Paul Hirst's 'forms of knowledge' thesis has been the subject of much discussion and debate in educational circles. Hirst's claim that such forms exist is not original but, as R. S. Peters claimed, his account is distinctive in its application to the school curriculum. This paper calls for a revision of Peters's claim on the grounds that R. G. Collingwood's writings on the forms of experience not only refer to the school curriculum, but also point (...) up an explicitly educational agenda. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 232-233 [Access article in PDF] Giuseppina D'Oro. Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xi + 179. Cloth, $80.00. There is a resurgence of interest in Collingwood among philosophers and political theorists in the English-speaking world. One of the scholars leading this resurgence is Giuseppina D'Oro, whose fine monograph on Collingwood's metaphysics and (...) epistemology appears in the series "Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy." D'Oro's prose is lucid and tightly argued: her analyses of the problems that concerned Collingwood, as well as her reinterpretations and supporting arguments, are a thoughtful model of clarity.Collingwood is generally ignored except by philosophers of art and history; D'Oro aims to reassess Collingwood's important metaphysical and epistemological views and raise awareness of them. Arguing that, when not ignored, these aspects of Collingwood's philosophy often have been misinterpreted, D'Oro supplies a reconstruction and defense of Collingwood's conception of philosophical thought. Admirably and insightfully, she contextualizes his concerns within the past three centuries of philosophy and also within influential contemporary discussions (addressing, for example, relationships to Locke, Hume, Kant, Prichard, Russell, Ryle, Ayer, James, Rorty, and Quine). D'Oro demonstrates that Collingwood provides crucial contributions to both the history of philosophy and contemporary debates.For D'Oro, Collingwood's key text is his An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933), which is concerned with the proper subject matter, method, and task of philosophy. This work, [End Page 232] with its distinction between philosophical and empirical concepts, introduces into Collingwood's metaphysics the Kantian element that D'Oro emphasizes to support her original interpretation. Collingwood's metaphysics, like Kant's, is described as a "descriptive metaphysics" or "metaphysics of experience" (2-3) which was intended to reform, not jettison, metaphysics. Conceptual rather than ontological, Collingwood's metaphysics is an epistemological project that reveals not the "structure of reality," but the "structure of experience" (2). According to Collingwood, all knowledge is based on presuppositions and conditioned by them; thus, metaphysics cannot be a presuppositionless "study of pure being" (3) or things-in-themselves. Rather, Collingwood's Kantian metaphysics aims to uncover the absolute presuppositions behind various aspects of experience, presuppositions that ground or make possible diverse forms of knowledge and that structure different domains of inquiry. D'Oro here argues intriguingly against a view of much Collingwood scholarship: that for the later Collingwood of An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), metaphysics is the study of the historically relative presuppositions adopted by diverse people of different historical eras or epochs, i.e., metaphysics entails historical relativism. Instead, D'Oro contends, metaphysics for Collingwood is the second-order study of the absolute presuppositons that provide the conditions for the possibility of disciplinary knowledge. Furthermore, she argues, this metaphysical view is consistent with An Essay on Philosophical Method. Contra some commentators, there is no "early" and "late" Collingwood, and the notion that he ultimately experienced a "radical conversion" (79) to historical relativism is false.Collingwood's metaphysics of experience entails that domains of inquiry such as art, religion, natural science, and history are governed by distinct presuppositions or a priori principles and thus provide complementary, not competing, accounts of reality. Hence, history deals with actions and presupposes that their causes are freely chosen reasons or motives; natural science deals with events and presupposes that they are caused by empirical regularities in nature. These presuppositional distinctions are philosophical and conceptual rather than empirical, and different areas of knowledge may address the same empirical objects in different ways.This truncated summary hardly does justice to the rich totality of D'Oro's book, much of which provocatively works out the implications of her reinterpretation. Among other things, she defends Collingwood against metaphysical realism, neo-empiricism, and logical positivism; addresses his idiosyncratic "'rehabilitation' of the ontological proof" (67); argues against the common view that his philosophy of history promotes "re-enactment" as a methodological procedure for historical practice; and explores his non-dualist and non-physicalist resolution of the mind/body problem.Perhaps... (shrink)

In Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience, Guiseppina D'Oro gives a compelling case for the position that Collingwood's philosophical project is a form of descriptive metaphysics in the Kantian critical mode. For D'Oro, the unity of Collingwood's thought as a whole is not due to a particular problem Collingwood is treating, or even to the theme of history. Rather, she believes 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". It is Collingwood's practice of philosophy in the neo-Kantian critical mode that unifies his early and later work. Under the umbrella of this theme, D'Oro discusses Collingwood's understanding of metaphysics, his attempt to find a via media between realism and idealism, his rehabilitation of the ontological argument, his supposed historicism, and his philosophy of history. The central texts that occupy the majority of D'Oro's reflection are Collingwood's Essay on Philosophical Method and Essay on Metaphysics. This focus is refreshing in that both texts are more subtle and meatier philosophical achievements than the popular Idea of History, and the contents of both are largely unknown to the wider philosophical community. (shrink)

Collingwood and Hegel R. G. Collingwood was a lonely thinker. Begrudgingly admired by some and bludgeoned by others, he failed to train a single disciple, just as he failed to communicate to the reading public his vision of the unity of experience. This failure stands in stark contrast to the success of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who won many disciples to a very similar point-of-view and whose influence on subsequent thought, having been rediscovered since 1920, has not (...) yet been adequately explored. Collingwood and Hegel share three fundamental similarities: both men held overwhelming admiration of the Greeks, both possessed uniquely broad knowledge of academic controversies of their day, and both were inalterably convinced that human experience consti tutes a single whole. If experts find Collingwood's vision of wholeness less satisfactory than Hegel's, much of the fault lies in the atmosphere in which Col lingwood labored. Oxford in the 1920'S and 1930's, sceptical and specialized, was not the enthusiastic Heidelberg and Berlin of 1816 to 183I. What is important in Collingwood is not that he fell short of Hegel but that working under adverse conditions he came so elose. Indeed those unfamiliar with Hegel will find in Collingwood's early works, especially in Speculum M entis, a useful introduction to the great German. (shrink)

The purpose of the work is to show that two recent philosophers whose views are in many respects divergent, R g collingwood and ludwig wittgenstein, Are in basic agreement with respect to the primary task of philosophy, Which is to search for liberating vision through accurate description of the multiple forms of life and experience and their relations. Detailed comparison is made of their views of experience, Language, Metaphysics, And religion. The underlying understanding of the task (...) of philosophy which they share is commended as relevant to current discussion. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between religion and history in the writings of R.G. Collingwood, Michael Oakeshott, and Clement C. J. Webb. Focussing principally on the early work of Collingwood and of Oakeshott and the later work of Webb, the paper shows that for all three philosophers the development of historical understanding in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had important religious implications. While many of their British Idealist predecessors and contemporaries had responded to the 'higher criticism' (...) of the Bible by constructing speculative philosophies of history, Collingwood, Oakeshott and Webb understood history to be a genuine form of understanding that could not be so easily translated into other terms. Where Collingwood and Webb sought to integrate history with other expressions of mind, Oakeshott insisted on separating the various 'modes of experience'. The effect of this is to insulate religion from historical criticism but also, from the perspective of Collingwood and Webb, potentially undermine it by isolating it from ultimate truth. (shrink)

Most early modern philosophers held that our emotions are always passions: to experience an emotion is to undergo something rather than to do something. Spinoza is different; he holds that our emotions – what he calls our ‘affects’ – can be actions rather than passions. Moreover, we can convert a passive affect into an active one simply by forming a clear and distinct idea of it. This theory is difficult to understand. I defend the interpretation R.G. Collingwood gives (...) of it in his book, The Principles of Art. An affect, it turns out, is passive when it is ambiguous whether we or somebody else is the subject of the affect. An affect is active when we fully accept the affect as our own. Here, I outline Collingwood's interpretation and then develop it further. (shrink)

In this, Gentile's inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Pisa in 1914, he describes his approach to and conception of history. The opening sections of the lecture display a more personal and relaxed, at times effusive side to Gentile's writing as he praises his former teachers, offering readers some insight into his influences and his view of his own philosophical project. In the later sections, he turns to the technical question of how we, as concrete subjects living, thinking and (...) acting in the eternal present, can make sense of the past, which is, by definition, outside the compass of our actual, present thinking. Despite the difficulty of the problem Gentile addresses--a difficulty increased, one suspects, by his habit of expressing questions and answers in his own specialist vocabulary--the lecture form enables him to relax his usual abstruse style, showing us something of himself as a teacher as well as a philosopher. (shrink)

Collingwood's... descendants... will be engaged in conceptual analysis not unlike other modern forms of conceptual analysis but not so isolated, in principle and in practice, from the panorama of the human past, from the rich diversity of contemporary cultures, and from the perplexities of individual experience in art, religion, the privacies of thought, and the publicity of action. They will search out the a priori elements in experience and the empirical genesis of thought. They may try, (...) although they will surely fail, to make the scope of philosophy as wide as life itself, and this attempt would at least be not unwelcome in a time when some of the descendants of Socrates try, although they too will fail, to make the scope of philosophy as narrow as an academic department. Louis O. Mink. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 717-733 [Access article in PDF] The Voice of Poetry in the Thought of Michael Oakeshott Efraim Podoksik The British philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) is mostly known as a political thinker of conservative persuasion, and his general philosophy is usually analyzed only in connection with the social and political aspects of his thought, with most attention being paid to his discussion of (...) practical wisdom, rationalism, and tradition. 1 Yet social theory and politics were by no means Oakeshott's only preoccupation. Among the subjects of his books and essays are philosophies of history, science, and aesthetics. 2 A close look at these writings exposes a different Oakeshott, not a conservative defender of the importance of practice and tradition but a radical thinker familiar with the trends of his own time and deeply influenced by them.Among those philosophies aesthetics is perhaps the most obscure one. Indeed, the significance of aesthetics for Oakeshott is readily recognized by commentators. His thought is often portrayed as having a strong aesthetic dimension. Thus, the influence of the Renaissance and Romanticism on his worldview is emphasized, he is sometimes compared with European existentialists, and one commentator even described his life as "poetic, not prosaic." 3 But, there [End Page 717] are relatively few studies outlining the development of Oakeshott's aesthetic theory. 4 These are usually found in short chapters in general surveys of Oakeshott's philosophy. Thus, W. H. Greenleaf analyzes Oakeshott's theory of aesthetics in the context of the idealistic tradition exemplified by Hegel, Croce, and Collingwood; Robert Grant discusses and rejects what he sees as the deceptive parallels between Oakeshott and the Bloomsbury group, and Andrew Sullivan argues that an aesthetic dimension is present in Oakeshott's concepts of practice and politics. 5Reasons for this neglect may lie in the fact that Oakeshott wrote little about aesthetics and that he was very ambiguous in his views on the character of this form of human experience. He formulated his views on science and history relatively early and never departed from them afterwards. These are first presented in the philosophical treatise Experience and Its Modes (1933).By contrast, it took him a long time to elaborate a coherent theory of aesthetics. It appears only in the essay "The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind," first published in 1959. This theory, however, occupies a central place in Oakeshott's mature philosophy as he radically defends "poetry" as one of the independent worldviews which constitute the character of modern experience. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of Oakeshott's view of the autonomy of aesthetic experience within its intellectual context.Oakeshott's interest in art is visible in his early publications in which he tends to recognize the independent character of aesthetic experience. He makes clear the attitude towards art he is defending in his first student article which discusses the character of Shylock in Shakespeare's drama. Oakeshott is attracted by Shakespeare's ability to describe a villain as a character and by his capacity for sympathy for a personality, some of whose traits he may have loathed. That such sympathy does not imply any absolute moral standard makes Shakespeare's description more profound, for "life is more complex than to foster heroes and villains of the conventional type." 6Oakeshott is opposed to the vulgar moralization of art and argues that the artist is able to present a deeper and more complex view of life whereall characters "have some intrinsic value of their own." 7 In the inter-war period in [End Page 718] which artists were often demanded to serve one or another social cause this position was not as commonplace as it is now. Oakeshott aligned himself with thetrend usually called "aestheticism" in England or l'art pour l'art in France, which had been at the peak of its influence at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century and, while still quite popular in the twenties, was being... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 13-31 [Access article in PDF] A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Computer Art Holle Humphries Before the computer is accepted unquestioningly as a legitimate artistic medium, some of the challenging aesthetic and philosophical issues raised by [computer art] must be solved. The most haunting questions concern the impact of the technology on the artist, the creative process, and the nature of (...) art. 1How might we lead students in an exploration of the philosophical issues regarding art created with a computer? The most important step is first to guide them in exploring ontological concepts and questions asked about the nature of art and computer art, before investigating related issues of epistemology, value, and criticism. Students need to understand the nature of their art tool and medium of choice. Therefore, it becomes a matter of concern to discover that when discussing and writing about computer art, students sometimes use such terms interchangeably as "computer art" and "computer-generated art," when they are not synonymous, and talk about "virtual reality" as though engaging in any activity that involves a computer constitutes experiencing one. It is clear that this problem arises because many have not paused to examine the nature of computer art within the context of the process and product of art, and the subtle nuances regarding what might distinguish each from other human enterprise. To help clarify their thinking, we might use the foundation of art theory and the strategy of philosophical inquiry, implemented by adopting questioning strategies, to guide students through an exploration of the ontological nature of computer art. This can begin by launching the question: "What is the nature of art — or computer art?" Philosophy of Art: "What is the Nature of Art?" Many philosophers have attempted to describe or define the nature of art formulated in a theory of art. A theory of art attempts to specify where the essence of art is thought to reside, or what exactly art's essence is. [End Page 13]The imitation theory, initiated in the 5th century B.C. by Plato, held that to be a work of art, an object must mirror reality. 2 As this theory placed the essence of art in the objective properties of the art work itself, we consider the imitation theory to be object-centered or objective in nature. Similarly, with his formalist theory of art, Clive Bell claimed that the essence of art lies in the object — within the structural design properties of a work of art. To qualify as a work of art, an object must exhibit significant form. Significant form consists of certain formal properties such as the art elements of lines and color combined in a particular way according to art principles, all used to create certain forms and relations of forms. 3The expression theories of art shifted attention to the artist and audience and thus are considered subject centered, or subjective, bound up in notions of the experience of creation by the artist and/or the response of the audience. Benedetto Croce asserted that a work of art resides in the mind of the artist. An artist must experience an intuition, and it is this mental process that constitutes art, not the object which the artist might create thereafter. 4 Robin Collingwood claimed that art is an exploration, clarification, and expression of an artist's emotion, made clear to an audience through a medium. 5 Leo Tolstoy believed that art should be a vehicle by which the emotion experienced by the artist at the time of creation is transmitted to an audience, so that the audience can experience that emotion as well. 6Morris Weitz asserted that none of these theories capture an essence of art because they are either too broad, too narrow, or else are circular. He claimed that the concept of art cannot be limited to one essence delimited in a definition. Weitz suggested that we must instead look at what theories of art have to say is important about art so that we know what to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 13-31 [Access article in PDF] A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Computer Art Holle Humphries Before the computer is accepted unquestioningly as a legitimate artistic medium, some of the challenging aesthetic and philosophical issues raised by [computer art] must be solved. The most haunting questions concern the impact of the technology on the artist, the creative process, and the nature of (...) art. 1How might we lead students in an exploration of the philosophical issues regarding art created with a computer? The most important step is first to guide them in exploring ontological concepts and questions asked about the nature of art and computer art, before investigating related issues of epistemology, value, and criticism. Students need to understand the nature of their art tool and medium of choice. Therefore, it becomes a matter of concern to discover that when discussing and writing about computer art, students sometimes use such terms interchangeably as "computer art" and "computer-generated art," when they are not synonymous, and talk about "virtual reality" as though engaging in any activity that involves a computer constitutes experiencing one. It is clear that this problem arises because many have not paused to examine the nature of computer art within the context of the process and product of art, and the subtle nuances regarding what might distinguish each from other human enterprise. To help clarify their thinking, we might use the foundation of art theory and the strategy of philosophical inquiry, implemented by adopting questioning strategies, to guide students through an exploration of the ontological nature of computer art. This can begin by launching the question: "What is the nature of art — or computer art?" Philosophy of Art: "What is the Nature of Art?" Many philosophers have attempted to describe or define the nature of art formulated in a theory of art. A theory of art attempts to specify where the essence of art is thought to reside, or what exactly art's essence is. [End Page 13]The imitation theory, initiated in the 5th century B.C. by Plato, held that to be a work of art, an object must mirror reality. 2 As this theory placed the essence of art in the objective properties of the art work itself, we consider the imitation theory to be object-centered or objective in nature. Similarly, with his formalist theory of art, Clive Bell claimed that the essence of art lies in the object — within the structural design properties of a work of art. To qualify as a work of art, an object must exhibit significant form. Significant form consists of certain formal properties such as the art elements of lines and color combined in a particular way according to art principles, all used to create certain forms and relations of forms. 3The expression theories of art shifted attention to the artist and audience and thus are considered subject centered, or subjective, bound up in notions of the experience of creation by the artist and/or the response of the audience. Benedetto Croce asserted that a work of art resides in the mind of the artist. An artist must experience an intuition, and it is this mental process that constitutes art, not the object which the artist might create thereafter. 4 Robin Collingwood claimed that art is an exploration, clarification, and expression of an artist's emotion, made clear to an audience through a medium. 5 Leo Tolstoy believed that art should be a vehicle by which the emotion experienced by the artist at the time of creation is transmitted to an audience, so that the audience can experience that emotion as well. 6Morris Weitz asserted that none of these theories capture an essence of art because they are either too broad, too narrow, or else are circular. He claimed that the concept of art cannot be limited to one essence delimited in a definition. Weitz suggested that we must instead look at what theories of art have to say is important about art so that we know what to... (shrink)

Bradley's essay, first published in 1874, is considered the earliest significant application of British idealism to philosophy of history and an exemplar of Anglo-American analytical philosophy of history. The editor of the present edition goes much further. He credits Bradley with being one of the chief sources of the twentieth-century idea of history and more particularly, of Collingwood's expression of that idea. Rubinoff makes out a good case for the identity between Collingwood and Bradley. Collingwood's concept of (...) history as the re-enactment of past thought has its counterpart in Bradley's "identification of consciousness," and Collingwood's idea of history as an attempt to organize the thought of the past into a dynamically developing scale of forms parallels Bradley's theory of reality as a concrete universal which appears in finite centers. Bradley evidently had no knowledge of Dilthey, yet his reactions to history were essentially the same. Both viewed history as an autonomous discipline requiring its own methodology, and both rejected the "dehumanized" approach of positivism, on the one hand, and the relativism and skepticism of primitive historicism on the other hand. Similarly, both had recourse to the concept of re-experience of past experience by the historian. The line from Bradley to Collingwood is clear enough. What seems cloudy is Rubinoff's claim that Dilthey lapsed back into positivism by presupposing the uniformity of human nature as the ground for understanding self and others, while Bradley escaped this lapse by making the historian the criterion of historical knowledge. It seems more accurate to describe Dilthey's concept as the continuity of human nature, not its uniformity. Uniformity would suggest that primitive man could understand modern society. Dilthey could hardly have been suggesting such a possibility! And, clearly, Bradley's concept of the historian as criterion of historical knowledge is only comprehensible within the framework of the continuity of human nature.--H. B. (shrink)

R. G. Collingwood's theory of re-enactment has long been understood as an important contribution to the philosophy of history. It has also been challenging to understand how re-enactment is operationalized in the practice of understanding past actors or, indeed, other minds occupying less remote regions of our experiences. Sebastian Rödl has recently articulated a compelling defence of second person ascription, arguing that it is, in form, analogous to first person understanding. By Rödl's lights, second person understanding follows the same (...) order of reason as its first person counterpart. In this paper I argue that Rödl's case for second person understanding, and its relationship to the first person point of view, is at once compelling in its own right but also helpful in explaining how re-enactment may be operationalized. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Introducing AestheticsJames McRaeIntroducing Aesthetics. By David E. W. Fenner. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 170.David E. W. Fenner's Introducing Aesthetics offers a comprehensive introduction to the major traditions of Western aesthetics. Fenner confines his study to Western aesthetics and does not address the aesthetic traditions of Asian philosophy. This is not, by any means, a limitation, as this restriction of scope makes Fenner's work more concise and readily (...) accessible to those unfamiliar with aesthetics.Fenner divides his book into four parts: "Experiences," "Objects and Events," "Meaning," and "Judgment." Part 1 discusses the meaning and scope of the term "aesthetic" and analyzes the significance of "aesthetic experiences" and "aesthetic properties." Here, Fenner also explains the notion of aesthetic attitude as it is understood from the traditional perspective of disinterest (which includes thinkers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Stolnitz) and from modern points of view (such as Bullough's psychical distance and Aldrich's impressionistic vision).Part 2 contains three chapters, which discuss the nature of aesthetic objects, the definition of "art," and the concept of creation and re-creation. The chapter that explores the definition of "art" provides a succinct explanation of the major traditions of aesthetics and art criticism: the Greek notions of imitation and representation (with sections on Plato and Aristotle), Romanticism (including Schopenhauer and Nietzsche), Expressionism (focusing on Tolstoy, Croce, and Collingwood), Formalism (particularly Moore and Bell), Anti-Essentialism (which includes Wittgenstein and Weitz), and a final section concerning perspectives on the art world (from theorists such as Danto and Dickie). The final chapter, on creation and re-creation, discusses the nature of creativity and the essential differences between fakes, forgeries, and reproductions.Part 3 is devoted to an exploration of the meaning of art. The first chapter of this section concerns the problem of art interpretation and discusses such issues as the educated viewer, the intentional fallacy, and the possibility of a pluralism of artistic interpretations. The second chapter deals with censorship and examines various approaches to balancing the freedom of artistic expression with the moral concerns of society.In Part 4, Fenner examines the theme of artistic judgment. The first chapter of this section analyzes three traditional approaches to defining the term "beauty": formalism, subjectivism, and naturalism. This chapter includes summaries of the aesthetic theories of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Dewey, to name but a few. The final chapter is devoted to a discussion of art criticism. Here, Fenner gives a detailed description of the four aspects of critical review (description, information, interpretation, evaluation) and explores the various challenges raised against the very possibility of criticism (such as emotivism). [End Page 515]Because of the clarity of its presentation and the quality of its scholarship, this book would serve well as a text for either introductory or upper-division undergraduate philosophy classes. One of the more useful features of Fenner's book is an extensive appendix that presents the history of Western aesthetics in outline form. Here, the ideas of the most important movements and philosophers of Western aesthetics are neatly summarized and presented in a chronology that clearly illustrates the historical shift in trends of thought and patterns of influence. This appendix would be an indispensable study guide for graduate students who are preparing for comprehensive examinations in the history of aesthetics. [End Page 516]Copyright © 2006 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)