ABSTRACT
The essays in this book attest to the flourishing of philosophical reflection on community, metaphysics, and idealism. But, as Leslie Armour has argued, philosophy cannot be divided into discrete, ‘atomic,’ subfields. Not only do ethical and political questions require a historical contextualization and a metaphysical grounding, but metaphysics itself rests on certain social and logical grounds. When idealists, such as Leslie Armour, hold that philosophy cannot be done piecemeal, and that enquiries must be pursued as they lead from one topic to another, it is important to recognize that this includes putting philosophical ideas into practice. James Connolly has recently noted this concerning R. G. Collingwood’s work—that, because of problems with the meaning of the term and because of the criticisms of his idealist teachers and predecessors, Collingwood went to great pains to deny that he was an idealist.
