ABSTRACT
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
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.
