R. G. Collingwood

Robin George Collingwood (February 22, 1889 - January 9, 1943), British philosopher and historian and son of W. G. Collingwood. Collingwood was a latter day idealist (though he disliked the label), a Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Important influences were the Italian Idealists of the time, Croce, Gentile and de Ruggiero, the last of whom in particular was a close friend as well. Collingwood is most famous for The Idea of History, a work collated soon after his death from various sources by his pupil, T.M. Knox. Despite its mixed genesis, the book came to be a major inspiration for postwar analytic philosophy of history in the Anglophone world. Moreover, Collingwood's work here was also admired by Hans-Georg Gadamer, who discussed it in Truth and Method and wrote the introduction to the German translation of Collingwood's Autobiography.

Related Topics:
February 22 - 1889 - January 9 - 1943 - W. G. Collingwood - Idealist - Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy - University of Oxford - Croce - Gentile - Hans-Georg Gadamer

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In aesthetics, Collingwood argued for an expressivist theory, following Croce in identifying art with language. He portrayed art as an inherently collective and social activity, and attacked the creeping commercialisation of it in a manner not wholly disimilar to Adorno. That said, in politics Collingwood was an ardent liberal (in a British, centrist sense), ever-ready to defend an arguably over-idealised image of nineteenth-century liberal practice.

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Aside from his philosophical interests, Collingwood was also a serious historian and archaeologist of Roman Britain, a leading authority on the subject indeed in his own time.

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