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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
The relation between Collingwood and Hegel has been mentioned very often but so far it has seldom been the subject of a thorough inquiry. Collingwood himself is for a large part responsible for this situation because he never expressed his debts to Hegel's philosophy. In the Idea of Nature and in the Idea of History, both published posthumously, Collingwood confines himself to a critical account of Hegel's philosophy of nature and history. The quality of Collingwood's interpretations in both works however, leads one to suspect that Collingwood had a very profound knowledge of Hegel's philosophy. This suspicion is confirmed by Collingwood's manuscripts in the Bodleian Library which show clearly that Collingwood studied Hegel much more thoroughly and continuously than his interpreters have assumed so far. In the manuscripts we find long and profound commentaries on Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, on his Science of Logic and on all parts of the Encyclopedia. The material in the Bodleian is so abundant that a whole book would be needed to interpret it satisfactorily. In this paper, however, I will restrict myself to the kernel of the Hegel's and Collingwood's philosophies which is the dialectic.
It needs no comment that Hegel's system is thoroughly dialectical. About the dialectical character of Collingwood's philosophy, however, many interpreters have their doubts and even when they admit, always after long discussion, that some parts of Collingwood's thought are dialectical, they immediately claim that these parts are not the best.
1 The most important contributions are: Harris, E E, “Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument” in Mind, 45 (1936), pp 474–480 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Collingwood's Treatment of the Ontological Argument and the Categorical Universal” in Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R G Collingwood, Ed Krausz, M, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1972), pp 113–33Google Scholar. Harris, H S, Introduction to his translation of G Gentile Genesis and Structure of Society, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1960, pp 14–20 Google Scholar. Rubinoff, L, Collingwood and the Reform of Metaphysics, Toronto, 1970 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mink, L, Mind, History and Dialectic, The Philosophy of RG Collingwood, Bloomington, 1969 Google Scholar.
I wish to thank both Professor E.E. Harris and Professor H.S. Harris for discussing this paper with me. Furthermore, I wish to thank the members of the Dutch Collingwood Society and in particular Herman Simissen for discussing an earlier draft of this paper.
2 I will refer to Collingwood's major works, all published at the Clarendon Press in the following conventional manner: Speculum Mentis, 1924 as SM. An Essay on Philosophical Method, 1933 as EPM. The Idea of Nature, 1945, as IN. Principles of Art, 1938, as PA The Idea of History, 1993 (new edition), as IH. An Autobiography, 1939 as Aut. The New Leviathan, 1992, (new edition) as NL. To the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library I will refer by the deposit number as DEP.
3 Letter from Collingwood to de Ruggiero, 2 October 1920. Bodleian Library DEP 27.
4 DEP 29 p 34
5 DEP 16.1
6 Letter from Collingwood to de Ruggiero, 16 September 1920. DEP 27.
7 Smith, T, “R G Collingwood: ‘This Ring of Thought’: Notes on Early Influences”, in Collingwood Studies, vol 1, 1994 p 30–31 Google Scholar.
8 I will show this in Collingwood and the Italian Connection, to be published by Brill, Leiden.
9 My interpretion of the Actualist reforms is based on H S Harris, Gentile's Reform of the Hegelian Dialectic, in Enciclopedia ′76-′77, Il pensiero di Giovanni Gentile, pp 474-480 and on G de Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea, Laterza, Bari, 1912. English translation by A H Hannay and R G Collingwood, Modern Philosophy, Allen and Unwin, London, 1921 pp 337-340.
10 de Ruggiero, G, Modern Philosophy, p 337 Google Scholar.
11 Notes towards a Metaphysic B, DEP 18/4 p 9.
12 Collingwood, Libellus de Generatione, DEP 28, p 1.
13 Collingwood, idem, DEP 28, p 47.
14 Collingwood, Lectures on the Ontological Proof, DEP 2
15 DEP 2, pl.
16 DEP 2, p 74.
17 DEP 2, p 76.
18 DEP 2, ρ 75.
19 Cited in van der Dussen, W J, History as a Science, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1981, p 129 Google Scholar.
20 DEP 16/2.
21 DEP 16/2 p 2. Comment on Hegel's Encyclopedia paragraph 3.
22 DEP 16/2 p 2.
23 See for example his defense of Hegel's dialectic against Croce's criticism (IH 118-9).
24 In “What Civilization Means” (1939-40) appendix 2 to the new edition of The New Leviathan Collingwood expounds the moral implications of these views.