This volume presents a many-faceted view of the great Oxford philosopher R. G. Collingwood. At its centre is his Autobiography of 1939, a cult classic for its compelling 'story of his thought'. That work is accompanied here by previously unpublished writings by Collingwood and eleven specially written essays on aspects of his life and work.

The original text of this uncompleted work has only recently been discovered and is accompanied here by Collingwood's shorter writings on historical knowledge and inquiry. Besides containing entirely new ideas, these incredible writings discuss many of the issues which Collingwood famously raised in The Idea of History and in his Autobiography. This book also includes a lengthy editorial introduction that puts Collingwood's writings in their context and discusses the philosophical questions they initiate. --from publisher description.

Best known today for his philosophies of history and art, Collingwood was also a historian, archaeologist, sailor, artist, and musician. A figure of enormous energy and ambition, he took as his subject nothing less than the whole of human endeavor, and he lived in the same way, seeking to experience the complete range of human passion. In this vivid and swiftly paced narrative, Fred Inglis tells the dramatic story of a remarkable life, from Collingwood's happy Lakeland childhood to his successes at Oxford, his archaeological digs as a renowned authority on Roman Britain, his solo sailing adventures in the English Channel, his long struggle with illness, and his sometimes turbulent romantic life. --from publisher description.

Robin George Collingwood, FBA (1889 – 1943) was an English historian, philosopher, and archaeologist most famous his philosophical works. Along with “The Principles of Art” (1938), Collingwood's “The Idea of History” was his best-known work, originally collated from numerous sources following his death by a student of his, T. M. Knox. It became a major inspiration for philosophy of history in the western world and is extensively cited to his day. This fascinating volume on history and its relationship to philosophy will appeal to students and collectors of vintage philosophical works alike. Contents include: “The Philosophy of History”, “History's Nature”, “Object”, “Method”, “Greco-Roman Histography”, “The Influence of Christianity”, “The Threshold of Scientific History”, “Scientific History”, “England”, “Germany”, “France”, “Italy”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume today in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

I do not think of aesthetic theory as an attempt to investigate and expound eternal verities concerning the nature of an eternal object called Art, but as an attempt to reach, by thinking, the solution of certain problems arising out of the situation in which artists find themselves here and now. Everything written in this book has been written in the belief that it has a practical bearing, direct or indirect, upon the condition of art in England in 1937, and in the hope that artists primarily, and secondarily persons whose interest in art is lively and sympathetic, will find it of some use to them. Hardly any space is devoted to criticizing other people’s aesthetic doctrines; not because I have not studied them, nor because I have dismissed them as not worth considering, but because I have something of my own to say, and think the best service I can do to a reader is to say it as clearly as I can. Of the three parts into which it is divided, Book I is chiefly concerned to say things which any one tolerably acquainted with artistic work knows already; the purpose of this being to clear up our minds as to the distinction between art proper, which is what aesthetic is about, and certain other things which are different from it but are often called by the same name. Many false aesthetic theories are fairly accurate accounts of these other things, and much bad artistic practice comes from confusing them with art proper. These errors in theory and practice should disappear when the distinctions in question are properly apprehended. In this way a preliminary account of art is reached; but a second difficulty is now encountered. This preliminary account, according to the schools of philosophy now most fashionable in our own country, cannot be true; for it traverses certain doctrines taught in those schools and therefore, according to them, is not so much false as nonsensical. Book II is therefore devoted to a philosophical exposition of the terms used in this preliminary account of art, and an attempt to show that the conceptions they express are justified in spite of the current prejudice against them; are indeed logically implied even in the philosophies that repudiate them. The preliminary account of art has by now been converted into a philosophy of art. But a third question remains. Is this so-called philosophy of art a mere intellectual exercise, or has it practical consequences bearing on the way in which we ought to approach the practice of art (whether as artists or as audience) and hence, because a philosophy of art is a theory as to the place of art in life as a whole, the practice of life? As I have already indicated, the alternative I accept is the second one. In Book III, therefore, I have tried to point out some of these practical consequences by suggesting what kinds of obligation the acceptance of this aesthetic theory would impose upon artists and audiences, and in what kinds of way they could be met. This book is organized as follows: I. Introduction Book I. Art and Not Art II. Art and Craft III. Art and Representation IV. Art as Magic V. Art as Amusement VI. Art Proper: (1) As Expression VII. Art Proper: (2) As Imagination Book II. The Theory of Imagination VIII. Thinking and Feeling IX. Sensation and Imagination X. Imagination and Consciousness XI. Language Book III. The Theory of Art XII. Art as Language XIII. Art and Truth XIV. The Artist and the Community XV. Conclusion

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the centre of the book are six chapters of a study of folktale and magic, composed by Collingwood in the mid-1930s and intended for development into a book. Here Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in thelong-term evolution of human society and culture. This is preceded, in Part I, by a range of contextualizing material on such topics as the relations between music and poetry, the nature of language, the value of Jane Austen's novels, the philosophy of art, and the relations between aesthetic theory andartistic practice. Part III of the volume consists of two essays, one on the relationship between art and mechanized civilization, and the second, written in 1931, on the collapse of human values and civilization leading up to the catastrophe of armed conflict. These offer a devastating analysis of the consequences that attend the desertion of liberal principles, indeed of all politics as such, in the ultimate self-annihilation of military conquest.The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in the fields of critical and literary history, social and cultural anthropology, and the philosophy of history and the history of ideas; they provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment brings hitherto unrecognized areas of Collingwood's achievement to light, and demonstrates the broad range of Collingwood's intellectualengagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology.

This book is volume one of a two-part series. Taken together, the two volumes of A Philosopher at War examine the political thought of the philosopher and archaeologist, R.G. Collingwood, against the background of the First and Second World Wars. Collingwood served in Admiralty Intelligence during the First World War and although he was not physically robust enough to play an active role in the Second World War, he was swift to condemn the policies of appeasement which he thought largely responsible for bringing it about. The author uses a blend of political philosophy, history and discussion of political policy to uncover what Collingwood says about the First World War, the Peace Treaty which followed it, and the crises which led to the Second World War in 1939, together with the response he mustered to it before his death in 1943. The aim is to reveal the kind of liberalism he valued and explain why he valued it. By 1940 Collingwood came to see that a liberalism separated from Christianity would be unable to meet the combined evils of Fascism and Nazism. How Collingwood arrived at this position, and how viable he finally considered it, is the story told in these volumes.

2014 Reprint of 1942 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) was a British philosopher and practicing archaeologist best known for his work in aesthetics and the philosophy of history. "The New Leviathan," originally published in 1942, a few months before the author's death, is the book which R. G. Collingwood chose to write in preference to completing his life's work on the philosophy of history. It was a reaction to the Second World War and the threat which Nazism and Fascism constituted to civilization. The book draws upon many years of work in moral and political philosophy and attempts to establish the multiple and complex connections between the levels of consciousness, society, civilization, and barbarism. Collingwood argues that traditional social contract theory has failed to account for the continuing existence of the non-social community and its relation to the social community in the body politic. He is also critical of the tendency within ethics to confound right and duty.