Blackwell Reference Online

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British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist; from 1935 Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics at Magdalen College, Oxford. As a philosopher, Collingwood disassociated himself from the realism and positivism of his colleagues, and in aesthetics pursued a course that drew on the work of Giambattista Vico, Benedetto Croce, and others. Besides his contributions to aesthetics, Collingwood is known especially for his work on philosophy of history, and he wrote extensively as well in metaphysics, philosophical method, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and politics. There is some controversy as to whether there is an essential continuity or discontinuity in the course of his philosophical career, which spans 15 published books. This question colors one's reading of his contributions to specific philosophical topics (see bibliography). Regarding mind as an activity rather than an entity, Collingwood's works may be viewed as an extended account of different types of mental activities or forms of experience. In his Speculum Mentis , he argues against the view that knowledge should be pursued in terms of delineable domains of inquiry, and emphasizes the essential unity of mind by charting the relations between its forms of experience: art, religion, science, history, and philosophy. These forms are not exhaustive, for Collingwood allows the possibility that others might yet develop ... log in or subscribe to read full text