ﬁnds no difﬁculty in distinguishing their supposing him a rascal and their believing him one, and he does not regard the former as evidence of the latter. (EM, 28–29)

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The metaphysician, therefore, does not detect what people believe, but what they presuppose. In Collingwood’s example, the pathologist is logically committed to the existence of causes, i.e. he has to presuppose a certain notion of causation, and this is what the metaphysician, as a detective, shows him by forcing him to regress to presuppositions that are more and more basic. Having outlined Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions, I now wish to turn to the question as to whether metaphysical analysis, as Collingwood understood it, is reducible to a form of depth psychology or, in other words, whether Collingwood’s metaphysics rests on the kind of soft naturalist assumptions to which Hume was committed. The accusation of soft naturalism possibly arises out of Collingwood’s claim that, as the distinction between truth and falsity does not apply to absolute presuppositions, the latter are beyond veriﬁcation. It is not difﬁcult to see why the claim that absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false may give rise to the suspicion that Collingwood is guilty of some kind of soft naturalism: if absolute presuppositions can be neither true nor false, they are unveriﬁable and if they are unveriﬁable they are beyond the scope of rational argument. If so, absolute presuppositions are simply assumptions that we do, as a matter of fact, make, without having any reason or rational justiﬁcation for doing so. Collingwood would thus seem to claim that absolute presuppositions are assumptions that we are simply unwilling to put under rational scrutiny in the way in which Hume thought we have a tendency to believe in inductively based expectations even if we have no rational ground for doing so. In the following I defend Collingwood from the charge of soft naturalism by arguing that, contrary to how it might appear, Collingwood’s strategy in EM is not Humean. As I have tried to illustrate, metaphysical analysis does not detect beliefs but presuppositions. Presuppositions differ from beliefs because whereas the latter may be irrationally held, a presupposition is by deﬁnition a belief that one is logically committed to in order to ask certain questions or pursue a certain line of inquiry. Metaphysics is concerned with beliefs only to the extent that they are logically chained to each other by the logic of inquiry that Collingwood refers to as the logic of question and answer. The task of the metaphysician, therefore, is not to detect how people think, or what they believe, but how they ought to reason and what they ought to believe. As he puts it: that a certain conclusion follows from certain premises is not disproved by the fact that someone who states the premises fails to see that the conclusion follows . . . the business of logical enquiries, like that on which we are now engaged, is to study high-grade or scientiﬁc thinking: their conclusions are not impaired by the fact that low grade or unscientiﬁc thinking also exists. (EM, 30)

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That metaphysics is concerned with what we are logically committed to believe, rather than what we actually believe, is perhaps the greatest difference between Hume’s and Collingwood’s form of inquiry. For Hume we simply do not know why, for instance, we hold beliefs in the existence of causes. In the absence of a justiﬁcation for such a belief Hume claimed that we believe instinctively, that nature disposes us to hold certain beliefs. By contrast, for Collingwood, metaphysical analysis is ‘the attempt to ﬁnd reasons for these beliefs’ (EM, 154). According to Collingwood, Hume and philosophers belonging to the empiricist tradition cannot ﬁnd reasons for such entrenched beliefs because they do not possess the idea of absolute presuppositions. And they do not possess the idea of absolute presuppositions because they acknowledge only two classes of propositions, propositions about matters of fact, which are empirically veriﬁable, and propositions about relations of ideas. As a consequence, philosophers who share this orientation in thinking are faced either with the option of reducing propositions about causal relations to analytic propositions, thereby trivialising them, or with the option of treating causal maxims as psychological/historical generalisations with a limited applicability in space and time. Yet if, as Collingwood says, metaphysical analysis is the ﬁnding of reasons for what Hume claims we believe on instinct, why did Collingwood claim that absolute presuppositions are unveriﬁable? The claim that absolute presuppositions are unveriﬁable, after all, seems to suggest that they are exempt from the requirement of justiﬁcation, thereby fuelling the suspicion that Collingwood, like Hume, belongs to the tradition of naturalised rather than normative epistemology. Collingwood certainly does claim that absolute presuppositions are unveriﬁable (EM, 32), but such a claim has to be understood in context and cannot be taken at face value. It has to be borne in mind, for instance, that in EM Collingwood was not just trying to defend metaphysics against the logical positivists’ onslaught, he was also trying to engage the logical positivists in a debate about the need for metaphysical analysis.15 To this end he employed a terminology that would have been intelligible to them. When Collingwood claims, for instance, that absolute presuppositions are unveriﬁable because they are neither true nor false, he is using the term ‘veriﬁcation’ as usually employed by the logical positivists to mean ‘empirical veriﬁcation’. As we saw in Chapter 4, in EM Collingwood borrows the terminology of the logical positivists and then attempts to beat them at their own game by showing that there are propositions which are meaningful even if their truth cannot be determined either by the application of the law of contradiction or empirically. The propositions that escape the strictures of the principle of veriﬁcation (as employed by the logical positivists) are, needless to say, what Collingwood refers to as absolute presuppositions. In other words, Collingwood presents absolute presuppositions as instances of propositions that are

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meaningful although neither analytically nor empirically true/false, thereby hoping to accomplish a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the logical positivists’ view according to which propositions which are not empirically veriﬁable are meaningless, unless they are tautologies. In order to carry out this reductio he begins by accepting the logical positivists’ view that there are propositions that are not empirically veriﬁable. However, although Collingwood did share with the logical positivists the view that absolute presuppositions are not empirically veriﬁable, he did not think, as a result, that they are beyond rational justiﬁcation. He thought that absolute presuppositions, like Kant’s categories, require not an empirical but a transcendental deduction, i.e. the justiﬁcation of absolute presuppositions is to be sought in the fact that they make experience possible. Admittedly Collingwood does, occasionally, convey the impression that absolute presuppositions are deep-seated psychological convictions that are exempt from any requirement for veriﬁcation. For instance, when illustrating the regress of reasons that leads the practitioners of a given science to become aware of their absolute presuppositions, he uses the example of a pathologist who is annoyed to be asked why he assumes that there are causes (EM, 31). The example may convey the impression that the degree of irritation with which certain questions are received, and the unwillingness to reply to them, might provide an indication of whether we have identiﬁed an absolute presupposition. But it would be hasty to conclude on the basis of this example that metaphysical analysis consists in detecting the strength with which a conviction is held rather than in assessing whether a belief is justiﬁed. Metaphysical analysis detects not the strength of the feelings with which a conviction is held but whether one is entitled to hold on to such a conviction. Hence, whereas the practitioners of a discipline may be excused for becoming impatient when questioned about their absolute presuppositions, the philosopher has to demonstrate that they are entitled to them. Given the nature of Collingwood’s metaphysics, the proof of such entitlement is not to be sought in the nature of things: metaphysical analysis, for Collingwood, discloses not ontological truths but epistemic postulates or presuppositions necessary for engaging in any given form of inquiry. Therefore, although Collingwood never explicitly says this, the test of whether one has properly identiﬁed an absolute presupposition, is not the strength with which a conviction is held by the practitioners of a discipline, but a counter-factual thought experiment aimed at establishing whether the form of inquiry in which the practitioners of a discipline are engaged would be possible without making the sort of assumptions that Collingwood refers to as absolute presuppositions. It is important to point out that although the task of metaphysical analysis is to provide a justiﬁcation for the ﬁrst-order sciences, metaphysical analysis does more than legitimise the beliefs of their practitioners. In clarifying the logical or conceptual links that hold between forms of

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inquiry and the presuppositions on which they rest, metaphysical analysis can also overthrow misconceptions about the nature and scope of any given discipline’s domain of inquiry. Metaphysical analysis can uncover such misconceptions by unveiling inconsistencies between the declared goals of a science and the kind of explanations it employs in order to achieve those goals. In conclusion, I hope to have shown that the accusation of epistemological naturalism has been erroneously levelled against Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions and that Collingwood’s work belongs to the tradition of normative rather than naturalised epistemology. Collingwood is no (Quinean) hard naturalist: the object of metaphysical analysis is not the causal relationship holding between sensory input and epistemological output but the a priori or logical relations that link different presuppositions with different forms of inquiry. Collingwood is no (Humean) soft naturalist either since the logic of question and answer is devised to uncover not what people believe by instinct, or what nature disposes them to believe, but what they ought to believe, i.e. metaphysical analysis is concerned not with beliefs but with presuppositions. Further, as the presuppositions that metaphysical analysis uncovers are logically related to the beliefs that they make possible, metaphysical analysis is itself a validation or justiﬁcation of those presuppositions. Such a validation takes the form of a Kantian-inspired transcendental argument that proceeds to the conclusions not deductively, from premises that require independent justiﬁcation, but regressively, from the fact of experience to the conditions of its possibility. To the extent that metaphysical analysis uncovers presuppositions rather than beliefs, metaphysical analysis is normative because it clariﬁes how the practitioners of any given form of inquiry ought to proceed, rather than simply describing how they proceed. It may be argued, of course, that the kind of normativity generated by transcendental arguments, as employed by Collingwood, is much weaker than the kind of normativity that is sometimes expected of Kant’s own transcendental arguments because the kind of normative claims that are generated by Collingwood’s metaphysical analysis are sustained purely by the demands of internal coherence.16 Since Collingwood’s metaphysics is a metaphysics of absolute presuppositions, or a metaphysics without ontology, it justiﬁes or validates absolute presuppositions not by showing that they conform to the ultimate nature of reality but by showing that they are required in order to explain how certain forms of knowledge are possible. In Collingwood’s metaphysics without ontology presuppositions that fail to explain how a certain form of experience is possible are discarded because of that failure, not in virtue of a lack of correspondence with the things-in-themselves. However, although Collingwood rejected the view that the notion of reality as it is in itself, should play any role in the justiﬁcation of knowledge claims, he did not relinquish the idea of justiﬁcation itself. For this reason his theoretical

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philosophy still belongs within a philosophical tradition which includes thinkers like Descartes and Kant, not within the philosophical tradition represented by ﬁgures like Hume and Quine.

8

The Idea of History as a branch of descriptive metaphysics

In this chapter I wish to examine Collingwood’s philosophy of history1 and the relationship in which it stands to his metaphysics. Having defended, in the previous chapters, Collingwood’s later philosophy against the accusation of historicism I will now suggest an account of the relationship between metaphysics and history that is not premised on the assumption that the later Collingwood collapsed the two together. I will argue that Collingwood’s philosophy of history is best described as a branch of his descriptive metaphysics. By this I mean that Collingwood’s philosophy of history is a study of the a priori concepts or categories that are brought to the study of history, i.e. of the concepts that structure historical understanding. On this understanding of the philosophy of history, the relationship between Collingwood’s metaphysics and philosophy of history can be described as follows. An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM) and An Essay on Metaphysics (EM) are primarily concerned with deﬁning philosophical method and the nature of metaphysical analysis. In these works, Collingwood is concerned not with the speciﬁc principles that govern the domain of inquiry of, say, historical, aesthetic, religious experience, etc., but with the claim that there are such principles and that an appeal to them is necessary in order to delineate the domain of inquiry of their respective disciplines. The Idea of History (IH), by contrast, focuses on the a priori concepts or presuppositions that govern historical knowledge as opposed to, say, knowledge of nature and seeks to defend the claim that history has a distinctive method and subject matter that differs from the method and subject matter of the natural sciences. Collingwood’s philosophy of history is an extended argument that aims to defend the autonomy of history against any form of scientism, or the use of the methods of natural science beyond their appropriate sphere of application. On this account of the relationship between the metaphysics and the philosophy of history, the philosophy of history presupposes the notion of philosophical method that Collingwood outlines in his general writings on the task and subject matter of philosophical analysis. The chapter is divided in two sections. In the ﬁrst I explain in what sense IH may be understood as a branch of descriptive metaphysics engaged in a form of categorial analysis. In doing

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so I will emphasise the Kantian strategy adopted by Collingwood in order to delineate the subject matter of history and the presuppositions of historical inquiry. In the second I will look at Collingwood’s critique of pseudo-histories as a paradigmatic example of the role that philosophy has in delineating domains of inquiry and exposing the application of the method of natural science beyond its appropriate sphere of application.

I The question of IH is ‘How is historical knowledge possible?’ 2 A number of points should be noted in relation to this question. First, the question is ambiguous in so far as it could be interpreted in two rather different ways. On the one hand the question could be interpreted as asking ‘How is it possible to have knowledge of the past, given that what occurs in the past is not available to observation?’ On the other hand, the question could be interpreted as asking ‘How is it possible to provide an account of human reality that differs from the kind of account that natural science provides for what occurs?’ The way in which one chooses to interpret the question inevitably colours one’s understanding of what makes knowledge historical. On the first interpretation knowledge is said to be historical because it is knowledge of what cannot be observed because it occurred in the past. Interpreted in the second way knowledge is said to be historical to the extent that it explains human reality in a way that differs from the kind of explanations that science provides for natural phenomena. Both conceptions of history are present in Collingwood’s work but IH is primarily concerned with the second. 3 The text of IH, in other words, is concerned primarily with the contrast between the concept of history and the concept of nature and the different methods by which natural and historical reality ought to be investigated rather than with the contrast between the present and the past and the different methods by which the past and the present can be known. The term ‘history’, therefore, as Collingwood employs it, is much broader than one might suppose since Collingwood’s goal is to outline a conception of the character of explanation in the social sciences at large: by historical subject matter and method Collingwood means not a subject matter and a method specific to history as practised in academic departments but a domain of inquiry and methodology that are common to any discipline in the social sciences which shares a conception of the nature of explanation distinct from the character of explanation in the natural sciences.4 Second, Collingwood claims that the need to re-articulate the question ‘How is historical knowledge possible?’ arises because the science of human nature, especially as propounded in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury epistemology, ‘failed to solve the problem of understanding what

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understanding is’ (IH, 208). This failure is due to the application of the methods and principles of natural science to the study of mind: The thesis that I shall maintain is that the science of human nature was a false attempt – falsiﬁed by the analogy with natural science – to understand the mind itself, and that whereas the right way of investigating nature is by the methods called scientiﬁc, the right way of investigating mind is by the methods of history. (IH, 209) The early modern epistemological approach to which Collingwood refers is the experimental method which consists in observation, classiﬁcation and the use of general laws, a method that was regarded as applicable equally to the investigation of nature and the study of human affairs. The goal of the experimental method was to provide a science of man proceeding from empirical observations and inductive generalisations.5 Such a method, for Collingwood, cannot be applied to the study of history because historians, unlike natural scientists are concerned with what occurs as an expression of thought. As he puts it: When a scientist asks ‘why did that piece of litmus paper turn pink?’ he means ‘on what kind of occasions do pieces of litmus turn pink?’ When an historian asks: ‘why did Brutus stab Caesar?’ he means ‘what did Brutus think, which made him decide to stab Caesar?’ (IH, 214) Undoubtedly, the claim that history is the study of mind may strike many as counter-intuitive: if asked what the subject matter of history is, one may be tempted to reply that history is concerned with what occurred in the past, that it is the recounting of certain facts and events as well as the deeds of historical agents. Such a claim, however, is counter-intuitive only if one assumes that historical knowledge is to be contrasted with knowledge of the present rather than with knowledge of natural phenomena. As we have seen, for Collingwood, what makes knowledge historical is the fact that it is concerned with explaining what occurs as an expression of rational processes rather than as a manifestation of empirical laws. Historical knowledge, Collingwood says ‘is not concerned only with a remote past . . . it is by historical thinking that we re-think and so re-discover the thought of Hammurabi or Solon, it is in the same way we discover the thought of a friend who writes us a letter’ (IH, 219). Claims such as these highlight Collingwood’s rather idiosyncratic use of the term history, which he describes as the right way of investigating the mind: knowledge, so conceived, is said to be historical, not so much because it focuses on the past rather than the present, but because it studies the mind.

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Third, it is important to stress that, in phrasing the question of IH in this way, namely by asking ‘How is historical knowledge possible?’, Collingwood presumes that there indeed is a kind of knowing that is historical. The task of a philosophy of history is not to show that historical knowledge is possible, but how it is possible. This way of proceeding is in line with Collingwood’s general conception of philosophy according to which the task of the philosopher is to reﬂect on knowledge or experience and regressively to ascend to the principles or presuppositions on which it rests. Such a procedure is the outcome of Collingwood’s view that whereas metaphysics is, logically speaking, the ﬁrst science, because it is logically presupposed by all other sciences, metaphysics is, temporally speaking, the last science (EM, 5), since the various forms of knowledge are the starting point for philosophical reﬂection. The argumentative strategy that Collingwood employs to show how history is possible, although focused speciﬁcally on historical knowledge rather than knowledge in general, closely parallels that employed by Kant in his theoretical philosophy in order to account for how any knowledge is possible. Collingwood remarks that, if asked what their domain of inquiry is, historians would reply without hesitation that they are concerned with what may be loosely referred to as the domain of human affairs in contradistinction to natural phenomena such as lightning, volcanic explosions, ﬂooding and the like. Further, historians would readily grant that although the object of historical inquiry is, broadly speaking, the domain of human affairs, not all human deeds form part of the subject matter of history. Historians, in other words, make a distinction between historical and non-historical human deeds. Collingwood proceeds to argue that, if the question concerning the subject matter of history were an empirical matter to be settled by following the method of observation and classiﬁcation, it would not be possible for historians to rule out any human deeds as unsuitable subject matter for historical inquiry because all deeds performed by human beings would ipso facto be historical. Collingwood argues that if the notion of the domain of human affairs were an empirical concept meaning ‘what is done by human beings’ and deﬁned by the sum total of human doings, historians could not avail themselves of the distinction between historical and non-historical human deeds. In an argumentative strategy that closely resembles Kant’s defence of a priori categories, Collingwood claims that what enables historians to distinguish between historical and non-historical human deeds has to do with the fact that they bring certain presuppositions to the investigation of the material. Just as natural scientists presuppose that reality is law-like and that what occurs must be understood as the manifestation of natural necessity, so too historians approach their subject matter by bringing to it the presupposition that historical reality is the product or construct of rationality and consequently that what occurs must be studied not as the manifestation of natural laws but as the expression of intelligent behaviour. What

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enables historians to delimit their subject matter in the ﬁrst instance to what is broadly referred to as the domain of human affairs and then, to a subset of human deeds, is the fact that historians, albeit unconsciously, presuppose a certain notion of reality. For historians the real is rational, not in the sense of the controversial thesis often attributed to Hegel (according to which everything that occurs is a manifestation of reason or Spirit) but in the sense that only what can be interpreted rationally is real (i.e. an appropriate subject matter) for historians. Collingwood illustrates the distinction between historical and nonhistorical human deeds as follows: It does not follow that all human actions are subject matter for history; and indeed historians are agreed that they are not. But when they are asked how the distinction is to be made between historical and nonhistorical human actions, they are somewhat at a loss to reply. From our present point of view we can offer an answer: so far as a man’s conduct is determined by what may be called his animal nature, his impulses and appetites, it is non-historical; the process of those activities is a natural process. Thus the historian is not interested in the fact that men, eat and sleep, and make love and thus satisfy their natural appetites; but he is interested in the social customs they create by their thought as a framework within which these appetites ﬁnd satisfaction. (IH, 216) It is on the basis of such considerations that Collingwood rules out the possibility that there could be any such things as a history of the animal kingdom or, for that matter, of the natural condition of humankind. In The Principles of History (PH), for instance, he says: a great many things which deeply concern human beings are not, and never have been, traditionally included in the subject-matter of history. People are born, eat and breathe and sleep, and beget children and become ill and recover again, and die; and these things interest them, most of them at any rate, far more than art and science, industry and politics and war. Yet none of these things have been traditionally regarded as possessing historical interest. Most of them have given rise to institutions like dining and marrying and the various rituals that surround birth and death, sickness and recovery; and of these rituals and institutions people write histories; but the history of dining is not the history of eating, and the history of deathrituals is not the history of death. (PH, 46) Whereas there may be an evolutionary account of life in the animal kingdom and of the natural condition of mankind, there can be no such

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thing as a history of natural processes. The notion of an evolutionary history is, for Collingwood, a contradiction in terms because history is concerned with rational rather than natural processes. The reply that IH provides to the question ‘How is historical knowledge possible?’ may thus be summarised as follows. History is possible because historians bring to the investigation of their subject matter the concept of ‘action’. For Collingwood, the presupposition that natural scientists bring to the investigation of reality, namely that what occurs is the manifestation of natural necessity, is encapsulated in the concept of an ‘event’. By contrast, the presupposition that historians bring to their subject matter, namely that what occurs is the expression of rational processes, is encapsulated in the concept of action. The concepts of action and of event, therefore, determine a priori the kind of reality (historical or natural) with which one is concerned and the method by which such reality is known. Since the notion of reality with which natural science is concerned comprises events, the natural scientist explains what occurs by seeking for causal nexa linking spatio-temporal phenomena. On the other hand, since the notion of reality with which historians are concerned comprises actions, historians explain what occurs by reconstructing chains of reasoning in which thoughts stand to one another in the relation of logical ground to consequent. What the concepts of action and event have in common is that they are what historians and natural scientists respectively bring to experience, rather than ﬁnd within it. In this respect the concepts of action and event are analogous to those concepts that Kant referred to as the a priori categories of the understanding. They are analogous to Kant’s categories because they are embedded in the kind of inferences made by the practitioners of the ﬁrst-order sciences and can be known not empirically but a priori, by reﬂecting on the kind of inquiry in which historians and natural scientists engage. To the extent that Collingwood’s philosophy of history is concerned with the a priori concepts of action and event, it is clear that IH is no applied historiography. It is a metaphysics of action in Collingwood’s special sense of metaphysics, i.e. a study of the presuppositions that must be employed in order to describe the doings of human beings as actions, i.e. as expressions of thought or rational processes. Collingwood’s philosophy of history stands to an applied historiography in the same relationship in which Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals stands to applied ethics or casuistry. Just as Kant, in the Groundwork, outlines the fundamental principle of moral reasoning, the Categorical Imperative, so in IH Collingwood outlines the presuppositions of historical reasoning. Undoubtedly, in order to elucidate the concept of action Collingwood has to make reference to particular human deeds, such as those of Caesar or Brutus. This, however, ought not to suggest that his claims are made at the level of an applied historiography. Collingwood’s concern is not to provide instances of historical explanations but to elucidate the notion of

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historical explanation itself: Collingwood’s occasional references to particular human deeds, therefore, are best understood not as examples borrowed from historical practice but rather as illustrations of the employment of a very basic a priori category. So far I have tried to provide an account of Collingwood’s philosophy of history that is compatible with his conception of metaphysics as a form of categorial analysis. In doing so I have presented his philosophy of history as a branch of descriptive metaphysics whose task is to bring to light or make explicit the a priori concepts that historians bring to their subject matter. Whereas this account of the relationship between the metaphysics and the philosophy of history is not novel,6 it is an aspect of Collingwood’s scholarship which is often neglected. Many readers of Collingwood’s philosophy of history have tended to focus on a particular deﬁnition of the concept of action which links the notion of action with that of inner and unobservable psychological processes. The prevalence of this interpretation is probably encouraged by Collingwood’s terminology. In IH, for instance, he distinguishes the concept of action from the concept of event by saying that actions have an inside or thought-side that events lack. The inside or thought-side is construed as an aspect of the event that cannot be captured by a behavioural or factual description. As he puts it: The historian, investigating an event in the past, makes a distinction between what may be called the outside and the inside of an event. By the outside of an event I mean everything belonging to it which can be described in terms of bodies and their movements . . . By the inside of an event I mean that in it which can only be described in terms of thought . . . (IH, 213) This way of drawing the distinction between the concept of action and the concept of an event does have a psychological ring to it, for Collingwood appears to be claiming that an occurrence is an action only if there is something that goes on inside the agent’s head and accompanies the bodily movement. Collingwood certainly does not choose his words carefully when he says, for instance: When an historian asks: ‘why did Brutus stab Caesar?’ he means ‘what did Brutus think, which made him decide to stab Caesar?’ The cause of the event, for him, means the thought in the mind of the person by whose agency the event came about. (IH, 214) Statements such as these have led many commentators to criticise Collingwood’s philosophy of history for endorsing a Cartesian picture of the

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mind and for reviving what Ryle had exposed as the myth of the ghost in the machine.7 This critical assessment of Collingwood’s philosophy of history, according to which Collingwood, having endorsed the doctrine of the privacy of mental states, had no choice but to invest historians with telepathic powers of access to the mind of historical agents, is deeply mistaken. Equally mistaken is the claim (encouraged by Collingwood’s oft-repeated claim that historical understanding requires re-thinking or re-enacting the thoughts of historical agents) that Collingwood is offering a method for revealing the thoughts of historical agents.8 Collingwood’s point is not, as so often claimed by his detractors, that something is an action if there is an inner and unobservable psychological process accompanying the outward and observable bodily movement, and that the task of the historian is to reveal this hidden psychological process through the method of re-enactment. His point, rather, is that the concept of action and the concept of mind are reciprocal concepts because to explain an occurrence as an action, rather than as an event, just is to explain it as an expression of thought or mind.9 In other words, the concepts of action and of mind stand to one another in the way in which the concept of freedom stands to the concept of moral responsibility. The ascription of moral responsibility entails the idea that an agent could have acted otherwise. Analogously, the description of the doings of human beings as actions entails the ascription of rationality. The psychologistic reading of Collingwood’s philosophy of history takes Collingwood’s terminology too literally and fails to acknowledge that he uses terms such as ‘re-enactment’, ‘inside/outside’, in a highly metaphorical way, to explain the nature of historical explanation and to distinguish the subject matter of history from that of the natural sciences.10 Natural science is concerned with the outer or observable aspect of what occurs in the sense that natural scientists establish empirical connections between events through observation and empirical generalisation. History is concerned with the unobservable side of what occurs not because it is concerned with inner psychological processes but in the sense that historians explain what occurs by establishing rational or logical rather than empirical connections. For the historian, to explain an action is not to discover a constant conjunction but to reconstruct a practical syllogism in which the agent’s beliefs and desires stand to the action as the premises of a deductive argument stand to the conclusion. The conception of Collingwood’s philosophy of history that I have advanced in this section, according to which it is best understood as a branch of descriptive metaphysics, emerges clearly if one connects Collingwood’s account of the action/event distinction as provided in IH with his account of the three senses of the term ‘cause’ as outlined in EM.11 Whereas in IH Collingwood tends to illustrate the distinction between explanations in the natural and the social sciences by employing the metaphorical distinction between the inner and the outer, the

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account of historical causation that he provides in EM has no such psychological overtones. In EM Collingwood claims that in the historical sciences causes are synonymous with motives. As we have already seen in Chapter 1, Collingwood deﬁnes historical causation by stating that in the historical sciences ‘that which is caused is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and causing him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it’ (EM, 285). To explain historically is to provide motives for actions. Collingwood’s use of words ‘to afford a motive’ seems to be carefully pondered. Unlike intentions, which may or may not ﬁnd expressions in actions, motives are logically related to the acts that express them. To illustrate: one might intend to light a cigarette but end up burning down the house; this would be a case in which an intention does not ﬁnd expression in the act. By contrast, if the burning of the house is described as arson, this entails that the motive was to cause a ﬁre. Collingwood’s point in claiming that in historical explanations causes are synonymous with motives is to emphasise that, in historical explanations, the cause (or motive) and the effect (the action) stand to one another in a relation of logical entailment: the cause of an action (the motive) determines how the action should be described, as, e.g. accidental ﬁre, arson, attempted murder, etc. The account of historical causation provided in EM presents the claim that in historical explanations the connection between the cause and effect is rational or logical rather than empirical, though without employing the inside/outside distinction, a distinction that encouraged a psychologistic reading of IH. To the extent that historical explanations express relations of entailment, the kind of explanations that historians employ are more akin to common-sense explanations for human behaviour than they are to scientiﬁc hypotheses. What we do when we explain human behaviour within the framework of vernacular psychology is to analyse how individuals respond to certain situations by drawing inferences from a number of premises and how they act on the conclusion of an argument that the folk-psychologist reconstructs on the agent’s behalf. For instance, if I attempted to explain why Jones declined an employment offer for a high-powered managerial position with a ﬁrm by saying that Jones turned it down because the ﬁrm operates a policy of employing illegal immigrants in order to cut production costs, what I am likely to mean is that Jones had reasons, be these of a legal or ethical nature, for declining the offer: ‘Jones declined the job offer because the company operates a particular employment policy’ is short-hand for ‘Jones declined the offer because he objects, on moral/legal grounds, to the company’s employment policy’. The long explanation, as opposed to the shorthand version of the explanation, makes it clear that the motivation for the act is sought in an agent’s response to a particular fact, a response that is understood in terms of the endorsement of a certain ethical code. Unlike scientiﬁc hypotheses, common-sense explanations of this kind are not attempts at explaining

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the behaviour of agents by appealing to empirical regularities. When, as a folk psychologist, I attempt to explain Jones’ behaviour, I am unlikely to ask myself the question: ‘What are the conditions which precede the rejection of employment offers?’, a question that would be structurally analogous to the one that is asked by the scientist, ‘On what kind of occasions do pieces of litmus turn pink?’ It is true that occasionally common-sense explanations are used to anticipate what an agent might do when confronted with a certain situation. Such attempts at anticipating future behaviour on the basis of observations of past responses to analogous antecedent conditions, however, are simply attempts at thinking through how an agent might reason on the basis of how s/he reasoned in the past: the justiﬁcation for using our knowledge of how an agent responded to an analogous situation in the past within the framework of vernacular psychology is not that when one thinks in folk psychological terms, one believes the uniformity of an agent’s responses can be accounted in terms of empirical regularities; rather, one assumes that an agent responds to similar situations in similar ways, to the extent that one assumes this agent to adhere to the rules of deductive inference and to possess integrity, i.e. to consistently reason on the basis of the adoption of certain norms, be these of a moral, legal, epistemic or aesthetic nature. Even such attempts at anticipating future behaviour are not strict predictions; after all, explanations within the framework of vernacular psychology are such as to allow for the possibility that Jones might act out of character or that the sort of thing that Jones would do, may not necessarily be the same thing that Smith might do, given the kind of people they are, no matter how similar the antecedent conditions of the action might be. Undoubtedly a number of different actions could be consistent with the adoption of the same norms. For instance, if a further premise were added to Jones’ argument, the premise that Jones believed the high-powered managerial position he was offered would put him in a position to change the company’s employment policy, he might have arrived at a different conclusion and taken up the post. The introduction of a further premise complicates Jones’ argument but does not alter the fact that the explanation given for the agent’s behaviour moves within what has been called ‘the space of reasons’: Jones, for instance, could have been both mistaken in assessing the situation, thereby falsely assuming that he would be able to change the company’s employment policy, and have correctly inferred that he could accept the post without compromising his moral integrity. Historical explanations are of a similar nature in so far as they move in the space of reasons. Historians, like folk psychologists, do not regard the behaviour of historical agents as knee-jerk reactions to antecedent conditions but as intelligent responses guided by the powers of deductive inference, mediated by an agent’s endorsement of certain norms or principles as well as by an assessment of the conditions in which such norms require application. Collingwood’s account of historical explanation, according to which

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explanations in history are, to use a term coined by Dray, ‘rational explanations’,12 was often subjected to a certain standard criticism. It was claimed that the model of explanation that Collingwood wished to adopt, according to which actions are the expression of a valid practical argument, is inadequate because human beings are not fully rational (they may fail to act, act randomly or unthinkingly or they may attempt to act rationally but fail to see what conclusions follow from which premises). Formulated in this way, the objection that Collingwood neglects the fact that many human actions are not expressive of rationality and consequently that he endorses an overly intellectualistic account of action, seems to be premised on a misunderstanding of the nature of the enterprise in which he was engaged. IH is concerned with the concept of action and it consequently describes actions as they ought to be, i.e. as expressions of thought.13 Just as the moral philosopher engaged in the project of describing and expounding the concept of the right abstracts from the way in which individuals sometimes act, i.e. wrongly or immorally, so the philosopher engaged in describing and expounding the concept of action must likewise abstract from the way in which individuals sometimes act, that is, irrationally, randomly or unthinkingly. Since nobody in their right mind would object to the moral philosopher engaged in the project of clarifying what the concept of the right is, by pointing out that people do not always act morally, so too nobody, in their right mind should object to the project of expounding the concept of action by pointing out that not all human doings are actions in the proper sense. The charge that Collingwood’s philosophy of history is overly intellectualistic because not all human doings are rational neglects to take into account the fact that in IH Collingwood is engaged in the project of explaining the domain of inquiry of history. The domain of inquiry of history, as we have seen, comprises only deeds that are expressive of rational processes. As Collingwood puts it in The Principles : Res Gestae are not the actions, in the widest sense of that word, which are done by animals of the species called human; they are actions in another sense of the same word, equally familiar but narrower, actions done by reasonable agents in pursuit of ends determined by their reason. (PH, 46) The fact that the domain of inquiry of history is rational processes (actions in the narrow sense) does not entail, as the accusation against Collingwood suggests, that all human doings (actions in the wider sense) are rational. Such an objection, in other words, has its roots in the conﬂation of an a priori concept (the concept of action) with an empirical concept, that of a human deed; it is based on the assumption that when Collingwood says that all actions are expressions of thought, he means that all

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human doings are rational. But he does not. When Collingwood claims that all actions are expressions of thought, he is simply unpacking the concept of action, he is not making a claim about the extension of this concept. Another version of the accusation that Collingwood’s philosophy of history is overly intellectualistic runs as follows: to the extent that historical explanations are rational explanations, history, in Collingwood’s sense of the word, abstracts from any non-rational conditions that may affect human behaviour. Any attempt to account for human behaviour by appealing to antecedent conditions, be these of a geographical, climatic or economic nature, would result in a natural history. As Collingwood puts it in one of his most provocative moments, even a poor person’s action cannot be determined by ‘the fact of his children’s unsatisﬁed hunger, the fact, the physiological fact, of empty bellies and wizened limbs, but by his thought of that fact’ (IH, 315–316). Statements such as this have not failed to attract criticism in so far as they seem to suggest a neglect for the way in which objective conditions inﬂuence human actions. Collingwood’s slogan that ‘all history is the history of thought’ (IH, 215), it is claimed, entails that all situations are thought situations. But this, the objection goes, is patently false. Human agents have to reckon with objective conditions that may determine their conduct in non-rational ways: whereas in some cases strength of character or personal determination may be all that is needed in order to overcome adverse conditions, in others, appeal to such things is mere wishful thinking: strength of character and personal determination, for instance, are not sufﬁcient conditions for overcoming illness and ultimately death. In defence of Collingwood, however, it may be said that if objective or material conditions are overwhelming, there simply cannot be a history of thought: had Collingwood endorsed an anthropocentric conception of action, he would indeed be unable to explain how there can be human doings that are not actions or expressions of rationality. Given, however, that for Collingwood, what deﬁnes an action is the fact that it is expressive of a rational process, any human doing which is determined by antecedent conditions is a human but not a historical human action. Collingwood’s claim that ‘all history is the history of thought’ should not be taken as entailing that ‘all situations are thought situations’, which is patently untrue, but as entailing the weaker and less controversial claim that ‘all situations are thought situations for the historian’. Read in this key, the claim that ‘all history is the history of thought’ is a statement about history’s domain of inquiry rather than an obviously false statement about the nature of the situations under which human agents act. On the conception of Collingwood’s philosophy of history defended so far, there is no conﬂict between Collingwood’s conception of philosophy, as outlined in EPM and in EM and his conception of the task of a philosophy of history. Whereas EPM and EM unpack the notion of philosophi-

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cal method and metaphysical analysis, IH illustrates how the principles that govern historical understanding can be known, i.e. by reﬂecting on the kinds of judgements that govern the practice of history. Further, this conception of Collingwood’s philosophy of history as concerned with the a priori concepts that govern historical knowledge has shown that many objections traditionally levelled against Collingwood’s philosophy of history, objections that may be clustered together under the generic criticism that Collingwood over-intellectualises the historical process, arise as a result of the failure to understand that IH is not an applied historiography but a metaphysics of action in Collingwood’s sense of the word, i.e. a study of the a priori concepts that make a certain form of experience or knowledge possible. As a metaphysics of action the goal of IH is not to provide examples of historical explanations but to elucidate what it means to explain historically.14

II In the previous sections we have seen that the task of a philosophy of history, for Collingwood, is to delineate the subject matter of history. The subject matter of history is what Collingwood refers to interchangeably as mind, actions or rational processes. In the following I wish to consider Collingwood’s critique of pseudohistory, i.e. his critical engagement with erroneous conceptions of the historical task. Collingwood’s critique of pseudo-history is important for two reasons. First, it shows that the employment of the empirical method in history gives rise to explanations that are inappropriately naturalistic. Second, it provides an excellent example of the role that philosophy plays in exposing the category mistakes that occur when the concepts and methods that are appropriately used within one domain of inquiry are inappropriately extended beyond their proper sphere of application. The pseudo-history with which Collingwood is concerned with in IH is referred to as ‘scissors-and-paste’ history. It is to his critique of scissors-and-paste history that I shall now turn. The general context of Collingwood’s discussion of scissors-and-paste history is a survey of other forms of historical thinking, which are referred to as common-sense history and scientiﬁc history. The ﬁrst variety of historical writing is common-sense history. This, for Collingwood, is what most people believe history to be upon ﬁrst reﬂection (IH, 234), an unadulterated picture of the events: on this conception the historian is like a landscape painter attempting faithfully to reproduce nature. This form of historical writing is exempliﬁed in the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides for whom eye-witnesses were ultimate authorities and whose work depended primarily on gathering the testimony of eye-witnesses with whom they had personal contact (IH, 25). Common-sense histories, as exempliﬁed in Herodotus and Thucydides, were contemporary histories.

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The limited time-span of these narratives did not require selectivity. It is with the writings of world histories that a new method, that of compilation, became necessary; this is the method employed by the second variety of historical writings Collingwood considers, scissors-and-paste history. It was now necessary to construct a patchwork history whose materials were drawn from ‘authorities’, that is ‘from the work of previous historians who had already written the histories of particular societies at particular times. This is what I call the ‘scissors-and-paste’ historical method’ (IH, 33). Scissors-and-paste history is a generic term used to describe any history constructed by excerpting statements from the writings of historians who either witnessed the events they recount or relied on the accounts of contemporary witnesses: It is characteristic of scissors-and-paste history, from its least critical to its most critical form, that it has to do with ready-made statements . . . Essentially, history, for the scissors-and-paste historian means repeating statements that other people have made before him. (IH, 274) In the most rudimentary form of scissors-and-paste history, as practised in the later Graeco-Roman world, there was no systematic examination of the authorities and no clear principle to determine their credibility. A clear technique for sifting true from false statements was a development of a later form of scissors-and-paste history that began to be practised in the seventeenth century and reached its apotheosis in the nineteenth century. This later development of scissors-and-paste history Collingwood calls ‘critical history’. The technique employed by critical history is to subject the statements found in historical sources to a truth test by asking whether the event recounted could have occurred in accordance with an inductive generalisation from present experience. In critical history the documents that were previously referred to as ‘authorities’ gradually came to be described as ‘sources’, to indicate that it is the role of the historian to establish which statements should be regarded as authoritative. The critical turn in scissors-and-paste history, for Collingwood, ﬁnds its full expression in F. H. Bradley’s The Presuppositions of Critical History,15 which is credited with carrying out a Copernican turn in the philosophy of history.16 The third form of historical writing considered is scientiﬁc history. Collingwood remarks that many historians found themselves dissatisﬁed with the methods of scissors-and-paste history. The primary source of discontent was identiﬁed by Vico when he claimed that the historian must seek to understand the meaning of its sources, and that the primary task of the historian is not to ascertain whether a statement is true or false, but what it means. Critical history, according to Collingwood, had attempted to transfer the Baconian revolution in science to the domain of historical

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inquiry. Bacon had denied that the scientist’s attitude towards nature should be passive and claimed that scientists must take the initiative, decide what they want to know by formulating questions, put these questions to nature and elicit answers from it (IH, 269). The Baconian revolution in science, as applied to the domain of human affairs, turned scissors-and-paste history into a critical enterprise which no longer took the sources at face value. Scientiﬁc history, according to Collingwood, applauds the Baconian revolution but divorces the logic of question and answer from the experimental method of natural science, and puts it at the service of a hermeneutic enterprise governed by a semantic imperative. The question that the scientiﬁc historian asks is not ‘Is this statement true/false?’ but ‘What does this statement mean?’ Further, for Collingwood, scientiﬁc history is intimately connected with the establishment of history as an autonomous discipline and with the idea of human activity as free. He claims, for instance, that ‘We must ﬁrst achieve a genuinely scientiﬁc and therefore autonomous method in historical study before we can grasp that human activity is free’ (IH, 320). Such a claim should not be taken to mean that prior to the discovery of scientiﬁc history individuals were not free, but rather that the intellectual grasp of human activity as free is the logical consequence of thinking about them in a particular way. The relationship between the description of human activity as free and the discovery of history as an autonomous discipline is not a chronological relationship, as if there could be no freedom in the absence of a fully articulated scientiﬁc history, but a logical relationship entailing only that the intellectual grasp of human activity as free presupposes the emancipation of history from the tutelage of natural science.17 In order to understand the historiographical principles which are the object of Collingwood’s critique, it may be helpful to consider a couple of illustrations. A good example of Collingwood’s concept of critical history can be found in Hume’s Enquiries.18 Hume asks to what extent one should rely on the testimony of other men and focuses on the case of reported miracles as an instance in which a historian is fully justiﬁed in disbelieving historical testimony and discarding the documents reporting miraculous events as untrustworthy.19 According to Hume, the historian evaluates the evidence attesting to certain facts and events according to his own observation and experience of similar facts and events: if there is nothing in the historian’s experience that conﬁrms the likelihood of miraculous events, the historian is justiﬁed in disbelieving the evidence rather than endorse a belief which has no ground in his experience. What grants the historian the right to discard the evidence as untrustworthy is an inductive generalisation based on the historian’s personal experience: When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or the fact, which he

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The Idea of History relates, should really have happened. I weigh one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the events which he relates; then, and only then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.20

An analogous historiographical principle underpins Bradley’s The Presuppositions of Critical History. Bradley claimed that ‘our experience of the world teaches us that some kinds of things happen and others do not; this experience, then, is the criterion which the historian brings to bear on the statements of his authorities’ (IH, 239). Bradley is concerned with the relation in which historical facts or events stand to the deposition of witnesses. According to Bradley, there is no testimony that can be regarded as trustworthy, i.e. as genuine historical evidence, without being subjected to a critical scrutiny. Like Hume, Bradley claims that the testimony of witnesses should stand the test of present experience: ‘the view that I have put forward is this, that every man’s present standpoint ought to determine his belief in respect to all past events’.21 Bradley states that criticism of historical testimony is based on the presupposition of the uniformity of nature and the course of events.22 This is the fundamental presupposition of a critical history, without which the deposition of witnesses could not be judged to be either true or false. Bradley reasons as follows: an historian who comes across depositions attesting to the occurrence of events which are not corroborated by the historian’s own experience, such as mesmeric events, can make either of the following assumptions: he can assume that the laws which are appealed to in explaining natural phenomena are stable/unchanging and that the witness misrepresented what happened, or he can assume that the laws which are appealed to in the explanation of natural events change and that the witness drew a correct inference based on an experience that differs from that available to the historian. Critical history, according to Bradley, must assume that its world is one23 because failing to make such an assumption would make it impossible to distinguish between true or objective judgements from false or merely subjective judgements about what is the case: To know that relations of thoughts express relations in things is impossible except on the formal or virtual assumption of the absolute stability of these latter relations, and the consequent assurance that a false judgment is the result of a false inference in me and not of a shifting connection in the world.24 A critical history, Bradley claims, ‘rests in the last resort upon an inference from our experience, a judgement based upon our own present state of

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things, upon the world personal in us; and this is the sole means of justiﬁcation which we possess for holding and regarding supposed events as real, i.e. as members in and of our universe’.25 Collingwood singles out three main features of scissors-and-paste history in its most developed form as critical history. The ﬁrst concerns the goals of scissors-and-paste history. This is to ascertain whether historical statements are true or false. The second concerns the kind of questions that the scissors-and-paste historian asks, questions such as ‘Shall we incorporate this statement in our own narrative or not?’ (IH, 259). The third concerns the method devised to meet the goals of scissors-and-paste history. This is to discard statements which lack credibility in the eyes of the historian: sometimes a statement ‘will tell him [the historian] 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’ (IH, 257). Collingwood rejects the three features of scissors-andpaste history outlined above.26 Collingwood remarks, ﬁrst, that in scissors-and-paste history there is no genuine distinction between ready-made statements and evidence because there is no genuine understanding of the statements with which the historian works. Even the ready-made statements that are included in scissors-andpaste history are simply reasserted, not understood. He complains that the only question that the scissors-and-paste historian asks himself is whether such statements should be included or excluded, ‘the [scissors-and-paste] historian’s problem about any one of these statements is whether he shall accept it or not: where accepting it means reasserting it’ (IH, 274) and says ‘that the important question about any statement made in a source is not whether it is true or false, but what it means. And to ask what it means is to step right outside the world of scissors-and-paste history’ (IH, 260). Collingwood accepts that there is a distinction between testimony (ready-made answers to the question that the historian poses as found in memoirs and contemporary chronicles) and evidence (the reasoned endorsement on behalf of the historian of such ready-made answers), but rejects the implication that historical criticism should be conducted by pasting testimony which is deemed to be true (i.e. possible in accordance with an inductive generalisation from present experience) and cutting depositions which lack credibility in the eyes of the historian and therefore deemed to be false (i.e. not possible in accordance with an inductive generalisation from present experience). For Collingwood only a statement which has been understood can count as evidence and constitute genuine historical material. History proper ‘contains no ready-made statements’ (IH, 275). Collingwood remarks, second, that the goal of understanding a statement is quite different from the goal of ascertaining whether a reported event could have occurred. For the scissors-and-paste historian to ascertain whether the testimony contained in a historical source is trustworthy

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is to establish whether the event or fact attested to by the witness could have happened in accordance with a law arrived at on the basis of an inductive generalisation from present experience: in scissors-and-paste history therefore, empirical generalisations function as conditions which determine the (possible) occurrence of the reported fact or event. Such conditions set limits on what could happen: they are limiting conditions of an ontological or existential nature. What is not explicable in accordance with an empirical generalisation is not simply an unintelligibility, it is an ontological impossibility. Scientiﬁc history, on the other hand, does not consist in ascertaining the possible occurrence or non-occurrence of the reported fact or event in accordance with an empirical generalisation: scientiﬁc history does not set limits on what can or cannot occur. If a statement cannot be understood, this simply signals a failure to make sense, an epistemic failure on behalf of the enquirer: unintelligibility is not synonymous with ontological impossibility. Collingwood makes this point rather obliquely when he says: It may thus be said that historical inquiry reveals to the historian the powers of his own mind. Since all he can know historically is thoughts he can re-think for himself, the fact of his coming to know them shows him that his mind is able . . . to think in these ways. And conversely, whenever he ﬁnds certain historical matters unintelligible, he has discovered a limitation of his own mind; he has discovered that there are ways in which he is not, or no longer, or not yet, able to think. Certain historians, sometimes whole generations of historians, ﬁnd in certain periods of history nothing intelligible, and call them dark ages; but such phrases tell us nothing about those ages themselves, though they tell us a great deal about the persons who use them, namely that they are unable to rethink the thoughts which were fundamental to their life. (IH, 218–219) Third, Collingwood rejects the priority that the perspective of the present enjoys in scissors-and-paste history. This priority is well illustrated by the attitude of the scissors-and-paste historian towards statements that report events deemed to be impossible in accordance with empirical generalisations from present experience: if the reasons why it is hard for a man to cross the mountains is because he is frightened of the devils in them, it is folly for the historian, preaching at him across a gulf of centuries, to say ‘this is sheer superstition. There are no devils at all. Face facts, and realise that there are no dangers in the mountains except rocks and water and snow, wolves perhaps, and bad men perhaps, but no devils’. The historian says that these are the facts because that is the way in which he

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has been taught to think. But the devil-fearer says that the presence of devils is a fact, because that is the way in which he has been taught to think. The historian thinks it a wrong way; but wrong ways of thinking are just as much historical facts as right ones, and, no less than they, determine the situation (always a thought situation) in which the man who shares them is placed. The hardness of the fact consists in the man’s inability to think of his situation otherwise. The compulsion which the devil-haunted mountains exercise on the man who would cross them consists in the fact that he cannot help believing in the devils. Sheer superstition, no doubt: but this superstition is a fact, and the crucial fact in the situation we are considering. (IH, 317) The statements contained in historical sources, for Collingwood, cannot be scrutinised on the basis of the adoption of empirical generalisations from present experience because the inferences of historical agents will vary according to the epistemic premises of actions, premises which, unlike natural laws, cannot be assumed to be universally valid for all agents. The problem with the argument from analogy with one’s present experience is that any such argument presupposes certain epistemic norms while failing to acknowledge the role that these norms have in the explanation of the historian’s own experience and that of like-minded agents. There are two important considerations that underpin Collingwood’s critique of scissors-and-paste history. The first is that the thought which actions express is a pre-condition for their empirical classification. As Collingwood puts it: ‘Statistical research is for the historian a good servant but a bad master. It profits him nothing to make statistical generalisations, unless he can thereby detect the thought behind the facts about which he is generalising’ (IH, 228). The reason why statistical generalisations are of little help to the historian is not because actions are so unique as to be unclassifiable but because such classifications, in order to be appropriately carried out, must take into account the intersubjectively valid moral, legal and political norms which informed the behaviour of agents. According to Collingwood, the ability to detect similarities among actions and to classify them into types is parasitic upon historical understanding i.e. upon the understanding of the thought-side of the action: Types of behaviour do, no doubt, recur, so long as minds of the same kind are placed in the same kinds of situations. The behaviourpatterns characteristic of a feudal baron were no doubt fairly constant so long as there were feudal barons living in a feudal society, but they will be sought in vain (except by an enquirer content with the loosest and most fanciful analogies) in a world whose social structure is of

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The Idea of History another kind . . . a positive science of mind will, no doubt, be able to establish uniformities and recurrences, but it can have no guarantee that the laws it establishes will hold good beyond the historical period from which its facts are drawn. (IH, 223–224)

Collingwood’s main claim is not that actions, unlike events, are unique and therefore unclassiﬁable, but that the idea of a law in history is, as Von Wright puts it, ‘primarily that of an intrinsic connection to be grasped through reﬂective understanding not that of an inductive generalisation established by observation and experiment’.27 Collingwood’s rejection of the method of empirical generalisatios does not rely on the controversial premise that historical situations, unlike natural events, are unique.28 The point that Collingwood is making is not that there are no two actions of the same type in history, but that for those two actions to be of the same type they must be informed by similar thoughts and in order to know whether they are informed by the same thoughts they must be ﬁrst understood historically.29 The second important consideration underpinning Collingwood’s critique of scissors-and-paste history is that the endorsement of the idea of the uniformity of nature leads to naturalistic explanations: It is the task of the historian to discover what principles guided the persons whose actions he is studying, and not to assume that these have always been the same. To forget this is to fall into the error of naturalistic or materialistic history: a history which replaces principles by causal laws, and assumes these laws, like the laws of nature, to be constant.30 A point that is rather buried in Collingwood’s discussion of scissors-andpaste history but which seems to be presupposed by the conclusions drawn from the example of the devil-fearer, is that to the extent that historians are concerned with reason as practical (reason as a spring of action), rather than reason as theoretical (reason as yielding knowledge of the natural world), even an agent’s theoretical knowledge is regarded not as knowledge of nature, but as a ‘principle of action’, i.e. as the agent’s idea of nature. The epistemic norm of the agent in the example of the devilfearer, for instance, is such that, for this agent, the mountains really are inhabited by devils. This agent does not say to himself: ‘I won’t cross the mountains because I believe in devils’ but ‘I will not go because there are devils’. His epistemic norms conceal from him that what he takes to be in nature is a projection of a certain idea of nature. Scissors-and-paste history overlooks the logical efﬁcacy of that epistemic norm: scissors-and-paste historians are driven to neglect the explanatory role that epistemic premises different from their own play in the explanation of action either

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because they presuppose that the inter-subjectively valid epistemic norms which could be appropriately employed in the explanation of the historian’s actions and those of like-minded agents are metaphysically real, i.e. reﬂect the unchanging, objective order of nature, or because they assume that the uniformity of experience is a necessary heuristic device for the scientiﬁc investigation of nature as well as a necessary principle of historical criticism. For Bradley, as we have seen, the principle of the uniformity of nature is equally a presupposition of the natural sciences and a presupposition of critical history. Whereas Collingwood would accept that the principle of uniformity is a necessary heuristic device for the investigation of nature and, as such, a legitimate presupposition of natural science, he rejects the application of this regulative ideal to the study of history just as he rejects the idea of a universal science of man. This at least is what he appears to be saying when claiming that: the historian’s experience of the world in which he lives can only help him to check, even negatively, the statements of his authorities in so far as they are concerned not with history but with nature, which has no history. The laws of nature have always been the same, and what is against nature now, was against nature two thousand years ago; but the historical, as opposed to the natural conditions of man’s life differ so much at different times that no argument from analogy will hold. (IH, 239) It is perhaps important to point out that Collingwood’s reasons for holding scissors-and-paste explanations to be inapplicable to history’s domain of inquiry is not based on the contingent historical fact that norms of behaviour have changed through time. It is at least in principle possible to conceive of a scenario in which such norms never changed. In such a scenario, there could be a great deal of coincidence in the results obtained by the method of scissors-and-paste and scientiﬁc history: if a contemporary scissors-and-paste historian shared the epistemic norms of the agent who refused to cross the mountain chain in Collingwood’s example, he could conclude, on the basis of observation and empirical generalisations, that a statement attesting to the existence of evil spirits is reliable/trustworthy. No degree of coincidence in the results of the respective explanations, however, could remove Collingwood’s principled objection to the method of scissors-and-paste history since this objection is not premised on what is merely a contingent fact of the matter, the fact that norms of behaviour have changed, but on the view that genuine historical explanations are concerned with laying bare the internal relationship between actions and the beliefs/norms they express, and are not concerned with establishing an external relation between matters of facts, in accordance with empirical laws. Scientiﬁc history, in this respect, is concerned with explanations that employ the term cause in sense I as

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described in EM, and is thus concerned with a notion of reason as practical rather than theoretical. Read against the background of Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics, IH may be regarded as an essay in a branch of descriptive metaphysics whose task is not to provide historians with a method for the acquisition of knowledge about the past, but to delineate the domain of inquiry of history by providing an answer to conceptual questions such ‘What is history?’ and ‘How does it differ from natural science?’ Interpreted in this light, the critique of scissors-and-paste history attempts to show that the application of the empirical method to the study of human affairs is guilty of a classiﬁcation across categories and, as such, fails to yield genuinely historical understanding. Collingwood’s main purpose is to clarify what the true subject matter of history is precisely by focusing on a bogus social science. Understanding the true subject matter of history involves disentangling a conception of reason as practical (reason as a spring of action) from a conception of reason as theoretical (reason as yielding knowledge of the natural world) and to bring to light the presuppositions through which human doings, whether past or present, have to be understood if they are to be understood as actions. If this reconstruction of Collingwood’s philosophy of history is correct, the task of a philosophy of history is not to show historians how to acquire knowledge of the past but to clarify what the subject matter of history is by bringing to light the a priori principles or categories that guide historians in their understanding of the domain of human affairs.

9

Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and action

In the following I wish to discuss two claims that I believe are crucial to Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and action. The ﬁrst is that the relationship between the mind and the body is not a relationship between two substances but a relationship between two sciences, the science of mind and the science of matter. The second is that the so-called problem of mind–body interaction is a pseudo-problem that arises out of a failure to understand the aforementioned relationship. As Collingwood puts it, the relation between the mind and the body is the relation between the sciences of the body, or natural sciences, and the sciences of the mind; that is the relation inquiry into which ought to be substituted for the make-believe inquiry into the makebelieve problem of ‘the relation between body and mind’. (The New Leviathan (NL), 2.49/11) The chapter is divided in three sections. In the ﬁrst I outline the main lines of Collingwood’s philosophy of mind. In the second I explain why Collingwood’s philosophy of mind commits him to a non-causal perspective in the philosophy of action and argue that Collingwood’s model of explanation for action is the logical implication of his account of the mind. In the third section I attempt to locate Collingwood’s philosophy of mind in relation to eliminativism, reductionism and ontological dualism. My argument consists of three claims. The ﬁrst is that Collingwood resists the pressures of both eliminativism and reductionism. The second is that Collingwood’s alternative to eliminativism and reductionism is premised not on the endorsement of a Cartesian notion of metaphysics with its dual ontology but on a Kantian notion of metaphysics as a form of categorial analysis. The third is that Collingwood’s non-reductionist strategy also differs from that adopted by those physicalists who defend a form of property dualism premised on the idea that mental properties supervene on physical properties. Collingwood’s non-reductionist strategy, unlike that of supervenience theorists, is based not on a dualism of properties but on a dualism of epistemological perspectives. Hence, whereas Collingwood is

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not committed to a dual (or multiple) ontology and may be legitimately described as an ontological monist, he does not identify what is ontologically ultimate with the physical: Collingwood’s monism is not a form of physicalism. In sum, my goal is to establish that Collingwood’s dualism (or pluralism) is neither ontological, as in Descartes’ case, nor is it a dualism of properties, as in the case of many (so-called) non-reductive physicalists wedded to the supervenience thesis; it is a methodological dualism (or pluralism) that rests on the acknowledgement of Kantian-inspired transcendentals or categories. For Collingwood, as for Kant, the plurality of perspectives under which an object can be described is made possible by the employment of certain a priori categories or transcendentals. It is in virtue to such a priori concepts that one and the same thing may be described either from the standpoint of agency (the point of view of practical reason) or from the standpoint of knowledge (the point of view of theoretical reason).

I If one were to ask: ‘Where do I look for Collingwood’s philosophy of mind?’ the answer would have to be ‘in his philosophy of history’. It is history that, according to Collingwood, is the study of mind. History is the study of mind because its subject matter is actions and actions are the expression of thought. Any study of Collingwood’s philosophy of mind, therefore, cannot be carried out independently of an inquiry into his philosophy of history. If one were to ask, further, ‘Why did Collingwood believe history to be the study of mind?,’ the answer would have to be found in Collingwood’s peculiar understanding of history. For Collingwood we gain an insight in the subject matter of history by contrasting it with that of the natural sciences: what is distinctive of history is not that it studies what happened in the past rather than what happens in the present, but that it studies what happens as an expression of thought. The term ‘history’, as employed by Collingwood, is a term of art and is not to be conﬂated with what history is ordinarily assumed to mean. In the vernacular, history is the study of the past; for Collingwood, by contrast, the object of history is the domain of inquiry of the social sciences at large. Given Collingwood’s understanding of history as the study of mind, it is not surprising that a substantial part of his philosophy of history should involve an attempt to specify the characteristics of the mental and to distinguish the method appropriate to an investigation of mind from the method appropriate to the investigation of nature. In this section I wish to focus on Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and on his philosophy of history as a vehicle for articulating his philosophy of mind. I certainly would not wish to deny that there are aspects of Collingwood’s philosophy of history that are not relevant to either his theory of the mind or to discussions associated with the philosophy of mind.1 My

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concern lies with Collingwood’s philosophy of history in so far as it involves claims that are relevant to or touch upon fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind and action. In the following I will begin by explicating what Collingwood takes to be characteristic of the mental, i.e. what features are peculiar to the mind. I will then try to outline the implications of Collingwood’s account of the mental for his philosophy of action. Collingwood’s discussion of the characteristics of the mental is developed in The Idea of History (IH) in the context of an attempt to explain how is it possible for historians to re-think or re-enact the thoughts of historical agents. Here Collingwood seeks to rebut the position of an imaginary objector who claims that it is not possible for the historian to rethink or re-enact the same thoughts of historical agents. Since Collingwood’s discussion of the characteristics of the mental is presented in this context, it is important to clarify precisely what this objection involves.2 The imaginary objector argues that no historian can rethink or re-enact the same thoughts of historical agents if ‘same’ stands for strict or numerical identity. The thoughts of the historian can be at best qualitatively identical to those of the agents. They cannot be numerically the same because they occur at different moments in time and there is at least one property (a temporal property) that they do not have in common. Ergo, they cannot be strictly or numerically identical. Collingwood’s reply proceeds as follows. He argues that criteria of identity must vary in accordance with the nature of the object whose identity is at stake and that one cannot assume that the criteria of identity that apply to one kind of thing will ipso facto apply to things that have a different nature. In order to understand what the criteria for the identity of thought are, therefore, one must ﬁrst determine what thought is. Collingwood contrasts thought (to which he also refers as ‘mind in its mediation’) with sensations or feelings (to which he refers as ‘mind in its immediacy’) and claims that there are two important respects in which they differ. First, feelings or sensations have spatio-temporal location, whereas thoughts do not. A pain, for instance, occurs in a particular region of the body and lasts for a certain amount of time. As Collingwood put it ‘what we feel is always something existing here and now, and limited in its own existence to the place and time at which it is felt’ (The Principles of Art (PA), 158–159). Thought by contrast is said to stand ‘outside time’. So boldly stated, the claim is rather controversial but it need not be construed to mean that thought exists in some super-sensible realm of transcendent entities. What Collingwood means when he says that thought stands outside time is that temporal (and spatial) properties are not the kind of attributes that are appropriately predicated of thought. Whereas we speak of pains as occurring at a certain place and time and as having a given duration, we describe thoughts as being boring/interesting, lucid/obscure; we may

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describe them as long-winded but certainly not as lasting a long or a short time. Second, thought differs from feelings/sensations in that whereas feelings and sensations are private, thought is not. As Collingwood puts it: the cold that one hundred people feel . . . is simply in them, or rather a hundred different feelings, each private to the person who feels it, but each, in certain ways, like the rest. But the ‘fact’ or ‘proposition’ or ‘thought’ that there are ten degrees of frost is not a hundred different ‘facts’ or ‘propositions’ or ‘thoughts’; it is one ‘fact’ or ‘proposition’ or ‘thought’ which a hundred different people ‘apprehend’ or ‘assent to’ or ‘think’. (PA, 158) In an argumentative move highly reminiscent of Locke’s account of personal identity, Collingwood argues that since spatio-temporal properties cannot be legitimately ascribed to thought, they should not be employed as criteria for identifying and distinguishing thoughts. For Collingwood thoughts should be identiﬁed and distinguished by referring to qualitative criteria only. The upshot of Collingwood’s discussion of the criteria for the identity of thought is that if the historian and the historical agent entertain a thought that is, qualitatively speaking, the same thought, they have one thought, not two thoughts of a similar kind: contrary to what the imaginary objector claims, the thought of the historian and that of the historical agent are strictly identical or numerically the same.3 As Collingwood puts it: 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 to such a discussion. Yet if I not only read his argument but understand it, follow it in my own mind re-enacting it with and for myself, the process of argument which I go through is not a process resembling Plato’s, it is actually Plato’s so far as I understand him correctly. (IH, 301) As the last clause (‘so far as I understand him correctly’) makes clear, Collingwood is not concerned with an epistemological question (has the historian correctly re-enacted the thought of the historical agent?) but with the issue of the criteria for the identity/non-identity of thought. In the course of discussing the criteria for the identity of thought Collingwood has spelled out the contradistinguishing character of the mental. Thought, or mind in its mediation, is to be identiﬁed not with a bodily process (feelings/sensations) but with the propositional content of thought. It is perhaps important to note that although Collingwood’s distinction between feelings/sensations and thought bears some resem-

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blance to the contemporary textbook distinction between ‘qualia’ (qualitative states denoting a certain experience such as pains, itches, after images, hearing a sound, feeling hot/cold, etc.) and ‘content sentences’ (the content of propositional attitudes as introduced by ‘that’ clauses), it only partially overlaps with it.4 There are two important differences between Collingwood’s distinction between feelings/sensations and thought and the standard distinction between qualia and content sentences. First, Collingwood clearly restricts the province of the mental to content sentences introduced by ‘that’ clauses and explicitly states that feelings/sensations lie beyond the realm of the mental. Second, Collingwood does not require feelings/sensations to have a qualitative or experiential aspect. What distinguishes feelings/sensations from thought is that the former can be spatio-temporally identiﬁed whereas the latter cannot. Hence, for instance, a brain process could be described as a feeling/sensation (because it has a speciﬁc location in space and time) although there is no qualitative experience that people go through when they think as opposed to when they feel or sense something. Collingwood’s main reason for restricting the province of the mental to content sentences appears to be that they are not the kind of things of which temporal and spatial properties can be predicated. A crucial characteristic of the mental, therefore, is the non-temporality and non-spatiality of thought. Collingwood’s claim that ‘thought stands outside time’ is not to be taken literally to imply that thought is located elsewhere in some kind of a temporal Platonic realm. It is simply a metaphorical way of stating that temporal (and indeed spatial) properties do not apply to thought, that it does not make sense to ascribe spatio-temporal predicates to it. Whereas the sentence ‘there is a squirrel on the branch of that tree’, or the brain process which underlies it, can be said to have a spatial and temporal location – they exist somewhere at some time or other – the thought expressed by the sentence, its propositional content ‘that there is . . .’, cannot be intelligibly ascribed spatial and temporal properties. Given that thought cannot be ascribed spatial and temporal properties, thoughts cannot be distinguished from one another and counted in the way in which physical things can. Physical objects or things can be distinguished from one another either qualitatively (on the basis of properties other than spatial and temporal ones) or numerically (on the basis of their spatio-temporal location alone). Since physical objects have spatio-temporal properties, they can be distinguished numerically even when they are qualitatively identical or indiscernible. On the other hand, since it is inappropriate to ascribe spatial and temporal properties to thought, thoughts can be distinguished from one another only by employing qualitative criteria of identity.5 This is to say that thoughts, for Collingwood, are numerically distinct from one another only to the extent that they are qualitatively discernible.6

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II Having outlined Collingwood’s understanding of mind, I now wish to illustrate why his account of the mind commits him to a non-causal position in the philosophy of action. It follows from Collingwood’s account of the character of the mental (the non-spatiality and non-temporality of thought) that thoughts cannot stand to one another either in a relationship of spatial contiguity or temporal priority. Whereas physiological processes (be these bodily movements or neuropsychological processes) have a spatial and temporal location, and hence can be said to occur ‘before’ or ‘after’ other physical processes, thoughts cannot be ordered by employing spatial or temporal criteria. From this it follows that thoughts cannot be Humean causes for Humean causes must be both spatially contiguous with, and temporally prior to, their effects. If there is an appropriate way in which thoughts can be referred to as causes, the meaning of cause must be redeﬁned as the logical ground rather than the temporal antecedent of the effect. In other words, a thought causes another thought in the sense that the former logically entails the latter. This explains why for Collingwood, mentalistic explanations must take the form of a practical syllogism in which the explanandum stands to the agent’s beliefs and desires rather as the conclusion of a valid practical argument or syllogism stands to its premises. According to Collingwood, history, as the study of mind or thought, differs from the natural sciences because it is concerned with logical or internal relations rather than with external empirical relations: mentalistic explanations relate actions to the beliefs and desires of agents as logical grounds and consequents, not as Humean causes and effects. This is what is generally captured by the claim that mentalistic explanations are intentionalist or teleological rather than causal. Mentalistic explanations are intentionalist or teleological in the sense that they are concerned with the relationship between logical ground and consequent rather than with the relationship between temporal antecedent and consequent. Collingwood makes this point by saying that whereas the subject matter of the natural sciences is events, the subject matter of history is actions. Historical explanations differ from the kind of explanations provided by natural scientists because the explanation of action requires a form of rational reconstruction referred to by Collingwood as re-thinking or re-enactment, whereas the explanation of events requires the observation of constant conjunctions. Notoriously, Collingwood’s position in the philosophy of action has come under attack on the grounds that the employment of syllogistic reasoning in the reconstruction of human deeds overlooks the fact that human beings are only partially rational beings. They are partially rational in a number of ways. First, since they do not always coherently reason from premises to conclusions, they may act in such a way as to contradict

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the goals that they set out to achieve. Second, human beings are only partially rational because, not being omnipotent, there are aspects of their behaviour which are the result of force rather than deliberation. Third, since human beings are not omniscient, they are subject to the phenomenon of unintended consequences. The list could probably be extended but the criticisms mentioned so far should sufﬁce to understand why Collingwood’s philosophy of action has been accused of overintellectualising the human condition.7 Collingwood never spends much time dealing with such objections but his reply to them would have to be sought in his claim that the sciences of mind are criteriological or normative sciences. For Collingwood, in order to reconstruct thought processes the historian must make reference to criteria or norms of rationality, even if they are only imperfectly exempliﬁed in the domain of human affairs, as human beings are only imperfectly rational. This criteriological or normative aspect is what distinguishes the sciences of mind from the sciences of nature, which are said to be descriptive rather than normative.8 The traditional sciences of mind, i.e. logic and moral philosophy, study the rules of valid inference and the principles of good conduct. Unlike the natural sciences, they do not describe laws that are derived from observation and empirical generalisation. History shares a criteriological element with logic and moral philosophy because in reconstructing the thoughts of historical agents the historian must presuppose that they are rational. As history is a normative or criteriological science, the chain of reasons by means of which the actions of a real, i.e. imperfectly rational, human being are understood, are the very reasons which would guide the conduct of an ideal, i.e. fully rational agent. Historians are in a position to explain what real human beings do, to the extent that what real, imperfectly rational beings do, reﬂects the way in which ideally rational agents would deliberate. The implications of the normative or criteriological aspect of historical inquiry are quite interesting. The normative or criteriological aspect of historical inquiry entails that historical explanations cannot appeal to bad reasons. Bad reasons do not do any work in historical explanations because appealing to a bad reason fails to explain why an agent should have acted as he did, thereby failing to make his conduct intelligible.9 The implications of the normative or criteriological aspect of historical inquiry may be captured by saying that in historical explanations the project of explanation and justiﬁcation coincide.10 Historians explain the actions of human beings by appealing to what they should have done had they acted rationally, i.e. had they conformed to an ideal standard of rationality.11 The notion of justiﬁcation at work in historical explanation is not that of ‘moral’ justiﬁcation since, in attempting to explain the actions of others, the historian is not interested in whether they act morally, but in whether their deliberations respect the rules of valid inference. Such a

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difference notwithstanding, the notion of justiﬁcation as employed in historical explanations does have something in common with the notion of moral justiﬁcation. As the moral philosopher praises a human action to the extent that it conforms to the concept of the good (however one might choose to construe this – hedonistically, consequentially or deontologically), the historian discerns intelligibility to the extent that what an agent does conforms to ideal standards of rationality. It is important to point out that although Collingwood’s non-causal explanations may be described as intentionalist, due care should be taken not to confuse motives (the logical ground of action) with intentions (the psychological antecedent of action). On Collingwood’s account of historical or mentalistic explanations, the explanans, i.e. the motives (desires/beliefs) are not to be confused with intentions, at least if by intentions one means a state that ‘precedes’ the action. Given that mentalistic explanations look for logical connections, the relationship between the explanandum and the explanans is not one that can be construed in terms of time. Reasons, for Collingwood, cannot be (Humean) causes because the relationship between the premises and the conclusions in an argument is not a temporal but a logical relation. It certainly cannot be denied that Collingwood occasionally refers to mentalistic explanations as causal, in some sense of the term. In An Essay on Metaphysics (EM), for instance, he contrasts the term ‘cause’ as used in the practical and theoretical sciences of nature with the term ‘cause’ as it is used in history. He says that when the term ‘cause’ is used in the historical sciences ‘that which is caused is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and causing him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it’ (EM, 285).12 Collingwood’s claim that historical explanations are, in some sense of the word, ‘causal’ explanations parallels his determination to employ the term ‘science’ in the Latin sense of the word scientia, to denote a systematic body of knowledge with a speciﬁc method and subject matter, rather than in the slang sense of the term ‘science’, which denotes the subject matter and method of natural science. Collingwood’s goal is to reclaim a generic sense for the term ‘cause’, analogous to the generic sense of the Latin concept of scientia. Yet, Collingwood’s claim that historical explanations are ‘causal’, in the generic sense of the term, should not be confused with the view that they are ‘causal’, in the slang sense of this term. Collingwood is concerned primarily with outlining the logical structure of mentalistic explanations and emphasises that in such explanations the explanans and the explanandum stand to one another as logical ground and consequent.13 For Collingwood mentalistic explanations connect the explanandum with the explanans in the way in which a detective seeks to unmask a crime by looking for motives, rather than as a scientist who seeks to isolate the determining cause of an event out of a series of antecedent conditions. It may therefore not be completely coincidental

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that when, in EM, Collingwood explicates the way in which the term cause is employed in the historical sciences, he speaks of ‘affording a motive’ rather than ‘seeking for an intention’. The word ‘motive’ does not have a psychological ring to it, since the ascription of motives does not coincide with the ascription of psychological states to agents. Having outlined what, according to Collingwood, properly deﬁnes the mental and the nature of historical or mentalistic explanations, we are now in a position to see in what sense history is a science of the mind. This will enable us to clarify what Collingwood means when he says that the relationship between the mind and the body is the relationship between the sciences of mind and the sciences of the body. History, for Collingwood, is a science in the Latin sense of the word scientia, i.e. a systematic body of knowledge, with a distinctive subject matter and method of investigation. The subject matter of history is thought or mind in its mediation and its method of investigation is that of rational reconstruction. Since historical explanations make sense of what happened as expressions of thought, history differs from the natural sciences not because it studies human beings, but because it studies human beings qua rational beings. Because history studies human beings qua rational beings, it is a criteriological rather than a purely descriptive science: the presupposition of rationality, therefore, is a fundamental assumption that the historian brings to the study of his subject matter. It is an assumption that is as crucial to the study of history as the presumption of the regularity of nature is to the investigation of natural phenomena. Of course, since practising historians need to interpret the actions of human beings, and human beings are imperfectly rational, history can only be a partially normative or criteriological science. Yet, for Collingwood, historians could not abandon the notion of a fully rational being and the related concept of action (only a rational being, strictly speaking, acts), without losing sight of what distinguishes the nature of investigation in the social sciences. It is on the basis of these considerations that Collingwood arrives at the claim that the relation between the mind and the body is a relation between two sciences, history, which is a normative or criteriological science (a science of mind) and natural science, which is a descriptive or empirical science (the science of body). For Collingwood, it is the failure to understand the fact that the relationship between the mind and the body is a relationship between two sciences which gives rise to the problem of psychophysical interactionism. The implications of Collingwood’s account of the mind, as a normative or criteriological science, and of the relationship in which it stands to the science of nature, as a descriptive or empirical science, should be clear: the question ‘How is it possible for a substance, which is not extended in space (the soul), to interact with the body, which is extended in space and time?’ is wrongly posed. Collingwood, for instance, ridicules Descartes who, having deﬁned the distinction between the mind and the

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body ontologically as a distinction between substances, asserted that in the human being, who is partly body and partly mind, res cogitans and res extensa interact through the pineal gland. Those who uphold this view fail to see that ‘nothing can inhabit a house made of matter except something else made of matter’ (NL, 2.13). It is important to point out that Collingwood’s dismissal of the problem of psychophysical interactionism as a pseudo-problem applies, mutatis mutandi, to physico-psychical interactionism and that the implications of Collingwood’s point reach far beyond a critique of the Cartesian doctrine of the pineal gland. When Collingwood claims that the problem of mind–body interaction is a pseudo-problem he is not simply challenging the view that a Cartesian immaterial soul can interact with the body, a view that few would wish to defend these days. Collingwood is also challenging a view that enjoys much more currency among contemporary philosophers of mind, i.e. the view that the mental can be explained in terms of the physical. Collingwood, in other words, dismisses psychophysical interactionism in both directions, mind-to-body and body-to-mind. For Collingwood, mental phenomena can only be explained by reference to other mental phenomena and physical phenomena by reference to phenomena of their own kind. To assume otherwise is to be guilty of a classiﬁcation across categories. Examples of such classifications across categories are rare in Collingwood’s work but one of them is to be found in IH in a rather (in)famous passage where he attempts to illustrate the point that the historian is concerned with the logical rather than empirical relation between explanandum and explanans. Here he states that for the historian, even a poor person’s action cannot be determined by ‘the fact of his children’s unsatisfied hunger, the fact, the physiological fact, of empty bellies and wizened limbs, but by his thought of that fact’ (IH, 315–316). It is easy to see why such a statement has attracted so much criticism:14 Collingwood’s claim that the subject matter of history is mind appears to neglect the fact that human beings have to reckon with material conditions that may determine their conduct in non-rational ways. There is, however, another interpretation of this statement, one more in keeping with Collingwood’s primary concern, namely that of clarifying the logical structure of explanations in the social and in the natural sciences. Collingwood’s claim may be interpreted to mean that if what the poor man does is an action, it cannot be explained by anything other than a thought or chain of reasoning. If on the other hand, what the poor man does is an event, it can and ought to be explained with reference to an antecedent state of affairs, rather than a thought or chain of reasoning. What cannot be done is to describe what the poor man does as an action and explain it in terms of an antecedent condition, i.e. hunger. Collingwood, in other words, does not deny that we can provide explanations for what human beings do that are empirical in nature; what he claims is that empirical explanations are not explanations of

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actions. To explain an action (rather than a bodily movement) in terms of an antecedent condition would be equivalent to providing the very interactionist account that, for Collingwood, is the result of conceptual confusion.

III In the previous section I have outlined Collingwood’s account of the nature of mind and suggested that Collingwood’s philosophy of mind commits him to a particular position in the philosophy of action, i.e. to the claim that action explanations are rational rather than causal. In this section I locate Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and action against the background of more contemporary debates concerning the nature of mind. I argue that Collingwood is neither an eliminativist nor a reductionist and further, that his anti-naturalism in the philosophy of mind is premised neither on the adoption of Cartesian or ontological dualism nor on the kind of property dualism advocated by supervenience theorists who see themselves as defending a form of non-reductive physicalism. I maintain ﬁrst, that Collingwood’s anti-naturalism is the result of his commitment to transcendentals and that it is, therefore, ﬁrmly grounded in his defence of metaphysics as the study of the fundamental principles that regulate domains of inquiry. I also suggest that Collingwood’s approach might be appealing to anti-naturalists who are sceptical about the prospects of marrying non-reductionism to a physicalist ontology. Let me begin by considering Collingwood’s position vis-à-vis that of the eliminativist. Eliminativism, as it is well known, is based on two fundamental assumptions. The ﬁrst is that folk-psychological or vernacular explanations for human behaviour are a rather primitive way of theorising about the mind. The second is that with the progress of neurophysiology such primitive forms of theorising will be replaced by more sophisticated theories and folk-psychological explanations will not be reduced to neurophysiological explanations but replaced by them. Collingwood never explicitly addresses the eliminativist but his opposition to the claim that folk-psychology is an empirical theory that can and will be replaced by scientiﬁc theories with enhanced predictive power, is implicit in his understanding of history as the study of mind. For Collingwood there is a very close link between historical and common sense explanations. Arguably, what Collingwood’s refers to as historical explanations (explanations in which the relationship between the explanandum and the explanans is logical rather than empirical) exemplify what are otherwise known as common sense, vernacular or folk-psychological explanations. Historical, like common-sense explanations for human behaviour, have a normative element: in describing how an agent reasons, the historian, like the folk psychologist, must appeal to ideal standards or criteria of rationality, even if these are only imperfectly exempliﬁed in the

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individuals studied. As a criteriological, and hence partially normative inquiry, history, very much like folk psychology, differs from empirical disciplines because it does not explain human behaviour on the basis of empirical regularities but by reconstructing thought processes. Since historical explanations have a normative element, they cannot be treated as purely empirical claims that will, as the eliminativist believes, be replaced by hypotheses with greater predictive power. Collingwood also rejects the reductionist option. Reductionism does not attempt to eliminate the mental by replacing folk psychological explanations with theories that have greater explanatory power, but to explain mental phenomena in physiological terms. For the reductionist, mental phenomena can be accounted for in physiological terms in the way in which say, the behaviour of a gas (the property that a gas has to expand and contract in relation to growing and diminishing temperature) can be explained in terms of the behaviour of microscopic gas molecules. The classical statement of the reductionist thesis is the mind–brain identity theory defended by U. T. Place.15 Identity theorists argued that the claim that mental phenomena are physical phenomena is analogous to the claim that lightning is a discharge of electro-magnetic particles in the atmosphere. The mind–brain identity theory was presented as an a posteriori or synthetic claim to be established empirically, rather than as an analytic claim knowable a priori or through reﬂection. The identity theorists hoped that, with the progress of neurophysiology, it would be possible to establish correlations between mental phenomena and brain/physical phenomena, just as science had already shown there to be correlations between water and H2O, lightning and electromagnetic discharge, the temperature of gas and mean molecular kinetic energy. Place defended the claim for mind–brain identity as a form of strict or numerical identity (there are not two things, the mind and the brain, but one, just as there are not two things, lightning and electro-magnetic discharge, but one) against ontological dualism by maintaining that it is a mistake to argue, as Descartes did, from the logical independence of two expressions to the ontological independence of the state of affairs to which they refer. On what grounds does Collingwood object to the reductionist project? Collingwood does not object to the claim that what is conceptually distinct may be ontologically the same. For Collingwood, the fact that we classify objects into actions and events does not entail that the class of objects that fall under the domain of inquiry of the historian (actions) cannot overlap with the class of objects that fall under the domain of inquiry of the natural scientist (events). The distinction between actions and events (as the distinction between mind and matter) is not an empirical distinction but a distinction of reason: since the distinction between actions and events is a distinction of reason, the historian and the natural scientist do not study different things, they study them in different ways. As Collingwood puts it:

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man’s body and man’s mind are not two different things, but the same thing . . . as known in two different ways. Not a part of man, but the whole of man is body in so far as he approaches the problem of self-knowledge by the methods of natural science. Not a part of man, but the whole of man is mind, in so far as he approaches the problem of self-knowledge by expanding and clarifying the data of reflection. (NL, 11) What Collingwood objects to in the reductionist project is not the claim for the ontological identity of mind and body but the idea of seeking empirical correlations between the sciences of mind and body. Such a project entails treating the sciences of the body and the sciences of the mind as being both sciences of nature standing to one another as the base theory to the theory to be reduced. The reductionist project, in other words, presupposes that history is an empirical science and that historical explanations are put forward as empirical hypotheses. This is the very claim that Collingwood wishes to resist. History, for Collingwood, is a criteriological rather than purely descriptive or empirical science. For this reason history cannot stand to the natural sciences as the theory to be reduced to the base theory. Inter-theoretical reduction may be successfully accomplished where the base theory and the theory to be reduced are both empirical: it is possible, for instance, to reduce macro-level gas laws to micro-level laws describing the behaviour of gas molecules. But whereas inter-theoretical reduction may be successfully accomplished within the natural sciences, it is not possible to reduce the sciences of mind to the sciences of the body because these are sciences in the Latin sense of the word scientia, meaning a body of knowledge with a distinctive subject matter and method of investigation. Collingwood’s objections to eliminativism and reductionism alike are based on the view that folk psychological theories could be either eliminated or reduced only if they were empirical theories. But, he argues, they are not because in folk psychological (as indeed in historical) explanations the relationship between explanandum and the explanans is logical rather than empirical. Collingwood’s defence of the autonomy of the mental is not to be confused with the position in the philosophy of mind adopted by supervenience theorists who have attempted to reconcile ontological physicalism with non-reductivism by claiming that although mental properties are dependent upon physical properties, they are not reducible to them.16 For the supervenience theorist mental states supervene upon physical ones in the way in which the aesthetic properties of a sculpture are dependent upon the material out of which it is carved. Since mental properties are dependent upon physical properties, organisms that have the same physical properties will have the same mental properties. Yet, just as the aesthetic attributes of a statue cannot be reduced to the physical properties

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of the piece out of which it is carved, so mental properties are not reducible to physical properties, i.e. there are no psychophysical laws or correlations of the kind that the early exponents of the mind–brain identity theory were looking for. The supervenience theory is therefore put forward as a form of non-reductive physicalism.17 Collingwood’s rejection of reductionism is not based on the kind of property dualism espoused by supervenience theorists. Supervenience theorists are not only monists; their monistic ontology is a physicalist ontology, because they regard physicalism to be the only ontology that is respectable from a scientiﬁc point of view. Collingwood’s ontology is monist, in so far as he rejects the argument (condemned by early identity theorists) according to which what is conceptually distinct must also exist in separation, but his monistic ontology is not physicalist. His defence of the autonomy of the mental is grounded not in a theory of supervenience but in his conception of metaphysics as a form of categorial analysis. Metaphysics, according to Collingwood, is not the study of things or of the ultimate structure of reality but of the way in which we think about things. Metaphysics is, therefore, a form of categorical analysis that we carry out by reﬂecting on the way in which we classify our experience of objects. According to Collingwood, the concepts and classiﬁcations with which metaphysical analysis is concerned, differ in one fundamental respect from the concepts and classiﬁcations one ﬁnds in empirical science. Empirical science classiﬁes objects by reference to their empirical properties. The zoologist, for instance, distinguishes between vertebrates and invertebrates, mammals and reptiles. Metaphysical analysis, by contrast, classiﬁes objects not with reference to their empirical features but with reference to the ways in which we speak about them. In the act of opening a window, for instance, one performs a bodily movement, i.e. raises one’s arm, but there is no difference between the opening of the window and the raising of one’s arm (between an action and a bodily movement) independently of how we speak about or describe them. Metaphysical analysis looks for concepts and conceptual distinctions to which there correspond no empirical differences: the metaphysician is concerned with the kind of concepts and conceptual distinctions that cannot be empirically observed but which nonetheless structure our ways of speaking about and experiencing the world. Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and action is ﬁrmly grounded in this conception of metaphysics as a form of categorial analysis rather than in a theory of supervenience. This is clear from the fact that whereas the supervenience theorist is wedded to a physicalist ontology, Collingwood claims that one’s ontological commitments depend on the nature of the investigation in which one wishes to embark. Collingwood, in other words, starts from the assumption that, since method determines subject matter, there is no ontology that is ultimate or more basic. The implications of Collingwood’s understanding of metaphysics as a

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form of categorial analysis for his philosophy of mind and action should now be clear. ‘Actions’ and ‘Events’ are concepts that the inquirer brings to the subject matter and the distinction between actions and events a philosophical rather than an empirical distinction. The explanation of an occurrence as an action entails the employment of rational explanations, whereas the explanation of an occurrence as an event entails the employment of causal explanations. To describe an action by employing a causal explanation, therefore, would be to provide a classiﬁcation across categories analogous to those one hears when sociologists try to present themselves as moral philosophers and adduce poverty as a justiﬁcation for crime. Collingwood’s solution to the question of the relationship between the mind and the body is not one that is often, if ever, voiced, in contemporary debates concerning the nature of the mind. This is hardly surprising, since most contemporary debates within the philosophy of mind dogmatically assume that no position is intellectually respectable if it is not, at bottom, a form of physicalism. Collingwood’s solution, however, should be attractive to those who ﬁnd the kind of anti-naturalism implicit in the supervenience theory to be insufﬁciently robust and are sceptical about the possibility of reconciling the claims of physicalism with those of nonreductivism. In fact, Collingwood’s philosophy of mind may still be the only way forward for strong-minded anti-naturalists who wish to avoid the trappings of Cartesian dualism.

10 Conclusion Collingwood and the nature of philosophical knowledge

By way of a conclusion I would like to add a few remarks about the importance of Collingwood’s philosophical project. Collingwood’s work occupies a signiﬁcant place in the history of philosophy because it provides a systematic attempt to delineate the subject matter and method of philosophical inquiry and to defend the autonomy of philosophical discourse in the face of the decline of traditional metaphysics. Collingwood denies both that the subject matter of philosophy is to be identiﬁed with a transcendent realm of real entities and that philosophy is left with no subject matter of its own once it is no longer identiﬁed with a study of the supersensible. For Collingwood, immemorial metaphysical problems, such as those concerning the relationship between the mind and the body, freedom and determinism, still persist in spite of the decline of traditional metaphysics. They persist because they are not merely the result of errors into which the metaphysicians of the past have foolishly fallen. Metaphysicians such as Descartes may have been mistaken in hypostatising the concepts of mind and body, but the problem of mind–body dualism does not simply disappear even if the concepts of mind and body are not reiﬁed. An example of what Collingwood would regard as a quintessentially philosophical problem is to be found in his account of the criteria of the identity of thought in the context of his discussion of re-enactment. As we saw in Chapter 9, Collingwood raises the question as to how it is possible for two agents to share the same thought. He points out that if the criteria employed for determining the identity of thought were the same as those employed for determining the identity of brain processes, it would be in principle impossible for two agents to have the same thought, since different brain states (or as Collingwood puts it, feelings/sensations) have different spatial and temporal locations. Collingwood argues that the paradoxical conclusion that two agents cannot have the same thought is the result of conﬂating the concept of mind with the concept of body and the subsequent application of criteria of bodily identity to issues pertaining to the identity of thought or mind. The reason why Collingwood’s discussion of re-enactment is a discussion of a paradigmatically philosophical problem is that it deals with a situation in which two philosophical con-

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cepts, that of mind and body, conﬂict. The task of philosophy is precisely to deal with problems that arise when concepts applicable in different domains of inquiry begin to interfere with one another. Collingwood’s account of the nature of philosophical problems explains why long-standing metaphysical problems persist even in the face of the success of natural science. The mind–body distinction, for instance, is not simply the preserve of a pre-scientiﬁc culture which is prepared to include immaterial substances within its ontology; it is a necessary feature of any conceptual articulation of reality that includes the distinction between agents and patients. Such problems persist in spite of the progress of natural science because they are not, ultimately, problems of an empirical nature that can be solved by the further growth of empirical knowledge. They are conceptual problems that have to be resolved a priori, through a reﬂection on the nature of experience, rather than by the accumulation of new data or empirically. Collingwood’s work is a resolute attempt to show that there is a speciﬁc kind of problem that is the unique province of philosophy. Collingwood’s conception of the nature of philosophical problems also involves a particular understanding of the relationship between philosophical knowledge and common sense. In traditional metaphysics common-sense knowledge is often described as a second-class kind of knowledge: Plato, for instance, depicted everyday knowledge as knowledge of the shadows that real things cast onto the walls of the cave, and Descartes claimed that everyday beliefs ought to be subjected to systematic doubt. Collingwood’s understanding of the relationship between philosophical and common-sense knowledge, by contrast, is informed not by the Platonic or Cartesian view that common-sense knowledge should be subjected to thoroughgoing critical assessment, but by the Kantian view that philosophical knowledge provides a reﬂection and clariﬁcation of the data of experience. It is important to point out that, although Collingwood did not share Plato and Descartes’ distrust for common-sense knowledge, he did not regard common-sense knowledge as superior to philosophical knowledge. Collingwood, for instance, never believed that philosophical problems are aberrations into which we fall when theory deviates too far from common sense. He did not hold the view, shared by ordinary language philosophers, that philosophical problems are the result of theoretical reﬂection and did not therefore believe his task to be that of curing errors generated by philosophical analysis. The task of philosophy, for Collingwood, is not to assert the superiority of common sense over theoretical knowledge, but to corroborate common sense distinctions often used unreﬂectively, such as the distinction between agents and patients, by showing that they are rooted in different conceptions of reality. Collingwood’s conception of the nature of philosophical problems shows no trace of the anti-theoretical bias that often characterises linguistic philosophy.1 Whereas there is a therapeutic dimension to

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Collingwood’s conception of philosophy’s task, since it is the role of philosophy to detect misconceptions that arise from the application of concepts beyond their appropriate domain of inquiry, nowhere does Collingwood claim that philosophical problems are artiﬁcially created by philosophers and are therefore of interest to philosophers only. Philosophical analysis, for Collingwood, provides a genuine clariﬁcation of everyday experience and of the paradoxes encountered when different conceptions of reality come into conﬂict. Collingwood’s conception of philosophical knowledge occupies the middle ground between the project of traditional metaphysics and that of linguistic philosophy. Like linguistic philosophers, Collingwood denies that philosophy enquires into the ultimate structure of reality. But, unlike ordinary language philosophers, he does not identify philosophical analysis with an inquiry into our use of words. Philosophy, for Collingwood, is concerned not with linguistic concepts but with Kantian-inspired categories, i.e. with concepts and distinctions, such as that of mind and body, that determine what is empirically real (what kind of things exist) for, say, historians and natural scientists. The role of the philosopher is to delineate the scope of these regional ontologies and to show that what is absolute from the standpoint of the historian or of the natural scientist is, from the standpoint of philosophical reﬂection, a manifestation of being qua mind (history) or matter (nature). The kind of concepts with which Collingwood is concerned are neither grammatical classiﬁcations (verbs, adjectives, articles) nor logical (subjects/predicates): philosophical concepts, like Kant’s categories, are concepts which determine the kind of judgements or inferences that are appropriate to a particular area of experience. Philosophical analysis, for Collingwood, as indeed for the linguistic philosopher, begins with a reﬂection on the ways in which we speak about the world; Collingwood, however, is not a linguistic philosopher, at least not in the derogatory sense denoting a superﬁcial concern with words or the reduction of philosophy to linguistics.2 Collingwood’s account of the nature of philosophical problems implies that they are perennial. It is important to point out that the reason for this is not that philosophical disputes, unlike disputes in the natural sciences, cannot be settled. Philosophical disputes, for Collingwood, are settled by ensuring that modes of inference which are perfectly legitimate within a particular mode of inquiry are not inappropriately employed elsewhere. For instance, as we have seen, the question as to whether two agents can have the same thought can be objectively answered by asking what criteria of identity should be employed when speaking of sameness of thought. Collingwood does not claim that philosophical disputes are insoluble because philosophy, unlike the natural sciences, is a fuzzy or imprecise discipline. Nor does he mistakenly conclude from the fact of philosophical disagreements that there are no objective standards by which philosophical disputes can be settled. He believes rather that the roots of

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philosophical controversy lie embedded in genuine and recurring intellectual problems and difﬁculties. It is because philosophical problems are genuine problems that they tend to recur in the history of philosophy, even if in slightly different ways. Hence, for instance, the problem of mind–body dualism appears, in Descartes’ thought, under the rubric of the relationship between res cogitans and res extensa, in Kant’s, as the problem of the relationship between theoretical knowledge and moral reasoning, in the work of neo-Kantians and in Collingwood’s own work, under the guise of the problem of the relationship between the natural and the social sciences. Philosophical problems appear over and over again because they are rooted in mutually exclusive conceptions of reality that govern basic common sense distinctions; they are, therefore, unlikely to disappear as long as such distinctions are part of our conceptual framework. Collingwood’s unacknowledged contribution to the history of philosophy has been that of providing a sustained discussion of the nature of philosophical knowledge and an interesting explanation of why there is a role for philosophical reﬂection even in the face of the decline of traditional metaphysics and the growth of natural science. Collingwood’s defence of the autonomy of philosophical discourse is perhaps more evident in An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM), but if the thesis of this book is correct, this theme is a pervasive feature of Collingwood’s work as a whole.

Notes

1 Collingwood and the metaphysics of experience 1 2 3 4

R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946; revised edition, edited by Jan Van der Dussen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940; revised edition, edited by Rex Martin, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. For an account of the three senses of the term cause see W. H. Dray, ‘Historical Causation and Human Free Will’, University of Toronto Quarterly 29 (1960) and R. Martin, ‘Collingwood on Reasons, Causes and the Explanation of Action’, International Studies in Philosophy 23 (1991). H. J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, London: Muirhead Library of Philosophy, 1936. Strawson ﬁrst introduced the term ‘descriptive’ metaphysics in Individuals, where he contrasts descriptive metaphysics, which is said to be ‘content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world’, with revisionary metaphysics, which is described as being ‘concerned to produce a better structure’ (Individuals, London: Methuen, 1959, p. 9). Collingwood has no such distinction between revisionary and descriptive metaphysics. Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions or as a metaphysics without ontology is contrasted, rather, with metaphysics understood as the science of pure being or of things-in-themselves. R. G. Collingwood, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’, Introduction, 1929, Bodleian Library, Collingwood Dep. 10.

5 6

7 8

9

2 The Kantian heritage of Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics 1 Any comparative study of Kant and Collingwood is riddled with problems not least because of the lack of agreement, within Kantian scholarship, on the precise nature of Kant’s reform of metaphysics. As far as Kant’s theoretical philosophy is concerned, there appear to be two main lines of interpretation that divide on the issue of whether Kant’s transcendental idealism is a purely epistemological thesis or whether there still is an ontological commitment in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Often this interpretative divide goes hand in hand with certain views concerning Kant’s attitude to scepticism.

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2 To my knowledge the Kant scholar who, more than any other, acknowledged this inﬂuence, is W. H. Walsh. See his Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975; Walsh, Reason and Experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947; Walsh, Metaphysics, London: Hutchinson University Library, 1963 and his article ‘Categories’ in R. P. Wolff (ed.), Kant, London: Macmillan, 1968. An argument in support of the view that Collingwood’s method can be ultimately traced back to Kant has been developed by A. J. Watt in ‘Transcendental Arguments and Moral Principles’, Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1975). 3 For the sake of exposition I have assumed that although Collingwood’s thought certainly developed, his understanding of the task of philosophy remained fundamentally the same and that his account of absolute presuppositions in An Essay on Metaphysics (EM) is a further exploration of what, in An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM), Collingwood had referred to as ‘philosophical propositions’ (propositions which are deﬁnitive of domains of inquiry). In this respect I would agree with Rex Martin and Adrian Oldﬁeld that metaphysics is, in the ﬁrst instance, to be deﬁned as a study of the absolute presuppositions of disciplines rather than epochs. On this point see Rex Martin’s ‘Collingwood’s Claim that Metaphysics is a Historical Discipline’ in The Monist 72 (1989), published in a slightly different form in Philosophy, History and Civilization: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on R. G. Collingwood, edited by David Boucher, James Connelly and Tariq Modood, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995 and Adrian Oldﬁeld’s ‘Metaphysics and History in Collingwood’s Thought’ published in the same anthology. I defend Collingwood against the so-called radical conversion hypothesis in Chapter 6 and against the accusation of historicism in Chapter 7. 4 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, London: Macmillan, 1985, translated by Norman Kemp Smith, B xvi, p. 22. 5 I have discussed Collingwood’s account of the presuppositions which govern history and the practical and theoretical sciences of nature in Chapter 1. 6 For Kant’s distinction between an empirical and a transcendental deduction see CPR B118/A86, p. 121. 7 See An Essay on Metaphysics, Part I, Chapter 3. 8 See John Locke’s ‘The Epistle to the Reader’, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Glasgow: Collins, 1981, p. 56. 9 Kant’s anti-Leibnizian point is to be found in CPR A24/B39, p. 68. It is the ﬁrst argument for the transcendental ideality of space given in ‘The Metaphysical Exposition of this Concept’. For an account of Kant’s arguments for the transcendental ideality of space see H. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983, pp. 82–86. I discuss the nature of transcendental arguments further in Chapter 7, section II. 10 Kant, CPR B234–A190/B248–A203, pp. 218–227. 11 Ameriks argues that the main feature of the method employed by Kant in the transcendental deduction lies in the fact that ‘it takes the Critique to accept empirical knowledge as a premise to be regressively explained rather than a conclusion to be established’ (‘The Transcendental Deduction as A Regressive Argument’, Kant Studien 69, 1978). 12 Collingwood acknowledged this circularity by stating that in a philosophical argument the principles put forward in explanation of a form of experience are answerable to that form of experience. He would have probably agreed with the claim made by many other philosophers that such circularity is unavoidable and that far from avoiding it one should ‘leap into the circle’. 13 Collingwood did not, therefore, commit the logical error caricatured in

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18 19

20

21

Notes

Hegel’s discussion of the ‘wise’ resolution of Scholasticus not to enter the water before having learned how to swim. Nor did he think Kant had committed that error. For Hegel’s criticism of Cartesian method see Hegel’s Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, translated by William Wallace and with a foreword by J. N. Findlay, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, nos 10 and 41. For a discussion of Hegel’s critique of that method see K. R. Westphal, Hegel’s Epistemological Realism, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989, pp. 96–97. Descartes outlined his method in Discourse on Method, in Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, selected and translated by Norman Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1952 and in Rules for the Guidance of our Mental Powers, in Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, selected and translated by Norman Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1952. For an account of Cartesian method see L. B. Beck, The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952 and L. B. Beck, The Metaphysics of Descartes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. S. Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, London: Routledge 1999, p. xiii. B. Stroud, ‘Transcendental Arguments’, Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968), pp. 244ff. Kant, CPR A7/B11, p. 48. Whereas there is much support for the ﬁrst line of interpretation, Kant’s text grants some plausibility to the second interpretation when, in the context of his refutation of the ontological argument, he claims that any reasonable person ought to admit that all existential propositions are synthetic (CPR A598/B626, p. 504). Kant, CPR A152/B191, p. 190. A thorough account of the historical context of Kant’s discussion of the analytic/synthetic distinction is to be found in H. E. Allison, The Kant-Eberhard Controversy, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Through an analysis of Kant’s reply to Eberhard, Allison shows how the apparent ambiguity in Kant’s formulation of the analytic/synthetic distinction can be clariﬁed. Eberhard challenged the novelty of Kant’s notion of the synthetic a priori from the perspective of dogmatic or pre-critical rationalism by saying that synthetic a priori knowledge is conceptual although not self-identical knowledge. When confronted with an attempt to reinscribe the analytic–synthetic distinction within the frame of reference of the dogmatic metaphysics which transcendental philosophy undertook to criticise, Kant stated that the predicate in a synthetic judgement could not possibly be derived by means of analysis. Whereas in analytic judgements the concept of the predicate is brought into a relation to another concept, in synthetic judgements the relationship between the predicate and the subject is a real, not a logical or conceptual relation, i.e. the concept of the predicate is related to an object, not to another concept (Allison, pp. 54–55). Another interesting account of the analytic–synthetic distinction is to be found in A. Coffa, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, Chapter 1. His metaphysics is, as Collingwood says, a metaphysics without ontology which makes no existential claims. It is possible to speak of an expansion of knowledge in Collingwood’s case only in the sense of an increased level of sophistication in the awareness of the presuppositions that govern one’s thought. To be precise, it is philosophical propositions, rather than absolute presuppositions, that Collingwood refers to as ‘synthetic a priori’, thereby making an explicit reference to Kant’s theoretical philosophy (in ‘The Collingwood–Ryle Correspondence’, deposited in the Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 26/3). The term ‘absolute presuppositions’ was coined later and would not have been

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23 24

25

26

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part of Collingwood’s philosophical vocabulary in the immediate aftermath of the publication of EPM, when the exchange with Ryle took place. As stated earlier, however, I am, for the purposes of this exposition, assuming that Collingwood conceives of metaphysics as a study of the absolute presuppositions of disciplines, rather than epochs and consequently, that absolute presuppositions, as discussed in EM are comparable, at least to a great extent, with philosophical propositions, as discussed in EPM. I discuss the relationship between EPM and EM in Chapter 6. Collingwood’s discussion of philosophical propositions is to be found in EPM, Chapter 6. A clariﬁcation of his defence of a third class of philosophical propositions in contrast to the logical positivists’ assertion that there are only two kinds of propositions, matters of fact and relations of ideas, is to be found in Collingwood’s private correspondence with Ryle in the context of a discussion about the ontological argument. I discuss the correspondence between Ryle and Collingwood in Chapter 5. Kant, CPR A599/B627, p. 504. In this respect I would disagree with Carr’s characterisation of Collingwood’s metaphysical project in his Metaphysics: An Introduction. Carr distinguishes between metaphysical relativism and metaphysical absolutism on the one hand and between categorial realists and conceptualists on the other. Metaphysical absolutists claim that the fundamental categories involved in our thought and talk about the world do not change in any fundamental ways, whereas metaphysical relativists hold the opposite view. Categorial realists claim that the categories involved in our thought and talk about the world reﬂect the structure of reality, whereas categorial idealists claim the opposite. Aristotle is said by Carr to be a categorial realist, whereas Kant is said to be a categorial idealist. Both Aristotle and Kant are said to be metaphysical absolutists. Collingwood’s metaphysics is said to be relativist in contrast to the metaphysical absolutism of both Aristotle and Kant. In my view, Collingwood’s metaphysics is best understood not as endorsing the distinction between metaphysical absolutism and metaphysical relativism in favour of the latter (as Carr claims), but as rejecting the contrast between categorial realism and categorial idealism. Since, for Collingwood, pure being is not a possible object of knowledge, he rejects the Kantian contrast between epistemically conditioned reality (reality as known by us) and epistemically unconditioned reality (reality as known by an intellectus archetypus). Having denied the distinction between those two, Collingwood leaves no room for the objection that epistemically conditioned knowledge may be defective in comparison to epistemically unconditioned knowledge. See B. Carr, Metaphysics: An Introduction, London: Macmillan Education Ltd, 1987, pp. 6–9. Collingwood’s rejection of the constitutive–regulative distinction amounts to the removal of any possible ontological anchor for knowledge or experience and paves the way for the view that all absolute presuppositions are regulative, i.e. that they are heuristic principles guiding different kinds of investigation. Collingwood’s claim that all absolute presuppositions are regulative does not entail historical relativism. Whereas Collingwood accepted the relativity of presuppositions to subject matter, he did not endorse the view that Carr, among others attributes to him, according to which absolute presuppositions are relative to historical periods. I defend Collingwood against the accusation of historicism and historical relativism in Chapters 6 and 7. This might explain why Collingwood often wavered in his self-representation as either a (Kantian) transcendental idealist or as an (Hegelian) objective idealist. In his (unpublished) ‘Commentary on the Preface to the Critique of

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Pure Reason’, for instance, Collingwood praised transcendental idealism and described Hegel’s post-Kantian ‘phenomenology’ as a backward step in the direction of scholastic philosophy, whereas in EPM he praised Hegel for his rejection of subjective idealism (subjective idealism being a term used by Hegel to describe Kant’s transcendental idealism). Such hesitation in Collingwood’s self-representation as either a Kantian transcendental idealist or as an Hegelian objective idealist may be explained by his desire to overcome the sceptical remainder in Kant’s transcendental philosophy without advocating a form of pre-critical or dogmatic metaphysics. Collingwood’s notes on the preface to Kant’s Critique are to be found in the Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 22/4. 3 Collingwood and the realism–anti-realism debate 1 R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939. 2 Ibid., Chapter 6, p. 44. 3 For an account of Oxford philosophy at the turn of the century see Mathieu Marion’s ‘Oxford Realism: Knowledge and Perception I’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8/2 (2000): 299–338 and its sequel, ‘Oxford Realism: Knowledge and Perception II’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8/3 (2000): 485–519. See also John Passmore’s, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd, London 1966, Chapter 10. 4 H. A. Prichard, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge is the only book that Prichard published during his lifetime. His lectures on the history of early modern philosophy from Descartes to Hume, from which Prichard’s own views on the nature of knowledge and perception can also be gleaned, were posthumously published in Knowledge and Perception: Essays and Lectures, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950. 5 H. A. Prichard, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 82. 6 H. A. Prichard, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, pp. 128ff. 7 Prichard was not the only one to be sceptical about the existence of a genuine distinction between Berkeleyan and Kantian idealism. See, for instance, H. W. B. Joseph ‘A Comparison of Kant’s Idealism with that of Berkeley’, Proceedings of the British Academy 15 (1929): 3–24. 8 H. A. Prichard, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 118. 9 R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, Chapter 6, pp. 44–45. 10 Collingwood’s argument bears a striking resemblance to the one presented by Hegel in the ‘Introduction’ to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Here Hegel argued against the project of knowing the structures of experience independently of an appeal to the experience or knowledge which they make possible, a project that he disparagingly refers to as an instrumental conception of knowledge. In the Phenomenology Hegel claimed that the attempt to know the structures of experience independently of the knowledge or experience that they make possible is question begging. The only way of becoming acquainted with either the instrument or the medium, is to compare reality as it is in itself with reality as it is known through either the instrument or medium. This operation of comparison, however, presupposes knowledge of reality, thereby rendering superﬂuous the attempt to know the instrument or the medium in order to discover in what way they have altered the object (G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, no. 73). 11 R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. 12 Ibid., p. 11.

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13 That Collingwood is working with the notion of an intentional object seems to be clear from his account of re-enactment in The Idea of History (IH). Here Collingwood distinguishes between what he refers to interchangeably as feelings/sensations or mind in its immediacy and to thought or mind in its mediation. Feelings or sensations (mind in its immediacy) for Collingwood are private psychological processes and correspond roughly to Lockean ideas. Thought (mind in its mediation) is public and corresponds roughly to what in phenomenology and the philosophy of mind is referred as the intentional object. I have discussed this aspect of Collingwood’s re-enactment doctrine in ‘R. G. Collingwood on Reenactment and the Identity of Thought’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 38/1 (2000): 87–101 and later in Chapter 9. For Collingwood’s discussion of the distinction between feelings/sensations/mind in its immediacy and thought/mind in its mediation, see IH, Epilegomena and The Principles of Art (PA), p. 158. 14 On Collingwood’s distinction between ‘being’ and ‘pure being’ see G. Vanheeswick, ‘Collingwood’s Metaphysics: No Science of Pure Being, but Still a Science of Being’, International Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1998): 153–174. 15 W. James, Pragmatism, New York: Prometheus Books, 1991, p. 87. 16 W. James, ‘The Dilemma of Determinism’, in J. J. Stuhr (ed.), Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 220. 17 W. James, Pragmatism, p. 41. 18 Ibid., p. 36. 19 I have borrowed this expression from F. B. Farrell, ‘Rorty and Antirealism’, in H. J. Saatkamp Jr (ed.), Rorty and Pragmatism: the Philosopher Responds to his Critics, Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995, p. 159. 20 For R. Rorty’s account of pragmatism see his Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982; Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, vol. III, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 21 See E. Burke, Reﬂections on the Revolution in France, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; ﬁrst published by Dodsley in 1790. 22 This point is clearly stated in The New Leviathan (NL), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942; revised edition, edited and introduced by David Boucher, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, 2.49, p. 11. 23 For an account of normative or criteriological sciences see EM, p. 109 and PA, p. 171. 4 Collingwood’s anti-naturalism 1 B. Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, La Salle, Ill: Open Court, Illinois, 1985, p. 141; ﬁrst published by Open Court in 1918. 2 Locke’s criticism of (allegedly innate) metaphysical principles is to be found in Book I of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. For an account of Locke’s critique of innate knowledge see R. S. Woolhouse, in Locke, Aldershot: Gregg Revivals, 1994, Chapter 1. 3 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, X. 4 Russell made this point by claiming that we ought to distinguish between names and truncated descriptions. ‘Romulus’ or ‘The present King of France’, for Russell, are examples of descriptions rather than names. Expressions such as Romulus have the grammatical appearance of names because they seem to symbolise, but they are just a different way of saying, ‘the person who killed Remus and founded Rome’ (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, pp. 109ff.).

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5 Russell, for instance said, a predicate can never occur except as a predicate. When it seems to occur as a subject, the phrase wants amplifying and explaining, unless, of course, you are talking about the word itself. You must say ‘Red is a predicate’, but then you must have ‘red’ in inverted commas because you are talking about the word ‘red’. When you understand ‘red’ it means you understand propositions of the form ‘x is red’. (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, p. 67) 6 The problem that the logical positivists had in accounting for universals is the result of their commitment to atomism (whether of a logical or ontological nature) and has a distinguished history. Empiricist epistemology has struggled, since the times of Locke, to account for concepts that are general in their very nature. Locke, for instance, attempted to account for how concepts are possible through the process of abstraction from particular ideas and claimed a general idea to be not an idea that is general (e.g. the general idea of man) but a particular idea that is used in a general way (the idea of e.g. Peter, used to denote any other male human). 7 The few references to contemporary debates concern realist philosophers such as Prichard, Joseph and Cook-Wilson. Apart from very rare references to the realist school, EPM gives very little away about the philosophical climate in which it was conceived. 8 Quoted from the methodological introduction to the 1929 ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’, p. 5. These lectures are unpublished and deposited in the Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 10. The introduction to these lectures, rewritten several times in the 1920s, was ultimately detached from the ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’ and published, in a rather extended form, as An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM). 9 The Idea of History, Part V, Epilegomena, no. 1, p. 213. 10 The distinction between the concept of action as an empirical and a priori concept is made quite clearly in The Principles of History (PH) when, in deﬁning the subject matter of history, Collingwood claims: Res Gestae are not actions, in the widest sense of the word, which are done by the species called human; they are actions in another sense of the same word, equally familiar but narrower, actions done by reasonable agents in pursuit of ends determined by their reason. (PH, 46)

11 12 13 14

I discuss the sense in which actions are the subject matter of history in Chapter 8, section I. Methodological Introduction to the 1929 ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’, p. 4. I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by H. J. Paton, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964, Chapter 1. Methodological Introduction to the 1929 ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy’, p. 4. Collingwood’s desire to resist the reduction of concepts to empirical classes clearly emerges from his private epistolary exchange with Ryle where both Ryle (and Russell) are accused of resolving the theory of universals into the theory of classes. Russell receives only a passing mention but what Collingwood says of Ryle could apply, mutatis mutandi, to Russell himself:

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It seems probable, to me, that the fundamental point at issue between us is concerned with the way in which we answer the question ‘what is a universal?’ . . . It looks to me as if, in your logic, this question was answered by saying ‘a universal is a class’; i.e. that whenever we make a statement (assent to a proposition) about ‘all x’ we are really making n statements about the n instances of x which exist. The theory of universals is thus, so to speak resolved into the theory of classes . . . So the question which most fundamentally seems to divide us appears to me to be the question: is a universal simply a class, or is it that which makes the class a class? – where you take the ﬁrst alternative and I the second. (The Collingwood–Ryle correspondence, Collingwood’s letter of 9 May 1935)

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I discuss the Collingwood–Ryle correspondence in Chapter 5 in the context of Collingwood’s account of the ontological proof. Collingwood discusses concepts that can be used equivocally to refer either to a philosophical or to a non-philosophical concept in EPM, pp. 34–35. As an illustration of such equivocal concepts he offers the concept of ‘Mind’ which ‘for the scientist, in this case the psychologist, is the name of one limited class of things outside which lie things of other kinds; for the spiritualistic philosopher, it is a name, perhaps the best and only name, for all reality’ (EPM, 34). It is arguably the conﬂation of the philosophical with the empirical concept of action that encourages the belief that it is possible to have an experimental science of mind. Philosophers such as Mill and Hempel, for instance, ﬁrst reduce the concept of action to the empirical concept of ‘whatever is performed by a human being’ and then claim that what human beings do (as for anything that occurs in nature) can be investigated by the methods of natural science. But whereas such thinkers ( J. S. Mill, C. Hempel and others) may have been correct in thinking that the behaviour of human beings can become an appropriate subject matter for the natural sciences, they failed to see that history and the social sciences at large are not concerned with human deeds but with actions. For Collingwood, any attempt to reduce the social to the natural sciences is based on the conﬂation of a philosophical with an empirical concept such as, e.g. the conﬂation of the concept of ‘action’ with the concept of a ‘human deed’ or of the concept of a ‘rational being’ with the concept of the ‘human being’. It is upon the defence of philosophical concepts and distinctions against the logical positivists’ attempt to reduce them to empirical concepts and distinctions that the possibility of history, as a distinctive discipline with an autonomous domain of inquiry, is based. Indeed, it is upon the defence of non-empirical concepts and distinctions that the possibility of philosophy, whether it is philosophy of history, philosophy of science or philosophy of art, rests. Mill outlined the claim for methodological unity in A System of Logic, Book VI, Chapters 1–5; Hempel outlined his version of the claim for methodological unity in ‘The Function of General Laws in History’, Journal of Philosophy 39 (1942). A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, London, Penguin Books, 1990; ﬁrst published by Victor Gollancz, in 1936. For an account of the historical context in which Language, Truth and Logic was conceived, see Ben Rogers’ A. J. Ayer: A Life, London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. In the course of describing Collingwood’s critical engagement with logical positivism I will often refer to the views of the ‘logical positivists’. Lest I be accused of misrepresenting the thought of any particular philosopher belonging to this school, I should state clearly that it is not my wish to assess the

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validity of the views of any one representative but to single out a set of assumptions to which anyone who deserves the label of logical positivist may be reasonably expected to be committed. 19 For a discussion of the principle of veriﬁcation in the context of Collingwood’s epistemological reform of metaphysics, see Alan R. White, Methods of Metaphysics, London: Croom Helm, 1987, Chapters 7 and 9. 20 For an account of Locke’s notion of a priori knowledge see R. S. Woolhouse, Locke, Aldershot: Gregg Revivals, 1994, Chapter 2. 21 One could, of course, attempt to evade the unattractive implications of the veriﬁcation principle by arguing that philosophical propositions (generalisations in which philosophical concepts are embedded) are tautologies, i.e. by claiming that one can know whether a philosophical proposition is true by analysing the meanings of the words occurring in the position of the grammatical subject and predicate. Such an approach might take care of the unwanted implications of the principle of veriﬁcation, but it only does so at the price of trivialising philosophical knowledge. The suggestion that propositions such as ‘all actions are expressions of thought’ could be veriﬁed and falsiﬁed in the way in which we verify and falsify the proposition ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’ would have been unacceptable to Collingwood who held philosophical knowledge to be a priori but not, for this reason, trivial. 5 Collingwood’s ‘rehabilitation’ of the ontological proof 1 G. Ryle, ‘Mr Collingwood and the Ontological Argument’, Mind 44 (1935): 137–151; reprinted in J. Hick and A. C. McGill (eds), The Many-Faced Argument: Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God, London and Melbourne: Macmillan, 1968. 2 The Collingwood–Ryle correspondence is deposited in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Collingwood Department 26/3. 3 E. Harris, ‘Mr Ryle and the Ontological Argument’, Mind 45 (1936): 474–480. 4 G. Ryle, ‘Back to the Ontological Argument’, Mind 46 (1937): 53–57; reprinted in J. Hick, and A. C. McGill (eds), The Many-Faced Argument. 5 The Collingwood–Ryle correspondence: Ryle’s letter of 21 May 1935. 6 For a sympathetic account of Collingwood’s descriptive metaphysics see L. Rubinoff, Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics: a Study in the Philosophy of Mind, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970. 7 When Ryle attacked Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological proof, Collingwood’s An Essay on Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940, had not yet been published. Therefore, Collingwood’s description of metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions would not have been known to Ryle. 8 For an account of the relationship between epistemology and ontology in Collingwood’s metaphysics, see W. H. Walsh, ‘Collingwood’s Metaphysical Neutralism’ in M. Krausz (ed.) Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. 9 For a survey of the ontological proof see J. Hick and A. C. McGill (eds), The Many-Faced Argument. 10 Collingwood’s interest in the ontological proof stretches from Religion and Philosophy (RPh) (1916) and the unpublished Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God (1919) to An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM) (1933) and An Essay on Metaphysics (EM) (1940). For an account of Collingwood’s treatment of the ontological proof, see J. M. Felser’s ‘R. G. Collingwood’s Early Philosophy of Religion and Its Development’, PhD dissertation, Department of Philosophy, Chicago, Illinois, June 1992, Vol. II,

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Chapter 4. Collingwood’s unpublished Lectures on the Ontological Proof are deposited in the Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 2. In these lectures Collingwood is much more ambiguous about the signiﬁcance of the ontological proof than he is in the epistolary exchange with Ryle following the publication of EPM. The Collingwood–Ryle correspondence, Collingwood’s letter of 9 May 1935. Ibid., Ryle’s letter of 21 May 1935. Ibid. Ibid., Collingwood’s letter of 9 May 1935. In this respect, Collingwood’s rehabilitation of the ontological argument may be said to be compatible with the reasoning that lies behind the most celebrated refutation of it: that of Kant. Kant undermined the ontological proof by arguing that whereas it is a contradiction to deny that triangles have three sides or that God is omnipotent, there is no contradiction in stating that there are no triangles or that there is no God. Despite appearances to the contrary, Collingwood’s defence of the ontological proof in its application to the object of philosophical thought does not contradict Kant’s insight that whereas it is not possible to negate the predicate of an analytic judgement (as in ‘triangles do not have three sides’ or ‘God is not omnipotent’) without uttering a contradiction in terms, it is possible to negate both the subject and the predicate (as in ‘there is no God’ or ‘there are no triangles’) without contradiction. For when Collingwood claims, e.g. that ‘mind exists’, he does not imply that to deny this statement is to utter a contradiction in terms, but rather that it is not possible to practise history without applying the concept of mind and that it is not possible to do natural science without applying the concept of matter. The Collingwood–Ryle correspondence, Collingwood’s letter of 6 June 1935. In EM Collingwood says that whereas metaphysics can take the form of an investigation into what exists for the religious person, the artist, the natural scientist, the historian, it cannot take the form of an investigation of what there is or exists in general, i.e. of ontology or the study of pure being. The concept of pure being, as the end point of the abstractive process, has no determinate content: it is the sheer idea of existence in general. The error of traditional metaphysics was to believe that there could be a presuppositionless study of pure being or epistemically unconditioned knowledge of reality. Collingwood’s defence of metaphysics, therefore, is very different from that recently articulated by Jonathan Lowe in The Possibility of Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. The possibility of metaphysics, for Lowe, is linked to the existence of a certain kind of judgement, i.e. to judgements which are neither logically necessary, and known a priori, nor logically contingent, and known a posteriori, but necessary even though known empirically. ‘Water is H2O’ would be an example of a judgement that expresses metaphysical rather than logical necessity because it is both necessary and knowable empirically. This kind of (metaphysical) necessity lies in the nature of things rather than in the laws of logic (Chapter 1, pp. 13–16).

6 Collingwood and the radical conversion hypothesis 1 See A. Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, Chapter X and his ‘Collingwood and Philosophical Method’, in Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, edited by M. Krausz, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

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2 N. Rotenstreich, ‘Metaphysics and Historicism’, in M. Krausz (ed.), Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. 3 S. Toulmin ascribed to Collingwood the view that the relativity of concepts and attitudes to historical contexts entails historical relativism in ‘Conceptual Change and the Problem of Relativity’, in M. Krausz (ed.), Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, second edition republished Chicago, 1985, pp. 212–213. 4 For a sustained defence of the continuity thesis see James Connelly’s ‘Metaphysics and Method: A Necessary Unity in the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood’, in Storia, Antropologia e Scienze del Linguaggio, 5/1–2 (1990), Bulzoni, ed., Rome. See also Tariq Modood’s ‘The Later Collingwood’s Alleged Historicism and Relativism’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 27 (1989), A. Oldﬁeld’s ‘Metaphysics and History in Collingwood’s Thought’ and R. Martin’s ‘Collingwood’s Claim that Metaphysics is a Historical Discipline’, both in D. Boucher, J. Connelly and T. Modood (eds), Philosophy, History and Civilization: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on R. G. Collingwood, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1995. Other commentators who have discussed the relation between Collingwood’s early and late thought, and rejected Knox’s thesis, include Lionel Rubinoff, Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970 and L. O. Mink, Mind, History and Dialectic, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1969; republished by Middletown, CT, 1987. 5 At the time of writing the editorial Introduction to The Idea of History (IH), Knox had access to the manuscript of The Principles of History (PH). The manuscript went missing after Knox completed the editorial work on IH (some of the manuscript was integrated in the text of IH but substantial parts of it were left out). Knox based his judgement that the later philosophy of Collingwood is historicist and relativist partly on his reading of a manuscript that was not available to Collingwood scholars until recently, when the manuscript of PH was fortuitously discovered in the basement of Oxford University Press. The recent publication of this supposedly lost manuscript has made it possible to see more clearly the nature of Knox’s editorial interventions in the text of IH, in particular which sections of PH were included and which were not. Knox’s interventions are discussed in the Introduction to PH, edited by W. H. Dray and Jan Van der Dussen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. I would concur with Dray’s and Van der Dussen’s view (p. xxiii) that it is difﬁcult to see why Knox should have concluded that the later philosophy of R. G. Collingwood is historicist and relativist on the basis of a reading of The Principles. I would tentatively advance the thesis that the only difference worthy of note between IH and PH is one of emphasis. In PH Collingwood’s emphasis seems to be more on history as a cultural process than on the logical structure of historical explanations. Whereas the concern with history as a cultural process is present in IH, it is more fully developed in PH. It is perhaps the later Collingwood’s interest in a more substantive conception of history (history as a cultural process) rather than in a merely formal conception of history (history as a kind/form of explanation) that led Knox to formulate the view that the later Collingwood fundamentally altered his philosophical outlook. 6 H. Putnam, ‘Why Reason Can’t Be Naturalized’, in Realism and Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 235. I discuss the notion of naturalised epistemology in Chapter 7 where I try to defend Collingwood against the suggestion that in his later (historicist) phase he abandoned the project of traditional, i.e. normative epistemology in favour of a version of epistemological naturalism. 7 This term was coined by L. Rubinoff. The term was originally introduced in

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‘Collingwood and The Radical Conversion Hypothesis’, Dialogue 5/1 (1966). The radical conversion hypothesis was further discussed in Rubinoff’s Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970. See A. Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, Chapter X, pp. 263–265. Metaphysics without ontology is a metaphysics of experience, a study of the conditions of the possibility of experience. Collingwood’s metaphysics of experience is Kantian in origin and should not be confused with dogmatic or pre-critical metaphysics. The latter sought to uncover the nature of things rather than the structures of knowledge. I have explored the relationship between Kant’s and Collingwood’s metaphysics of experience in Chapters 1 and 2. Rotenstreich, ‘Metaphysics and Historicism’, pp. 199–200. Most historicist readings of Collingwood appeal to a particular statement of the doctrine of absolute presuppositions that easily lends itself to such an approach. On p. 47 of EM Collingwood says: To sum up. Metaphysics is the attempt to ﬁnd out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking. Arising out of this, it will consider (for example) whether absolute presuppositions are made singly or in groups, and if the latter, how the groups are organized; whether different absolute presuppositions are made by different individuals or races or nations or classes . . .

My view is that whereas there certainly are historicist moments in Collingwood’s thought, they tend to be a recessive element and Collingwood’s principled position is not ultimately historicist. 12 Collingwood referred to this form of history as scientiﬁc history not because its method resembled that of natural science but, on the contrary, because it is a form of inquiry which is distinct from natural science. This kind of history is said to be scientiﬁc because it has its own domain of inquiry and therefore answers to the original Latin meaning of the word scientia, meaning a systematic body of knowledge with its own method and subject matter. 13 For Collingwood’s account of these three conceptions of history, see Chapter 8, section II. 14 A similar view is presented by Rex Martin in the ‘Introduction’ to the recent edition of EM, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. According to Martin, the presuppositions about the nature of a science can be ordered into a scale of forms in accordance with their progressive phases of development (pp. xliv–xlv). Collingwood’s progressive ordering of different conceptions of history is, for Martin, an instance of a scale of forms. The notion of a ‘scale of forms’ was introduced by Collingwood at least as early as 1924 and was widely used in Speculum Mentis (SM). In his earlier work, especially in SM (but to some extent also in An Essay on Philosophical Method (EPM)), the notion of a scale of forms was used to order different disciplines (religion, natural science and history) hierarchically in accordance with the extent to which the presuppositions that govern such disciplines approach genuine idealist insights. Collingwood gradually abandoned the idea of a hierarchical ordering of disciplines. The notion of a scale of forms becomes, in Collingwood’s later work, a tool to order progressively not different disciplines but different conceptions of the same discipline in accordance with their ability to explain how that particular form of

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knowledge is possible. This is how the notion of a scale of forms is employed in Collingwood’s discussion of different conceptions of history (common sense, scissors-and-paste and scientiﬁc) in IH. Rotenstreich, ‘Metaphysics and Historicism’, p. 187. Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, p. 263. Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, p. 265. The Collingwood–Ryle correspondence, Collingwood’s letter of 9 May 1935.

7 Collingwood and the project of naturalised epistemology 1 A. Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, p. 279. 2 W. V. Quine, ‘Epistemology Naturalized’, in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. 3 For an account of the differences between normative and naturalised epistemology see J. Kim, ‘What is Naturalized Epistemology?’, in J. Toberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 2. Epistemology, Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1988. 4 I have borrowed this distinction from P. F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, 1985. 5 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. 6 The most unambiguous statement of Collingwood’s views on how to understand the relationship between mind and body is to be found in The New Leviathan (NL), where he says: ‘The problem of the relation between body and mind is a bogus problem which cannot be stated without making a false assumption.’ The body–mind relation ‘is the relation between the sciences of body, or natural sciences, and the sciences of mind; that is the relation inquiry into which ought to be substituted for the make-believe inquiry into the make believe problem of “the relation between body and mind”’ The New Leviathan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, edited and with an Introduction by David Boucher, 2.41–2.49, pp. 10–11. 7 P. F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, p. 26. 8 J. Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1957, p. 309. 9 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B38–39/A23–24. 10 Strawson, for instance, thought that transcendental arguments could be employed to defeat scepticism about other minds (Individuals, Chapter 3, p. 106). 11 B. Stroud, ‘Transcendental Arguments’, Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968), pp. 244ff. 12 For an account of the differences between the more and less ambitious versions of transcendental arguments as found respectively in Strawson and Stroud, see A. C. Grayling, The Refutation of Skepticism, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 1985, Chapter 4, especially pp. 82–85. 13 I. Kant, CPR A193–194/B238–239. 14 For an account of the logic of question and answer, see E. Gellner, ‘Thought and Time, or the Reluctant Relativist’, in I. C. Jarvie and J. Agassi (eds), The Devil in Modern Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1974. For Collingwood’s account of the logic of question and answer see EM, especially pp. 23–33. 15 EM was written shortly after the publication of Language, Truth and Logic in 1936. Whereas Collingwood’s attack on logical positivism is not a novel element in his philosophy, in EM, unlike in previous philosophical work, he makes an

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explicit polemical intervention in contemporary debates and, in particular, rejects the logical positivists’ attempt to declare metaphysics dead. 16 Collingwood is unambiguously concerned with establishing the epistemic (rather than the objective) validity of absolute presuppositions and is clear that his metaphysics is a metaphysics without ontology. In this respect absolute presuppositions, for Collingwood, are synthetic a priori only in the rather weak sense that they are explanatorily necessary; they are not synthetic in the sense they establish conclusions that could not be arrived at by means of analysis. Collingwood’s employment of transcendental arguments, therefore, differs in one important respect from the way in which transcendental arguments have been discussed in the debate that began in the 1960s and 1970s. At the forefront of such debates was the question of the contribution that transcendental arguments could make towards the solution of the problem of external world scepticism. By contrast, Collingwood employs transcendental arguments in the context of a purely conceptual inquiry whose aim is not to defeat scepticism concerning the existence of the external world but to clarify the presuppositions on which knowledge rests. 8 The Idea of History as a branch of descriptive metaphysics 1 For a general discussion of Collingwood’s philosophy of history, see W. H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History, London: Hutchinson University Press, 1967, Chapter 3. For more detailed discussions, see R. Martin, Historical Explanation: Re-enactment and Practical Inference, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977, Chapter 3; L. O. Mink, Mind, History and Dialectic, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1969; republished by Middletown, CT., 1987, Chapter 6; A. Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962, Chapter 8; J. Van der Dussen, History as Science: The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff publishers, 1981, Chapter 3 and most of W. H. Dray’s work. 2 It is important to point out that Collingwood does not make any terminological distinction between ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’. Unlike philosophers working in the neo-Kantian tradition, such as Dilthey and Rickhert, he does not reserve the term understanding for the kind of knowing that is appropriate to the social rather than to the natural sciences. Although Collingwood does not terminologically distinguish between understanding and knowledge, he does distinguish conceptually between the two: he points to the conceptual distinction between the domain of inquiry of the social and natural sciences by qualifying the term knowledge, i.e. by speaking, for instance, of ‘historical’ knowledge. 3 Collingwood occasionally refers to the ﬁrst conception of historical knowledge as ‘history in the narrow sense’ and to the second as ‘history in the wider sense’. To the extent that The Idea of History (IH) primarily addresses the question of the relationship between the concept of history and the concept of nature, the focus is ﬁrmly on history in the wider sense. Collingwood, however, is not always very clear about which conception of history he is discussing. The text of IH often slips from one conception to another. I have discussed these different conceptions of history in ‘On Collingwood’s Conceptions of History’, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 7 (2000). 4 On Collingwood’s use of the term ‘history’, see Donagan’s The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, and Martin’s Historical Explanation. Donagan says: when an historian like Collingwood claims the whole of human action as the province of history, social scientists are apt to dismiss his claim as a

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Notes manoeuvre in academic politics: either an attack on the academic position of their own sciences, or as an attempt to bring their work under the academic hegemony of Departments of History. Collingwood’s claim was neither. His sole intention was to show that all the social sciences, so far as they have been fruitful, have employed the same methods as history, and that those methods are neither applications nor anticipations of a putative natural science of human behaviour. (p. 170)

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Rex Martin claims that Collingwood’s historicism designates ‘a philosophical conception, speciﬁcally a conception of the nature of explanatory judgement in social science’ (p. 38). For an account of the experimental method and the early modern attempt to provide a universal science of man as exempliﬁed in Hume’s thought see R. Martin’s Historical Explanation, ‘Introduction’ pp. 23ff. and Chapter 1. See also L. Pompa’s Human Nature and Historical Knowledge: Hume, Hegel and Vico, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, Chapter 1. The role of metaphysical analysis in delineating the domain of inquiry of the ﬁrst-order sciences has been widely, even if indirectly, explored in W. H. Dray’s discussion of Collingwood’s action/event distinction. See for instance, ‘Historical Understanding as Rethinking’, University of Toronto Quarterly 27 (1957); ‘Historical Causation and Human Free Will’, University of Toronto Quarterly 29 (1960); ‘The Historical Explanation of Actions Reconsidered’ in S. Hook (ed.), Philosophy and History, New York: New York University Press, 1963; ‘R. G. Collingwood and the Understanding of Actions in History’ in W. H. Dray’s Perspectives on History, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. See also his History as Re-enactment: R. G. Collingwood’s Idea of History, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. I believe that the account of the relationship between the metaphysics and the philosophy of history developed here is implicit in much of Dray’s work on the action/event distinction, although Dray does not explicitly link Collingwood’s account of action in IH with his conception of philosophy as a form of categorial analysis as expounded in EPM and EM. G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, London: Penguin Books, 1990, pp. 17ff. Collingwood’s philosophy of history has often been criticised for endorsing a Cartesian picture of the mind, according to which mental states are private and accessible only from a ﬁrst-person perspective. The most vocal critic of Collingwood was Gardiner who argued that the re-enactment doctrine rests on a form of intuitionism that credits the historian with para-normal telepathic powers (The Nature of Historical Explanation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952 and ‘The Objects of Historical Knowledge’, Philosophy 27, 1952). Gardiner accuses Collingwood of a literal, non-metaphorical employment of the inside–outside distinction and claims that if the thought that an action expresses is a nonobservable aspect of the agent’s mental life, ‘there must be some other “direct” means of making contact with the agent’s thought’ (‘The Objects of Historical Knowledge’, p. 213) and re-enactment is a kind of intuitive method for knowing the thought of historical agents. Accusations of this kind seem to be the result of a tendency to read Collingwood’s philosophy of history without locating it in the context of his metaphysics. Interpreted in the context of the metaphysics, it is clear that Collingwood’s inside–outside distinction deﬁnes the subject matter of history and of the natural sciences and has nothing to do with a claim concerning the epistemic privacy of mental states. The term ‘re-enactment’, together with Collingwood’s claim that actions have an ‘inside’ that events lack, is probably the main reason why so many

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commentators have dismissed Collingwood’s philosophy of history as premised on an untenable picture of the mind and as presenting an even less tenable method for gaining access to the mental states of others. For this reason I have deliberately attempted to explain Collingwood’s notion of historical explanation without employing that term. The emphasis that commentators have put on re-enactment seems unjustiﬁed given that it is only one of the ways in which Collingwood attempts to illustrate the distinction between explanations in history and in the natural sciences. In his inaugural lecture for the Waynﬂete Professorship in Metaphysical Philosophy delivered in 1945, Ryle appears to acknowledge quite clearly that for Collingwood philosophy is a form of categorial analysis and that the philosophy of history is concerned with the a priori concepts that govern historical understanding. The lecture was subsequently published in G. Ryle, ‘Philosophical Arguments’, Collected Papers, vol. 2, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1990. See p. 195. Collingwood’s discussion of the three senses of the term ‘cause’ was considered in some detail in Chapter 1. W. H. Dray, ‘The Historical Explanation of Actions Reconsidered’, in S. Hook (ed.), Philosophy and History, New York: New York University Press, 1963. The claim that Collingwood’s account of historical explanation is overly intellectualistic takes more than one form. It has been articulated as (i) the objection that since human beings are not perfectly rational they may act irrationally or randomly; as (ii) the claim that since human beings do not have the power of intellectual intuition, their intentions may not necessarily be expressed in their actions, as it is well documented by the phenomenon of unintended consequences; and as (iii) the objection that since human beings are not all powerful they may be forced to act by external circumstances, such as hunger, intimidation, etc., that have nothing to do with rational considerations. For a survey of the objections mentioned above, see W. H. Dray, Philosophy of History, London: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1964, Chapter 2, pp. 12ff. See also Jan Van der Dussen, History as a Science: The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, pp. 88ff. In this account of Collingwood’s conception of historical method and subject matter I have made no reference to Collingwood’s account of the historian as a detective. I have not dealt with this particular aspect of Collingwood’s philosophy of history because I have focused on IH as concerned primarily with providing an answer to the conceptual question: ‘What is historical understanding?’ rather than as a work concerned with answering an epistemological question ‘How can the past be known?’ Those commentators who construe IH as an answer to a methodological rather than a conceptual question, tend to focus not so much on Collingwood’s account of the action/event distinction as on his account of historical evidence. In contrast to the so-called constructionist theory of history, I have presented an interpretation of Collingwood’s Idea of History as a form of categorial analysis and as primarily concerned with conceptual elucidation. The constructionist theory of history has been defended, among others by L. B. Cebick in ‘Collingwood: Action, Re-enactment and Evidence’, Philosophical Forum 2 (1970); M. Nielsen in ‘Re-enactment and Reconstruction in Collingwood’s Philosophy of History’, History and Theory 20 (1981); P. H. Nowell-Smith, ‘The Constructionist Theory of History’ History and Theory 16 (1977) and L. J. Goldstein, ‘Collingwood’s Theory of Historical Knowing’, History and Theory 9 (1970). It also has inspired the work of L. Pompa (‘Truth and Fact in History’, in Substance and Form in History, edited by L. Pompa and W. H. Dray, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981). The constructionist theory of history has been critically discussed by Dray in ‘Was Collingwood

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27 28 29

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an Historical Constructionist?’, Collingwood Studies 1 (1994) and, more recently, in his History as Re-enactment, pp. 264 ff. F. H. Bradley, The Presuppositions of Critical History. All quotations from this text are from the Thoemmes Press, edited and introduced by Guy Stock, Bristol, 1993. Collingwood thought critical history found its full expression in The Presuppositions, and credited Bradley with carrying out a Copernican turn in the philosophy of history because, unlike Hume, Bradley believed the principle of the regularity of nature to be more than a principle of association which pertains to the faculty of imagination. Bradley thought this principle to be a necessary regulative idea for the investigation of nature, thereby giving a Kantian twist to Hume’s psychological theory. On history as an autonomous discipline see J. Van der Dussen’s ‘Collingwood’s Lost Manuscript of The Principles of History (PH)’, History and Theory 36 (1997). D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Book X in Enquiries, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. For an account of Hume’s treatment of miracles in relationship to history see D. F. Norton, ‘History and Philosophy in Hume’s Thought’, in Norton and R. H. Popkin (eds), David Hume: Philosophical Historian, Indianapolis: the Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1965. D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Book X. F. H. Bradley, The Presuppositions of Critical History, p. iii. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 19. For a sympathetic account of Collingwood’s critique of Bradley see L. Rubinoff, ‘The Autonomy of History: Collingwood’s Critique of F. H. Bradley’s Copernican Revolution in Historical Knowledge’, in Philosophy After F. H. Bradley, edited by James Bradley, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996. G. H. Von Wright, Explanation and Understanding, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971, p. 8. For a survey of the literature on the role and nature of generalisations in history see J. Van der Dussen, History as a Science: the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff publishers, 1981, pp. 117ff. There has been a great deal of discussion concerning the role of generalisations in history and whether Collingwood concedes that they have a role in historical explanation. This debate was prompted by the publication of Hempel’s inﬂuential article ‘The Function of General Laws in History’. Here Hempel offered an argument to show that historical explanations have the same logical structure as explanations in the natural sciences. Hempel claimed, ﬁrst, that scientiﬁc explanations are nomological or covering-law explanations: in a nomological explanation the explanandum is deducible from a major premise (a universal law with hypothetical form) and a minor premise (the antecedent conditions). Hempel claimed, second, that explanations in history are not in essence different from scientiﬁc explanations: historical explanations only appear to differ because they are incomplete or mere ‘explanation sketches’. An historical explanation of the kind ‘Dust bowl farmers migrate to California because continual draught and sandstorms render their existence continuously precarious and because California offers much better living conditions’ rests on the unacknowledged universal hypothetical ‘Populations will tend to migrate to regions which offer much better living conditions’. Appeal to such a universal hypothetical will complete the

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sketch and show that historical explanations, once completed, have the structure of scientiﬁc ones, i.e. they appeal to generalisations. In an attempt to counter Hempel’s criticism some commentators have denied that generalisations have any role to play in historical explanation and attributed this view to Collingwood. Collingwood, however, does not deny that generalisations have a role to play in historical explanation. What he claims, rather, is that if historians employ any generalisations, such generalisations will tend to refer to principles or norms that inform the conduct of agents in certain periods of time rather than to empirical laws. For a discussion of the autonomy of history thesis in the wake of Hempel’s claim for methodological unity see L. O. Mink, ‘The Autonomy of Historical Understanding’, A. Donagan, ‘The PopperHempel Theory Reconsidered’ both in Philosophical Analysis and History, W. H. Dray (ed.), New York and London: Harper and Row, 1966. 30 ‘Outlines of a Philosophy of History’ in The Idea of History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; revised edition, with an Introduction by Jan Van der Dussen, p. 475. 9 Collingwood’s philosophy of mind and action 1 See my paper ‘On Collingwood’s Conceptions of History’, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 7 (2000): 45–69. 2 See IH V, Epilegomena 4: History as Re-enactment of Past Experience. 3 I have discussed Collingwood’s account of the criteria for the identity of thought at greater length in ‘R. G. Collingwood on Re-enactment and the Identity of Thought’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 38/1 (2000): 87–101. On this topic see also H. Saari, ‘R. G. Collingwood on the Identity of Thought’, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 28 (1989); J. Van der Dussen, ‘The Philosophical Context of Collingwood’s Re-enactment Theory’, International Studies in Philosophy 27/2 (1995); and F. P. Skagestad, Making Sense of History: the Philosophies of Popper and Collingwood, Oslo, Bergen and Tromsö: Universitetsforlaget, 1975, Chapter 7. 4 For an account of the textbook distinction between qualia and content sentences see J. Kim, Philosophy of Mind, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, p. 13. 5 The thesis that thoughts can be distinguished numerically only to the extent that they are qualitatively different, is to be found, in an inchoate form, in RPh, where Collingwood claimed that one mind ‘is identical with another if it thinks and wills the same things as that other’ (RPh, 116) and that, since the identity of mind consists in the identity of the (intentional) objects of thought, when two persons attend to the same object they have not two minds but one. As he puts it, ‘if two persons think of the same table, they not only share the same thoughts, but even actually have one mind for this moment’ (RPh, 101). It is important to emphasise that Collingwood’s point, however controversially stated, is not to deny the physical boundaries between individuals but to argue that criteria of identity vary in relation to the sort of things to which they are applied. 6 This account of re-enactment differs from the one provided by W. H. Dray in the following respect. Dray’s major concern in his recent book, History as Reenactment: R. G. Collingwood’s Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), and in his previous work on Collingwood, lies with the logical form of re-enactive or historical explanations. My account of re-enactment, on the other hand, focuses not on the logical form of explanation but on the criteria for the identity/non-identity of thought. On my account, Collingwood is

162

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11

12

Notes

assuming (very much like Locke in his discussion of personal identity) that criteria of identity are relative to the kind/sort of thing under consideration and hence that the kind of thing thought is, determines what the appropriate criteria for identifying and distinguishing thoughts are. I believe these two accounts of re-enactment (from the point of view of a discussion of the logical form of historical explanations and from the point of view of criteria for the identity of thought) to be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Dray brieﬂy discusses re-enactment in the context of the criteria of identity of thought in ‘R. G. Collingwood and the Acquaintance Theory of Knowledge’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 11 (1957), especially p. 431. I have defended Collingwood against this criticism in Chapter 8, section I. For an account of the distinction between criteriological and descriptive sciences see PA, p. 171 (note to p. 164). The doings of a madman, therefore, could not be explained historically. In appealing to madness one does not provide an historical explanation but admits, rather, that there is no historical explanation available. This view of the nature of historical explanation is defended by W. H. Dray in Laws and Explanations in History, London: Oxford University Press, 1957 pp. 122ff. and in ‘The Historical Explanation of Actions Reconsidered’ in S. Hook’s (ed.), Philosophy and History, New York: New York University Press, 1963. It is because the project of explanation coincides with that of justification that historical explanations can have predictive power, even if their predictive power is limited and they are not, normally, used to make predictions. What makes such predictions possible, however, is not the observation of a constant conjunction (as in natural science) but the ascription of a practical argument. Although Collingwood refers to historical explanations as causal, in some sense of the term ‘cause’, historical explanations are not causal in the way in which reasons are sometimes said to be causes in contemporary debates in the philosophy of action. In particular, Collingwood’s position should not be confused with the view endorsed by those, like Davidson, who have argued for the view that reasons are causes. In ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, Davidson asks us to consider the differences between two cases. In the ﬁrst someone does something and has a reason for doing it, but does not do it for that reason. For instance Sally goes back home, switches the light on in the bedroom and in doing so alerts a prowler to the fact that she is home. Sally did not know about the presence of the prowler in her house and her intention was to switch on the light to illuminate the room rather than to switch the light on to disturb the prowler. Alerting the prowler could have been a reason for Sally to switch the light on, but it is not the reason why she did it; her reason for switching the light on was to illuminate the room. In this case, Davidson argues, the reason is not the cause of the action. In the second case a person does something, has a reason for doing it, and does it for that reason. For instance, Sally switches the light on because she intends to disturb the prowler. In this case, Davidson argues, the reason is the cause of the action. In the second case causation and explanation are inextricable and this is what Davidson means by the claim that rationalisation (explanation by appeal to beliefs and motives/practical syllogism) is a form of ordinary causal explanation. For Davidson the justiﬁcatory and explanatory role of reasons cannot be equated. As the example shows, to equate them is to fail to distinguish between cases in which an agent has reasons for acting in a certain way from cases in which the agent acts because of those reasons (D. Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, in his Essays on

Notes

13

14 15 16 17

163

Actions and Events, Clarendon Press, 1980; reprinted in A. R. Mele (ed.), The Philosophy of Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. 3–21. Davidson’s model of explanation differs from Collingwood’s because whereas the former questions the legitimacy of linking explanation and justiﬁcation, for the latter, the link between explanation and justiﬁcation is a key feature of historical explanations. For Collingwood historical explanations render intelligible what imperfectly rational beings do by appealing to how they would act if they were fully rational, i.e. by referring to an ideal standard of rationality. Arguably, for Collingwood, to give up on the link between explanation and justiﬁcation would be equivalent to giving up on the view that history is a criteriological science, even if an imperfect one, since it studies not perfectly rational beings but human beings, in so far as they act rationally. Similar, non-causal accounts of action have been developed by W. H. Dray and G. H. von Wright. See in particular Dray’s Laws and Explanation in History, London: Oxford University Press, 1957 and von Wright’s Explanation and Understanding, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1971. A non-causal account of action explanation is also developed by P. F. Strawson, in Analysis and Metaphysics, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. For a review of such criticisms see Chapter 8 and J. Van der Dussen’s History as Science: the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1981, pp. 88ff. U. T. Place, ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, British Journal of Psychology (1956) 47: 44–50. Arguably, Davidson’s anomalous monism is the best-known form of (allegedly) non-reductive physicalism. See for instance his ‘Mental Events’, in his Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. I will not, in the following, explore the issue as to whether the kind of property dualism advocated by supervenience theorists can fulﬁl the promise of a nonreductive physicalism; how, for instance, the general idea that lies at the basis of the supervenience theory (the claim that if two things are physically identical, they must also be psychologically indiscernible) can be reconciled with the view that there are no psychophysical laws connecting certain types of physical events with certain types of mental events. For a sceptical view on the issue of uniting non-reductivism and physicalism see J. Kim, ‘The Myth of Non-reductive Materialism’ in his Supervenience and the Mind, Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

10 Conclusion: Collingwood and the nature of philosophical knowledge 1

The terms ‘linguistic philosophy’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ are often used interchangeably to refer (occasionally in a derogatory manner) to the views of the early Ryle (especially his essay ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’), of Austin (Sense and Sensibilia) and of Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations). For a critical assessment of linguistic philosophy see E. Gellner, Words and Things, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979; and C. W. K. Mundle, A Critique of Linguistic Philosophy, London: Glover and Blair Limited, 1979. For a more recent and less critical account of linguistic philosophy see H. J. Glock, The Rise of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997. In the following I will use the terms ‘linguistic philosophy’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ to describe a philosophical movement that (i) denies that the task of philosophy is to enquire into the ultimate structure of reality thereby deﬁning itself in opposition to traditional metaphysics and (ii) identiﬁes philosophical inquiry with the study of linguistic use rather than with an

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analysis of a priori concepts or categories in the Kantian/Collingwoodian sense outlined in this book. Arguably, linguistic philosophy at its best goes beyond a superﬁcial concern with words and does not advocate a reduction of philosophical to linguistic analysis. Even so I would certainly feel uneasy in describing Wittgenstein as a linguistic or ordinary language philosopher. But I do not wish to enter this debate in the limited space available here.

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Works by R. G. Collingwood cited in the text (1916) (1924) (1933) (1938) (1939) (1940) (1942) (1945) (1946)

(1999)

Religion and Philosophy, London: Macmillan Press. Speculum Mentis, Oxford: Clarendon Press. An Essay on Philosophical Method, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Principles of Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press. An Autobiography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. An Essay on Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press; revised edition, with an introduction by Rex Martin, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. The New Leviathan, Oxford: Clarendon Press; revised edition, edited and introduced by David Boucher, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. The Idea of Nature, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Idea of History, Oxford: Clarendon Press; revised edition, with an Introduction by Jan Van der Dussen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. The Principles of History, edited by W. H. Dray and Jan Van der Dussen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Unpublished manuscripts by R. G. Collingwood referred to in the text (1919)

Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God, Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 2. (1928?) ‘Commentary on the Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason’, Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 22/4. (1929) Introduction to the Lectures on Moral Philosophy, Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 10. (1932) Introduction to the Lectures on Moral Philosophy, Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 7. (1935) The Collingwood–Ryle Correspondence, Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 26/3. (1935) ‘Realism and Idealism’, Bodleian Library, Collingwood dep. 19. For a complete list of the unpublished manuscripts by R. G. Collingwood see C. Dreisbach, R. G. Collingwood: A Bibliographical Checklist, Bowling Green, OH: The Philosophy Documentation Center, 1993.

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Index

absolute presuppositions 146–7n21; An Essay on Metaphysics 26, 65, 72, 82, 88, 155n11; An Essay on Philosophical Method 33; experience 28; logic of question and answer 64–5; metaphysics 46, 68, 155n11; naturalism 91; normative 101; philosophical method 28; propositions 64, 99–100; regulative 147n25; and relative presuppositions 96–7; synthetic a priori 32–3; terminology 63–4; transcendental argument 91, 92–5; unveriﬁability 65, 96–7, 99; validity 31–2, 157n16 absolutism 147n24 acquaintance theory of knowledge 4 actions: anthropocentrism 114; belief 123; causes 18–19; concepts 21, 57, 59, 76, 109, 116, 150n10, 151n16; deeds 57; events 18, 20, 55, 56, 58–9, 60, 108, 110, 136–7, 139, 158–9n9; experience 57–8; explanations 122–3, 125; history 6, 18, 20, 55, 63, 108; mind 72; motives 111–12; noncausal accounts 163n13; philosophy of history 58–9, 76; The Principles of History 113, 150n10; rationality 113–14; social science 157–8n4; thought 20, 63, 71, 113; unclassiﬁable 122; see also philosophy of action aesthetic attributes 137–8 aesthetic judgement 4, 54 agents: historical 110, 127, 128, 135–6; moral responsibility 31 Allison, H. E. 146n19 Ameriks, Karl 27, 145n11 animal kingdom 107–8 Anselm, Saint 68, 77, 85 anti-foundationalism 94

anti-naturalism 139; concepts 21; An Essay on Metaphysics 53, 61–6; An Essay on Philosophical Method 53, 54–61; transcendentals 135 antinomies 3–4, 30, 43 anti-realism 4; correspondence theory of truth 37, 46, 47–8; epistemology 43, 45–6; foundationalism 44; metaphysics 17–18; normativity 51–2; perception theory 44–5; transcendent entities 51–2 anti-representationalism 38 Aristotle 15, 147n24 art 12, 13–14, 17 assumptions 27, 43 An Autobiography 37–8, 42 Ayer, A. J. 2, 61, 156n15 Bacon, Francis 116–17 beauty 4, 53, 54 behaviour 106–7, 111, 113–14, 151n16; see also actions; deeds being 17; An Essay on Metaphysics 34–5; existence 35; Kant 33–4, 35; natural science 23; pure 3, 23, 34–5, 46, 149n14, 153n17 belief 80; actions 123; cognitive psychology 90; Descartes 94, 141; epistemology 90; events 118; foundational 44; Hume 99; Kant 93; metaphysical analysis 100–1; metaphysics 99; presuppositions 97, 98; quid iuris 88; time 84; validation 93 Berkeley, George 26, 39, 40, 44, 148n7 body: see mind/body dualism Boucher, D. 145n3 Bradley, F. H. 116, 118–19, 123, 160n16 brain/mind 136

Index Brutus/Caesar example 109 Burke, E. 49 Carr, B. 147n24 categorial analysis: The Idea of History 103–4; metaphysics 20–1, 22, 109, 125, 138–9; philosophy 142; propositions 70 categorial realists 147n24 Categorical Imperative 13, 108 categories 109, 134, 135–6; see also classiﬁcation causality: actions 18–19; Dray 144n6; An Essay on Metaphysics 18–19, 110–11, 132; history 111, 162–3n12; Hume 130; The Idea of History 111; Kant 29, 94; natural science 18–19 changes, objective/subjective 27 classiﬁcation: categories 134; concepts 58; An Essay on Philosophical Method 14–15, 59; experimental method 105; history 105; metaphysics 138; natural science 56; philosophy 14–15, 57; science 138; see also class overlap doctrine class overlap doctrine 14–15, 55, 58, 61, 82–3, 84 cognition 25, 27 cognitive psychology 7, 90 Collingwood, R. G.: anti-realist 4; British Idealist 24; historical relativist 79; historicist 79, 158n4; objective idealist 147–8n26; ontological monist 126; radical conversion hypothesis 1, 80, 87, 155n7; transcendental idealist 147–8n26; see also terminology Collingwood–Ryle debate 8, 67, 68–9, 74, 150–1n14 complementarity thesis 14 concepts: actions 21, 57, 59, 76, 109, 116, 150n10, 151n16; anti-naturalism 21; a priori 13–14, 19–20, 86–7, 103; classiﬁcation 58; empiricism 58, 60; equivocal 151n15; An Essay on Metaphysics 83; An Essay on Philosophical Method 34, 59, 65–6, 151n15; events 21, 109; experience 18; extensional equivalence 55; history 84, 157n3; Kant 32; moral philosophy 57, 66; natural science 55–6; particulars 17–18; philosophy 55–6, 59–61, 76; reciprocity 40, 110;

173

Russell 54–5; transcendental 58; universals 59 Connelly, James 79, 145n3 consciousness, moral 73 conservatism 49 content sentences 129, 161n4 contradictions 3–4, 43 Cook-Wilson, John 38 Copernican revolution 25, 116, 160n16 correspondence theory of truth 37, 46, 47–8 crime 89–90 critical philosophy 3 cultural relativism 80 Darwin, Charles 48 Davidson, D. 162–3n12 deductive argument 9–10, 93, 94 deeds 57, 106, 107 depth psychology 88, 91, 98 Descartes, René: belief 94, 141; epistemology 89; God 90, 94; Meditations 29, 31, 89; mental 158n8; mind/body dualism 7, 50–1, 133–4, 140, 143; ontological dualism 136; rationalism 28 descriptions 149n4 devil-haunted mountains 120–1, 122 doctor/patient example 40, 41, 96 Donagan, A.: depth psychology 88; on early/late Collingwood 79, 80; historicism 81, 87; history 157–8n4; ontological proof 85; philosophical propositions 84–6; soft naturalism 91 Dray, W. H. 113, 144n6, 161n6 dualism: see mind/body dualism Eberhard, J. A. 146n19 eliminativism 125, 135 empiricism: concepts 58, 60; epistemology 150n6; generalisation 120; Locke 26; propositions 33 epistemology: anti-realism 43, 45–6; beliefs 90; cognition 25; Descartes 89; empiricism 150n6; human nature 104–5; idealism 46; logic 21; naturalised 88, 95, 101, 154n6; normative 95, 154n6; ontology 21, 23, 34–6, 41–2, 152n8; Prichard 38–9; realism 38–9; scepticism 46–7 Essay on Metaphysics, An 1; absolute presuppositions 26, 65, 72, 82, 88, 155n11; anti-naturalism 53, 61–6;

174

Index

Essay on Metaphysics, An continued being 34–5; cause 18–19, 110–11, 132; concepts 83; depth psychology 91; An Essay on Philosophical Method 2, 79; explanation 83; God 77; knowledge 5–6, 15–16, 46; metaphysical analysis 103; metaphysics 153n17; metaphysics without ontology 22–3, 95; naturalism 53, 61–6; ontological proof 87; philosophy 81–2; presuppositions 97; Rotenstreich 80–1; terminology 2, 16, 65–6, 82, 99 Essay on Philosophical Method, An 8; absolute presuppositions 33; antinaturalism 53, 54–61; class overlap doctrine 55; classiﬁcation 14–15, 59; complementarity thesis 14; concepts 34, 59, 65–6, 151n15; An Essay on Metaphysics 2, 79; intellectual climate 54, 55; knowledge 5–6; logic 12–13; naturalism 53, 54–61; ontological proof 72–3, 87; philosophical method 1, 9–13, 103, 143; philosophy 9, 28, 81–2; Rotenstreich 80–1; scale of forms 155n14; Speculum Mentis 79, 80; terminology 2, 26, 65–6, 82, 84 essence/existence 68–9, 73 ethics 51 events: actions 18, 20, 55, 56, 58–9, 60, 108, 110, 136–7, 139, 158–9n9; belief 118; concept 21, 109; history 109; natural science 18, 20, 55, 82, 108 evidence 117–18, 119 existence 35–6, 68–9, 72–3, 75 expedient 15, 55 experience 35; absolute presuppositions 28; actions 57–8; artistic 17; circularity of argument 145n12; concepts 18; generalisations 120–1; historical 17; knowledge 13–14, 16, 26–7, 36; metaphysics 3, 20; metaphysics without ontology 155n9; scientiﬁc 17; universals 4 experimental method 105, 158n5 explanandum/explanans 130, 132, 134, 135, 137 explanation: actions 122–3, 125; common-sense 112; empirical 134–5; An Essay on Metaphysics 83; historical 86, 112–13, 114, 130, 131–2, 159n13, 162n11, 162–3n12; historical science 86; justiﬁcation 131–2; mentalism

130; mind/body 91; natural science 110–11; naturalism 122; rational 113, 114; scientiﬁc history 123–4; social sciences 104; sociological 90; subject matter 83–4; understanding 24 feelings 128–9, 140, 149n13 folk-psychology 112, 135–6 foundationalism 18, 44, 94 freedom 3–4, 40 freedom of will 31 Gardiner, P. 158n8 Gardner, S. 30 Gellner, E. 156n14 generalisations: empiricism 120; experience 120–1; history 160–1n29; laws of 105; logical positivism 63; natural science 110; veriﬁcation principle 62–3 genetic science 91 geology 56, 57 geometry 10–11 ghost in the machine 110 God: Descartes 90, 94; An Essay on Metaphysics 77; Kant 33–4; ontological proof 33–4, 68, 71–2, 85–6, 153n15 good 14–15, 17 Harris, Errol 67 Hegel, G. W. F. 67, 107, 146n13, 148n10, 148n26 Hempel, C. 151n16, 160–1n29 Herodotus 115–16 historian 110, 127, 128, 135–6, 159n14 historical agents 110, 127, 128, 135–6 historical relativism 79–80, 88, 91 historicism 79–81, 87, 88, 91, 158n4 historiography, applied 108 history 12, 157–8n4; actions 6, 18, 20, 55, 63, 108; a priori concepts 13–14, 19–20, 103; causality 111, 162–3n12; classification 105; common sense 84, 115–16; concepts 84, 157n3; criteriological 137; critical 117, 118–19; domain of inquiry 113–14, 123, 126; events 109; evidence 117–18, 119; experience 17; explanations 86, 112–13, 114, 130, 131–2, 159n13, 162–3n12, 162n11; generalisation 160–1n29; Hume 117; The Idea of History 84, 157n3; knowledge 104–5, 106, 157n3;

Index methods 105, 159n14; mind 33, 46, 49–50, 69, 86, 105, 120, 142; natural science 130; nature 123; normative 131; presuppositions 6; rationality 6, 108; reality 106; scientia 133, 137, 155n12; scientific 84, 116–17, 123–4, 155n12; scissors-and-paste 84, 115, 116, 119, 120, 121, 122; statements 72, 116, 119, 121; subject matter 56–7, 115, 124, 159n14; thought 114; understanding 6, 121–2, 159n14; see also The Idea of History; philosophy of history; The Principles of History Hobbes, Thomas 49 human beings 56, 107, 130–1; see also agents; behaviour; deeds human nature 104–5, 151n16 Hume, David: belief 99; cause 130; history 117; soft naturalism 98, 101; A Treatise of Human Nature 90 Hume’s fork 33, 69 Idea of History, The 1, 13; a priori principles 13, 19–20, 103, 104–5; categorial analysis 103–4; causality 111; descriptive metaphysics 124; explanandum/explanans 134; historical reasoning 108–9; history 84, 157n3; Introduction 79; knowledge 104, 106; Knox 79, 154n5; mental 127; presuppositions 19–20; psychologistic reading 111; subject matter of history 56–7; understanding 6, 24, 115, 159n14 Idea of Nature, The 13 idealism: Berkeley 26, 39, 40, 148n7; epistemology 46; German 54; Hegel 67; Kant 147n24, 147–8n26, 148n7; knowledge/reality 40; transcendental 26, 29–30, 39, 41–2, 144[Ch2]n1, 147–8n26 ideas 27, 45, 149n13 identity 92, 128–9, 136, 161n5, 162n6 inference 9–10, 11–12 instrumentalism 48, 49 intentionalism 111, 149n13 intentionality 45, 132, 133; see also objects, intentional interactionism, psychophysical 134 intuitionism 158n8, 159n13 James, W. 47

175

Joseph, H. W. B. 38 judgements: aesthetic 4, 54; ampliative 32; analytic 146n19; false 118; moral 35, 73; synthetic 146n19; synthetic a priori 32 justiﬁcation 101–2, 131–2, 139 Kant, Immanuel 94, 144n1, 147n24; being 33–4, 35; belief 93; Categorical Imperative 13, 108; causality 27, 94; conceptual knowledge 32; critical philosophy 3; Critique of Pure Reason 25, 27, 29–30, 92; God 33–4; Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals 57–8, 108; idealism 147n24, 147–8n26, 148n7; knowledge 141; Leibniz 31, 145n9; metaphysics 2, 20, 26; ontological proof 153n15; practical/moral reasoning 3; psychologism 27; space 27, 31; transcendental argument 88, 89, 92, 101; transcendental idealism 26, 29–30, 39, 41–2, 144[Ch2]n1; transcendental philosophy 35; understanding 26, 108; universals 4 Kim, J. 161n4, 163n17 knowledge: acquaintance theory 4; analytic 146n19; a priori 62, 152n20; cognition 27; common sense 141; An Essay on Metaphysics 5–6, 15–16, 46; An Essay on Philosophical Method 5–6; existence 35–6; experience 13–14, 16, 26–7, 36; historical 104–5, 106, 157n3; The Idea of History 104, 106; idealism 40; innate 149n2; Kant 141; Locke 62, 149n2, 152n20; nonempirical 25; non-relational 39; order of 75; philosophical 7, 44, 74–5, 141; Plato 141; practical 3–4; presuppositions 3; principles 15–16; quid iuris/de facto 6; realism 37–8, 42–3; reasoning 143; reﬂexive 75; science 22, 46; self-knowledge 18; sociology of 7, 79–80; synthetic a priori 32, 146n19; understanding 157n2; validity 5–6 Knox, Malcolm 79, 84, 154n5 language acquisition example 21 Lectures on Moral Philosophy 8, 21 Leibniz, Gottfried W. 25, 31, 92, 145n9 linguistic philosophy 141, 163–4n1

176

Index

Locke, John: empiricism 26; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 54; ideas 27, 45, 149n13; knowledge 62, 149n2, 152n20; neo-empiricism 54; perception 38; personal identity 128, 162n6; realism 39, 41–2; social contract 49 logic 12–13, 21, 64–5, 131, 156n14 logical positivism 151–2n18; generalisations 63; logic of question and answer 64, 156n14; metaphysics 26, 31; propositions 33, 62, 100, 147n22; universals 150n6; veriﬁcation 61–2, 99–100 Lowe, Jonathan 153n18 Marion, Mathieu 148n3 Martin, Rex 79, 145n3, 155n14, 158n4, 158n5 matter: mind 86, 142; natural science 33, 50, 69, 142 mentalism 127, 129–30, 136, 137–8, 158n8 metaphysical analysis 100–1, 103, 158n6 metaphysics: absolute presuppositions 25, 46, 68, 155n11; anti-realism 17–18; being 34–5; belief 99; categorial analysis 20–1, 22, 109, 125, 138–9; classiﬁcation 138; descriptive 2–3, 6, 20, 63–4, 124, 144n8; An Essay on Metaphysics 153n17; of experience 3, 20; Kantian 2, 20, 26; logical positivism 26, 31; Lowe 153n18; naturalised epistemology 88; neoempiricism 4–5, 60–1; normativity 73; philosophy of history 103; Plato 50, 52; pragmatism 47; pre-critical 68; presuppositions 16–17, 83, 96, 97–8; pseudo-problems 49; rationalist 25; realist philosophers 4; reality 3; reform of 22, 24–5, 29, 68, 76–8, 80–1; relativistic/absolute 147n24; Russell 54, 59; things-in-themselves 3, 22; without ontology 16–17, 22–3, 87, 95, 101, 146n20, 155n9 Mill, John Stuart 151n16 mind: actions 72; and brain 136; history 33, 46, 49–50, 69, 86, 105, 120, 142; matter 86, 142; natural science 105, 141; The New Leviathan 125, 156n6; philosophy of history 109–10; see also mentalism; mind/body dualism; philosophy of mind

Mind 67 mind/body dualism 49; Descartes 7, 50–1, 133–4, 140, 143; explanations 91; natural science 105, 141; The New Leviathan 125, 156n6 Modood, Tariq 79, 145n3 moral philosophy 131; concepts 57, 66; existence 72–3; justiﬁcation 139; normativity 73; property 89–90; right 113 moral responsibility 31, 40, 110 morality 57, 110 motives 111–12, 132, 133 names/descriptions 149n4 natural history 14 natural science 12, 17; being 23; cause 18–19; classiﬁcation 56; concepts 55–6; empirical 51; events 18, 20, 55, 82, 108; explanation 110–11; history 130; matter 33, 50, 69, 142; mind/body 105, 141; observation/generalisation 110; reality 23, 106 naturalism: absolute presuppositions 91; An Essay on Metaphysics 53, 61–6; An Essay on Philosophical Method 53, 54–61; explanation 122; hard/soft 90–1, 98, 101; realism 53; see also antinaturalism; epistemology, naturalised nature 123 neo-empiricism 2; Locke 54; metaphysics 4–5, 60–1; propositions 63–4; Russell 2, 58, 61 neurophysiology 135 New Leviathan, The 125, 156n6 non-reductivism 137 normativity: absolute presuppositions 101; anti-realism 51–2; epistemology 95, 154n6; ethics 51; history 131; metaphysics 73; philosophy 12, 37, 51–2 objectivity/subjectivity 45 objects, intentional 40–1, 45, 149n13 observation 10, 82, 105, 110 Oldﬁeld, Adrian 79, 145n3 ontological dualism 136 ontological proof 72, 75–6; Collingwood–Ryle debate 8, 68–9; Donagan 85; An Essay on Metaphysics 87; An Essay on Philosophical Method 72–3, 87; God 33–4, 68, 71–2, 85–6,

Index 153n15; Kant 153n15; Rotenstreich 85; Ryle 67–8, 73–4, 75 ontology 21; being 34–5; epistemology 21, 23, 34–6, 41–2, 152n8; monist 126, 138; physicalist 138; realism 38, 39 ordinary language philosophy 141, 163–4n1 Oxford philosophy 38, 148n3 pain 127–8 particulars 17–18, 59, 69–70, 76 Passmore, J. 91 pathologist example 97, 98 Paton, H. J. 20 perception theory 38, 44–5 philosophy 1, 7, 9, 142–3, 145n11; categorial analysis 142; classiﬁcation 14–15, 57; concepts 55–6, 59–61, 76; An Essay on Metaphysics 81–2; An Essay on Philosophical Method 9, 28, 81–2; foundationalism 18; history of 23; knowledge 7, 44, 74–5, 141; linguistic 141, 163–4n1; methods 1, 9–13, 27–8, 29, 103, 143; normative 12, 37, 51–2; Oxford 38, 148n3; presuppositions 16; propositions 39, 69–70, 71, 74, 82, 84–6, 145n3, 146–7n21, 147n22; science 28, 82–3; second order activity 69, 72, 82; Socratic principle 10, 11–12, 29; see also moral philosophy philosophy of action 135, 138, 162–3n12 philosophy of history 24; actions 58–9, 76; descriptive metaphysics 6; metaphysics 103; mind 109–10; philosophy of mind 126–7; terminology 110 philosophy of mind 7, 125, 126–7, 135, 138 physicalism 90, 137, 138, 163n17 Place, U. T. 136 Plato 50, 52, 128, 141 Platonic forms 4, 50, 59 pleasant 15, 55 poverty 89–90, 139 pragmatism 47–9, 149n20 predicates 150n5 presuppositions: assumptions 27; belief 97, 98; An Essay on Metaphysics 97; freedom 3–4; history 6; The Idea of History 19–20; knowledge 3;

177

metaphysics 16–17, 83, 96–8; philosophy 16; propositions 95–6; relative 96–7; science 155n14; see also absolute presuppositions Prichard, H. A. 38–42, 148n4 principles: knowledge 15–16; a priori 10, 13, 19–20, 103, 104–5 Principles of Art, The 13 Principles of History, The 107, 113, 150n10, 154n5 property ownership 89–90 propositions: absolute presuppositions 64, 99–100; categorial analysis 70; categorical/universal 70; empiricism 33; existential 67–8; hypothetical 33; logical positivism 33, 62, 100, 147n22; neo-empiricism 63–4; particular 69–70; philosophical 33, 69–71, 74, 82, 84, 86, 145n3, 146–7n21, 147n22; presuppositions 95–6; Ryle 70–1; synthetic a priori 33, 75, 146n21; universal 33; universal/particular 69–70 pseudo-history 115 pseudo-problems 49, 134 psychologism 27, 29, 88 psychology 7, 88, 91, 98, 111 Putnam, Hilary 80, 154n6 qualia 129, 161n4 question and answer logic 64, 156n14 Quine, W. V. 89, 101 radical conversion hypothesis 1, 80, 87, 155n7 rationalism 25, 28 rationality: actions 113–14; behaviour 113–14; explanation 113, 114; historical agents 135–6; history 6, 108; human beings 56; partial 130–1; reality 106–7 realism 4, 7; assumptions 43; An Autobiography 37–8; epistemology 38–9; indirect 41–2; knowledge 37–8, 42–3; Locke 39, 41–2; naturalism 53; ontology 38, 39; Oxford philosophy 38; perception theory 38; tertium quid 39 reality 3; history 106; history of philosophy 23; idealism 40; justiﬁcation 101–2; metaphysics 3; natural science 23, 106; objects 45; rationality 106–7; thought 36

178

Index

reason 3, 122; see also rationality reasoning: historical 108–9; knowledge 143; practical/moral 3 reciprocity 40, 110 reductionism 125, 135–7 re-enactment 6, 110, 140–1, 149n13, 158–9n9, 161–2n6 relativism: cultural 80; historical 79–80, 88, 91; metaphysical 147n24; presuppositions 96–7 Religion and Philosophy 161n5 reversibility thesis 10–12 right 15, 55, 113 Rorty, Richard 48–9, 149n20 Rotenstreich, N. 79, 80–1, 84–6, 87 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 49 Rubinoff, L. 154–5n7 Russell, Bertrand: concepts 54–5; metaphysics 54, 59; names/descriptions 149n4; neoempiricism 2, 58, 61; predicates 150n5; universals 55, 150–1n14 Ryle, Gilbert 8, 159n10; ghost in the machine 110; ontological proof 67–8, 73–5; propositions 70–1; universals 71, 150–1n14; see also Collingwood–Ryle debate scepticism 7, 30–1, 46–7, 90, 144[Ch2]n1 Scholasticus 146n13 science 10–11, 138; a priori principles 13–14; experience 17; historical 86, 111; knowledge 22, 46; philosophy 28, 82–3; presuppositions 155n14; theoretical/practical 19; see also natural science sciences of mind 46, 131 scientia 133, 137, 155n12 scientism 103 self-knowledge 18 sensations 128–9, 140, 149n13 social contract theorists 49 social science 104, 157–8n4 sociology 51 sociology of knowledge 7, 79–80 Socratic principle 10–12, 29 space 27–8, 31, 92, 94 spatio-temporal properties 129 Speculum Mentis 45, 79, 80, 85, 155n14 statements: history 116, 119, 121; truth 116, 119; understanding 119–20

Strawson, P. F. 20, 91, 144n8 Stroud, Barry 30, 92–3 subjectivity/objectivity 45 superstition 120–2 supervenience theorists 137–8, 163n17 tautology 62, 100, 152n21 teleology 48 terminology: absolute presuppositions 63–4; An Essay on Metaphysics 2, 16, 65–6, 82, 99; An Essay on Philosophical Method 2, 26, 65–6, 82, 84; philosophy of history 110 testimony 119 things-in-themselves 3, 22, 30 thought: actions 20, 63, 71, 113; feelings/sensations 128–9, 140; historian 127, 128; historical agents 110, 127; history 114; numerical distinction 161n5; object 45; pain 127–8; public 128; reality 36; time/space 129 Thucydides 115–16 time 84, 129 Toulmin, S. 79 transcendence 51–2, 66 transcendental argument: absolute presuppositions 91, 92–5; Kant 88, 89, 92, 101; validation 93–4 transcendental idealism 26, 29–30, 39, 41–2, 144[Ch2]n1, 147–8n26 transcendental philosophy 29, 35, 53 transcendentals 53, 58, 135 truth: correspondence 37, 46, 47–8; instrumentalism 49; pragmatism 47–8; statements 116, 119 understanding: explanation 24; historical 6, 121–2, 159n14; The Idea of History 6, 24, 115, 159n14; Kant 26, 108; knowledge 157n2; statements 119–20 uniformity 123 universals 70–1; concepts 59; Kant 4; logical positivism 150n6; particulars 69–70, 76; Russell 55, 150–1n14; Ryle 71, 150–1n14 validation 5–6, 31–2, 93–4, 157n16 Van der Dussen, J. 161n3 veriﬁcation principle 29, 152n19, 152n21; absolute presuppositions 65,

Index 96–7, 99; generalisations 62–3; logical positivism 31, 61–2, 99–100 Vico, Giambattista 116 Von Wright, G. H. 122

White, Alan R. 152n19 Wolff, C. von 25 Woolhouse, R. S. 152n20

179

Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Real Metaphysics (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Ineffability and Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Trust and Toleration (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

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Ineffability and Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Trust and Toleration (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Laws in Nature (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy

The Scotch Metaphysics: A Century of Enlightenment in Scotland (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Philosophy)

The Story of Analytic Philosophy: Plot and Heroes (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Philosophy and the Vision of Language (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

The Analytic Turn: Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Aesthetic Order: A Philosophy of Order, Beauty and Art (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

The Philosophy of Time: Time before Times (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

Philosophy of Mathematics in the Twentieth Century

Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy

Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy

Transformations in Twentieth Century Korea (Routledge Advances in Korean Studies)

Descartes' Natural Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth Century Philosophy)

French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century

The Problem in Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Pierre Bayle's Cartesian Metaphysics: Rediscovering Early Modern Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy)

Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century

Anglophone Jewish Literatures (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)

Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy)

Subjects of Experience (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

Subjects of Experience (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

Philosophy After Postmodernism: Civilized Values and the Scope of Knowledge (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy, 16)

Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning and Knowledge (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

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