This article argues that toleration understood as the principled restraint from the use of force is an instance of RG. Collingwood's 'ideal of civility' towards which liberalism as the process of civilisation aspires. In the first part of this article, Toleration as Civility, I draw on Collingwood's philosophy to provide an account of toleration as an instance of civility embodying self-respect, historical consciousness, and complete freedom of the will. Accordingly, the limits of toleration are conceived as necessarily informed by the (...) level of civilisation in society, and relativism in such limits in society is part of the dynamic of the process of civilisation towards a universal ideal, and not an end state in itself. In the second part, Toleration and 'Absolute Presuppositions', it will be shown that Collingwood's theory of atonement and his assertion of the Christian roots of liberalism supports a view of toleration as a moral 'attitude' which captures the elements of atonement (those being punishment, forgiveness, love and hope), and highlights the relevance of Collingwood's theory of 'absolute presuppositions' to contemporary issues in political philosophy. (shrink)

His final verdict, after an exhaustive study, runs as follows.

Heidegger through Hegel's "Phenomenology of Mind" from the absolute beginning and returns the absolute prerequisite for the analysis, while abandoning Hegel skillfully expounded his own view of hermeneutics, in particular related to the limited and infinite nature of the relationship, the meaning of existence and there are other issues, for we understand the "Phenomenology of Mind", to understand Heidegger's own thinking and in philosophical method, as well as between the two thinkers and critical internal succession relations are very (...) instructive. (shrink)

Vasso Kindi examines, first, whether Collingwood’s logic of question and answer, which was to replace the symbolic logic of the logical positivists, does indeed bear similarities to Bacon’s and Kant’s use of questions, as Collingwood claims. She argues that Collingwood’s emphasis on questions is more similar to Kant’s concern with presuppositions that make knowledge possible than to Bacon’s interest in pursuing and questioning nature to divulge her secrets. She, then, explains how Collingwood’s emphasis on questions is tied to his (...) view that propositions are not abstract entities with intrinsic meaning in isolation from the network of presuppositions in which they are embedded. Finally, she suggests that the metaphysician’s task, according to Collingwood, is to ‘excavate’ different complexes of questions and answers until the absolute presuppositions which govern them are reached. It is this historical methodology that gives Collingwood’s metaphysics its distinctive character. (shrink)

While there are good reasons to think that Hegel would not engage with modern scepticism in the Science of Logic, this article argues that he nevertheless does so in a way that informs the text's conception of logic as the latter pertains to metaphysics. Hegel engages with modern scepticism's general concerns that philosophy should begin without unexamined presuppositions and should come to attain not only knowledge of truth, but corresponding second-order knowledge: knowledge of knowing truth. These concerns inform two (...) needs that Hegel formulates for first philosophy, which logic—by unifying with metaphysics, which is traditionally synonymous with first philosophy—is to satisfy. However, logic, for the Logic, is unified with metaphysics as a science of absolute knowing, the form of thinking involved in traditional metaphysics. As such, logic, for the Logic, is neither anti-metaphysical nor reducible to metaphysics, but is rather a science of metaphysical thinking, which, for Hegel, includes metaphysics. The article emphasizes how Hegel's construal of logic as a science of absolute knowing avoids running into the ‘swimming problem’ that Hegel raises against, broadly, epistemological forms of first philosophy. (shrink)

In general, the ultimate end is the end beyond which there can be no further end. However, almost all the ultimate ends considered so far— “a man’s ultimate end”, “humanity’s ultimate end”, “the ultimate end of the universe”, and so on—are relative, in that they can in fact have a further end. Additionally, many of the ideas are based on dubious presuppositions such as teleology. Can there, then, be a meaningful idea of the absolute ultimate end without dubious (...) presuppositions, beyond which there can never be any further end? And if so, what will it be like? This paper, by raising such questions, suggests a possible study of the absolute ultimate end, which has never been attempted before, at least explicitly. At first, the classic ideas of the ultimate end and modern criticisms of them are surveyed; then, postulates for the concept of the absolute ultimate end are presented. Next, a definition of the absolute ultimate end is presented, and it is argued that the idea of AUE is not based on dubious presuppositions, and that AUE is the strongest meaningful ultimate end. Further, it is suggested that a study of AUE would be highly metaphysical—or even mystical—in character. Lastly, the possible relationships between us human and AUE are suggested. (shrink)

Raymond Plant argues that Hegel’s philosophy "has as its centre and as its presupposition that profoundly moral humanistic concern for the fate of man, his religion and his society in the modern world which characterized his very earliest work." In order to add plausibility to the claim that Hegel’s philosophy is best understood as, "a response to certain problems in social and political experience," Plant devotes more than half of his book to a discussion of Hegel’s early writings where those (...) concerns most clearly dominate Hegel’s thought. Some of the early works surely become more intelligible when interpreted as efforts toward the overcoming of individual and social division. Plant makes good sense of Das Leben Jesu, a work that has otherwise been either curiously ignored as by Lukács and Knox, or rendered as a strange Kantianizing of Christ. Nor can one gainsay Plant’s contribution in uncovering the possible importance of Steuart’s An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. Rosenkranz tells us that Hegel read Steuart’s work and took extensive notes, now lost. Plant reviews Steuart’s work and points out interesting if problematic anticipations of Hegel’s ideas on historical development. Yet with all this said in favor of Plant’s scholarship the question remains: do we gain a better understanding of Hegel’s mature system by beginning with Plant’s politically oriented premises? (shrink)

An argument that what is usually dismissed as the “mystical shell” of Hegel's thought—the concept of absolute knowledge—is actually its most “rational kernel.” This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel's system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel's radicalism is located precisely at the point where his thought seems to regress most. Most current readings try to update Hegel's thought by pruning back his grandiose claims to “absolute knowing.” Comay and Ruda (...) invert this deflationary gesture by inflating what seems to be most trivial: the absolute is grasped only in the minutiae of its most mundane appearances. Reading Hegel without presupposition, without eliminating anything in advance or making any decision about what is essential and what is inessential, what is living and what is dead, they explore his presentation of the absolute to the letter. The Dash is organized around a pair of seemingly innocuous details. Hegel punctuates strangely. He ends the Phenomenology of Spirit with a dash, and he begins the Science of Logic with a dash. This distinctive punctuation reveals an ambiguity at the heart of absolute knowing. The dash combines hesitation and acceleration. Its orientation is simultaneously retrospective and prospective. It both holds back and propels. It severs and connects. It demurs and insists. It interrupts and prolongs. It generates nonsequiturs and produces explanations. It leads in all directions: continuation, deviation, meaningless termination. This challenges every cliché about the Hegelian dialectic as a machine of uninterrupted teleological progress. The dialectical movement is, rather, structured by intermittency, interruption, hesitation, blockage, abruption, and random, unpredictable change—a rhythm that displays all the vicissitudes of the Freudian drive. (shrink)

I argue that monarchies, in any possible form (absolute or constitutional), should be abolished once and for all. This is because of the deeply immoral presuppositions such a system of government upholds (implicitly or explicitly). Call this _‘the moral argument against monarchy’_. I identify three basic moral principles that monarchy by definition breaches: ‘the basic moral equality principle’, ‘the basic dignity principle’ and ‘the basic moral desert principle’. Finally, I examine and reply to three objections, including the common (...) objection that constitutional monarchy should not be abolished because it is pragmatically useful. (shrink)

The generalizing methods of philosophies achieve a popularity for a period of time, which may be extended or brief, during which their proponents and even their opponents may regard them as the cognitive presuppositions for the epoch. The same effect is achieved by the more exact scientific methodologies as they find fame outside the scientific circle and are treated by some as omnipotent discoveries with powers to heal all other disciplines which may be ailing. The limping disciplines, generally classified (...) among the humanities and discerned to be in trouble since the nineteenth century, are understandably envious of the seemingly invincible, favored scientific children of our time. For our era tends to worship quantifiable data and the principles and instruments for measuring and conceptualizing it. Thus semiotics and information theory, in hopes of acquiring the status of the sciences, have led aesthetic inquiry toward the currently popular scientism; but the limited cognitive scope of this methodology has not been recognized. Sociology of knowledge, however, forewarns us of the winds of fashion on cognitive paradigms. Where the inherent explanatory scope of a doctrine, system, or method is less than is believed according to the prevailing sociological patterns, a correction will eventually set in. And an important factor in overcoming the para-religious claims will be, precisely, the fundamental antinomical tendency of the human mind. Stefan Morawski, Research Professor at the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has lectured throughout the United States and is currently teaching at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. His works have appeared in a variety of languages: Marxism and Aesthetics: History of Ideas has been published in Spanish and Italian; Absolute and Form, in Polish, Italian, and French; and, in English, Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. (shrink)

The three presumptions that Hegel’s idealism further develops or radicalises Kant’s transcendental idealism, that their respective versions of idealism are linked by Kant’s account of self-positing (Selbstsetzungslehre) in the late opus postumum and that the basic model of Hegel’s early idealism holds also for his mature system are wide-spread and largely unexamined. This paper examines several problems confronting these presumptions, including Hegel’s refutation of the basic premises of Kant’s transcendental idealism and Transzendentalphilosophie in the late opus postumum (§2), Hegel’s critical (...) rejection of intellectual intuition because it cannot escape Pyrrhonian scepticism (§3), and his critical rejection of the deductivist ideal of scientia, which undergirds Kant’s transcendental idealism and his late Transzendentalphilosophie (§4), the highly un-Kantian principles of Hegel’s mature idealism (§5) and finally Hegel’s thorough and incisive critique in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit of common philosophical views, concepts and presuppositions, including those which undergird the three presumptions noted above (§6). To understand properly Hegel’s philosophy of nature and hence also his philosophical system requires abandoning those three presumptions. (shrink)

Collingwood wrote at a time when positivism was the dominant philosophical influence in British philosophy. Central to Collingwood's philosophical project was the task of rehabilitation of metaphysics against the backdrop of the positivistic deconstruction of metaphysics. Collingwood's defence of metaphysics is much nuanced in the sense that while Collingwood does not sympathize with the grandiose conception of metaphysics associated with traditional metaphysics he is nonetheless keen to argue for the possibility of metaphysics in some form by reconceptualising metaphysics as a (...) science of absolute presuppositions. Thus his reform of metaphysics is an answer to positivism at the same time an attempt to tone down the claims of metaphysics such as to bring it in accord with scientific rationality. Yet it remains to be seen whether Collingwood's rehabilitation of metaphysics is successful, so far as the so-called absolute presuppositions do not have any ontological bearing with the domain of reality as it is in-itself but are exclusively grounded as structural features of human rationality, writ large. In this sense, Collingwood's initiative appears to suffer from similar difficulties that bedevil its Kantian predecessor in reforming metaphysics in terms of the claims of his Copernican revolution in epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Metaphysics and its Doubters Analysis and Logic Naturalism and Identity 4 Supervenience Conclusion Time.

2014 Reprint of 1940 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. One of Collingwood's finest works, "Essay on Metaphysics" considers the nature of philosophy, and puts forward Collingwood's original and influential theories of causation, presuppositions, and the logic of question and answer. From the mid-thirties onwards Collingwood's work increasingly engaged in a dialogue with the newly emerging school of analytic philosophy. In this work he attacked the neo-empiricist assumptions prevalent in early analytic philosophy (...) and advocated a logical/epistemological transformation of metaphysics from a study of being or ontology to a study of the absolute presuppositions or heuristic principles which govern different forms of enquiry. Collingwood thus occupies a distinctive position in the history of British philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. He rejects equally the neo-empiricist assumptions that prevailed in early analytic philosophy and the kind of metaphysics that the analytical school sought to overthrow. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are notable similarities between Collingwood’s method of investigating absolute presuppositions and contemporary strands of pragmatism, focusing on two areas - the critique of realism and causation. It is first argued that there are methodological similarities between Collingwood’s argument against realism and his Kantian-inspired critique of metaphysics, and Putnam’s critique of externalism. Regarding causation, it is argued that Collingwood’s view and Price’s pragmatist approach have a common method – investigating causation in the context of (...) specific human practices. Both authors place causation in the framework of scientific inquiry as opposed to making it the subject of the inquiry itself. Thus, Collingwood’s work proves to be in line with current metaphilosophical debates, particularly in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Focusing mainly on a number of unpublished texts by Collingwood, especially his “Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God,” the study examines the English philosopher’s innovative interpretation of the Anselm’s main contribution to the philosophical-theological tradition. Collingwood insightfully shows how the ontological argument can be used in (...) analyzing and discussing the religious experience, not in trying to formulate a logical proof of God’s existence. When abstracted from the individual’s practical religious life, that is, from the experience of prayer, worship, and the like, mind’s awareness of God cannot be understood. Resorting mainly to Anselm, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Descartes, Collingwood argues that the externality of the Platonic absolute is that of an absolute transcendent whereas the Christian God is not only conceived as the transcendent cause of all things, but also as the immanent spirit in them. By asserting the unity of the mind—regarded as identical with its acts—this interpretation is meant to serve both as a means towards self-knowledge, and as a starting point for a future conceptual unification of religion and philosophy. (shrink)

It is argued that ideas and theories often evolve into preconceptions of our perceptions. Such evolution is implicit in Heidegger's notion of truths of alethia. The description of this process holds implications for the traditional givenness of humans for themselves in terms of the changabllity of absolute presuppositions. Among the implications are 1. the insufficiency of the historical mode for explaining changes in human self-perception; 2. the inadequacy of radical subjectivism and environmentalism; 3. a radical contingency and complexity (...) to the course of human conceptualization; and 4. the awareness that human efforts can influence alterations in preconceptions. The influence of modern brain theory is subject to these conditions. (shrink)

An Essay on Metaphysics is one of the finest works of the great Oxford philosopher R. G. Collingwood : in it he considers the nature of philosophy, especially of metaphysics, and puts forward his original and influential theories of absolute presuppositions, causation, and the logic of question and answer. Three fascinating unpublished pieces by Collingwood have been added for this revised edition: they illuminate and amplify the ideas of the Essay, to which they are closely related. The editor (...) Rex Martin contributes a substantial introduction telling the story of the composition of all these works, discussing their major themes, and setting them in the context of Collingwood's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

In his early writings on logic Collingwood offered a powerful critique of contemporary theories, including subjective idealism and realism to which he continued to be opposed throughout his career. Simultaneously these same early writings present a sustained attack on dichotomous forms of thought, which are also carried through to his later writings. Throughout Collingwood maintains a critical respect for Hegel. Subjectivity and objectivity are not to be severed from each other, nor are identities to be excluded from one another. Continuity (...) is not to be understood apart from discontinuity. Collingwood's early critiques inspire a variety of later doctrines such as the scale of forms, the logic of question and answer, metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions, and his conception of the relation between mind and civilisation. The later theories are to be understood as continuous with the earlier doctrines, but not deducible from, nor reducible to them. (shrink)

Collingwood’s account of re-enactment is often misunderstood as providing methodological guidance to historians. Williams’s chapter is perceptive in seeing through this erroneous interpretation. Williams is however very critical of Collingwood’s account of the relationship between philosophy and history. He reads Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions as embracing a form of ‘radical historicism’ and argues that, like many other philosophers who reject foundationalism, Collingwood tends to use the word ‘we’ in an evasive way, both in an inclusive sense “as (...) implying universalistic preconditions on interpretation and intelligibility” and in a contrastive sense “under which ‘we’ here and now are distinct from others elsewhere and elsewhen, who lived in others and different intelligible human formations”. William’s chapter appropriately introduces this volume since the question concerning the nature of absolute presuppositions, and in what sense they can be said to be constitutive of the forms of inquiry which they make possible, is a central concern of this collection and is discussed by several contributors. (shrink)

Is philosophy continuous with science or does it have a distinctive domain of inquiry that differs from that of the special sciences? Collingwood claimed that philosophy has a distinctive subject matter and a distinctive method. Its distinctive subject matter is what he called the “absolute presuppositions” that govern the special sciences and its method consists in making these presuppositions explicit by showing that they are entailed by the questions asked in the special sciences. In this chapter the (...) editors seek to provide a guide to the diverging interpretations of Collingwood’s claim that metaphysics is not the study of pure being but of the presuppositions that govern knowledge of reality. They argue that a reassessment of his contribution to philosophical methodology is timely in the light of the recent revival of interest in second-order questions concerning the role and character of philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Integrative Bioethics engages in descriptive and normative fields, or in two cultures, as Snow puts it in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, announcing though, in his later writings the emergence of a third culture that can mediate between the two. Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions exposes the practice of a new paradigm of the teaching of history describing in fact the relation of science and humanities in the positivist era. The long standing reasons-causes debate that (...) lay the groundwork of the implied incompatibility of the two cultures, as it reflects on the Collingwoodian anti-causalism of the philosophy of history, against Davidsonian causalism, may elucidate the problem of the ‘marriage’ of cultures. Taking a look on Collingwood’s absolute presuppositions and Carnap’s external to linguistic frameworks questions, will help us investigate the possibility of a coherent framework for integrated Bioethics. Can we frame a transdisciplinary field, where science and humanities as collaborating social practices, or as a new ‘cultural policy’, will abstain from normative violence against each other? (shrink)

A good theory of rationality should accommodate debates over first principles, such as those of rationality. The modest challenge made in this article is that relativists try to explain the (intellectual) value of some debates about first principles (absolute presuppositions, basic assumptions, intellectual frameworks, intellectual commitments, and paradigms). Relativists claim to justify moving with relative ease from one framework to another, translating chunks of one into the other; this technique is essential for historians, anthropologists and others. Thus ideas (...) concerning false prophecy are transferable to contemporary discussions. Ancient false prophets offered illusions of overcoming difficult problems cheaply; relativists do that too. The problem that relativism purports to solve cheaply is that of legitimizing pluralism. As the absolutist theory of truth is intuitively problematic, relativism seems intuitively more acceptable, but this intuitive advantage vanishes when it manifests as false prophecy. (shrink)

Hegel's critique of Schleiermacher as the embodiment of two currents of romantic irony: empiricist skepticism (Schlegel) and feeling (Novalis), are explicitly presented as "absolute presupposition of our time". The article associates these "presuppositions" with features of postmodernity, as presented by Lyotard. Thus, the Hegelian critique of Schleiermacher might be read as a critique of postmodernity.