Talking with Yahoos: Collingwood's Case for Civility

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Notes

¹I have used the following edition of The New Leviathan for the convenience of citing from ‘What “Civilization” Means’ which it contains as Appendix 2, R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, revised edition, edited and introduced by David Boucher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) (hereafter referred to as NL). For helpful recent discussions of Collingwood's political philosophy in which civility receives extended treatment, see David Boucher, The Social and Political Thought of R. G. Collingwood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; David Boucher, ‘Editor's Introduction’, R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Gary K Browning, Rethinking R. G. Collingwood, Philosophy, Politics and the Unity of Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Gary K. Browning, ‘Rethinking Collingwood, Rethinking Hegel’, Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, 47 (2003) No. 8: 17–33; James Connelly, Metaphysics, Method and Politics, The Political Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003); Marnie Hughes-Warrington, ‘How Good an Historian Shall I Be?’ (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003), and Peter Johnson, R. G. Collingwood, An Introduction (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1998).

²See, for example, the discussions of civility in Loren E. Lomasky, Persons, Rights and the Moral Community, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) 140, and Burton Zweibach, The Common Life, Ambiguity, Agreement and the Structure of Morals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988) 97.

³NL 35.41.

⁴NL 37.15.

⁵John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) 179.

⁶Ibid., 342–3.

⁷Ibid., 114.

⁸Ibid., 547.

⁹John Rawls, ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’, Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980) 519.

¹⁰John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, op cit., 139.

¹¹NL 38.74.

¹²NL 38.74.

¹³NL 38.65.

¹⁴NL 21.61–21.67.

¹⁵NL 38.75.

¹⁶John Rawls, ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’, op cit., 519.

¹⁷R. G. Collingwood, ‘Money and Morals’, Lecture to the Student Movement, London Branch, 27 May 1919, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Dep. Collingwood 5, 7. In some manuscript notes intended for a short book under the following title, ‘Economics as a Philosophical Science’, (Oxford: Bodleian Library, Dep. Collingwood 24/2, p. 24) Collingwood writes that economic life is characterized both by cooperation and competitiveness. It is clear that the economic arrangements of the Yahoos certainly lack cooperation. It is also difficult to think of the Yahoos as competitive since they have no capacity to assess the aims of others, to plan the best strategy or to think of the consequences of their behaviour even for their own future benefit let alone that of others. We might say that Yahoo life, as Swift describes it, is ‘pre-economic’. This being so, to give further attention to Collingwood's writings on economics would distract us from Collingwood's use of the Yahoos which is the main subject of the paper.

¹⁸Ibid., 8.

¹⁹R. G. Collingwood, ‘Goodness, Rightness, Utility’, Lectures given in 1940, reprinted as appendix 1, NL 398.

²⁰NL 30.52–30.95, see 30.7 for Collingwood's account of his sources. I have concentrated on Swift because his ideas seem most relevant to the themes of this paper.

²¹NL 30.8.

²²NL 38.71.

²³R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, revised edition, edited with an introduction by Jan Van Der Dussen, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) 227; for discussion, see Hughes-Warrington, op. cit., 82–85. Collingwood's remark gives no support to the idea that human feelings can be made the subject of historical knowledge. As Collingwood says himself, ‘so long as man's conduct is determined by what may be called his animal nature, it is non-historical; the process of those activities is a natural process’, R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, op cit., 216.

²⁴Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Demaria, (London: Penguin Books, 2003) 217, (hereafter cited as GT). Studies of Swift I have found especially useful include Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise, Constable, London, 1959, and R. S. Crane, ‘The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the History of Ideas’, as reprinted in his The Idea of the Humanities and other essays, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1967, Vol. 2, pp. 261–82.

²⁵NL 30.52.

²⁶GT 249.

²⁷GT 245.

²⁸NL 30.6.

²⁹NL 30.65.

³⁰R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938) 241.

³¹GT 249.

³²NL 41.11.

³³ NL 41.12.

³⁴R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, op cit., 282–5; see the discussion in Aaron Ridley, R. G. Collingwood, (London: Phoenix, 1998) 3–10.

³⁵NL 30.8

³⁶F. Waismann, How I See Philosophy, edited by R. Harre, (London: Macmillan, 1968) 32 .

³⁷Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, edited by G. E. M.Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969) 35e–36e, 275; for recent discussion of the affinities between Collingwood and Wittgenstein, see Hughes-Warrington, op. cit., 84–8.

³⁸NL 36.59.

³⁹NL 34.7, for an illuminating discussion, see Connelly, op cit. 270–84.

⁴⁰NL 34.56.

⁴¹NL 34.55.

⁴²R. G. Collingwood, ‘What “Civilization” Means’, Appendix 2 of NL, 494.

⁴³NL 9.5.

⁴⁴NL 35.72.

⁴⁵NL 35.76.

⁴⁶NL 35.5, for discussion of the political aspects of Collingwood's views on nature, see Browning, op cit., 151, and Connelly, op cit. 265–6 and 313–15.

⁴⁷GT 234–5.

⁴⁸NL 29.45.

⁴⁹R. G. Collingwood, ‘Political Action’, as reprinted in David Boucher, editor, R. G. Collingwood, Essays in Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 103.

⁵⁰NL 16.7.

⁵¹NL 27.29.

⁵²NL 27.38.

⁵³See, R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939) 161–7.

⁵⁴R. G. Collingwood, ‘The Three Laws of Politics’, reprinted in Essays in Political Philosophy, op cit., 214.

⁵⁵NL 27.43.

⁵⁶NL 30.86.

⁵⁷Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited with an introduction by Conor Cruise O'Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) 240.

⁵⁸Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (London: Harvard University Press, 1984) 44.

⁵⁹NL 40.35.

⁶⁰NL 35.93.

⁶¹NL 41.12.

⁶²NL 36.94.

⁶³NL 35.78.

⁶⁴Montaigne, Essays, translated by Charles Cotton (London: George Bell, 1905), Volume 1, 50.

⁶⁵‘Man Goes Mad’, op cit., 177.

⁶⁶Brian Barry, ‘How Not To Defend Liberal Institutions’, British Journal of Political Science, 20 (January 1990) Pt 1: 1–14.

⁶⁷Ibid., 14.

⁶⁸Ibid., 14.

⁶⁹R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, op cit., 152–3.

⁷⁰Barry, op. cit., 14.

⁷¹R. G. Collingwood, ‘Man Goes Mad’, reprinted in R. G. Collingwood, Essays in Political Philosophy, op. cit., 186.

⁷²Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) 231.

⁷³NL 35.48.

⁷⁴Smith, op. cit., 233.

⁷⁵R. G. Collingwood, ‘The Place of Art in Education’, in Alan Donagan (editor) R. G. Collingwood, Essays in the Philosophy of Art (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964) 188.

⁷⁶NL 39.92.

⁷⁷NL 39.92.

⁷⁸G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, translated with Notes by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) 138.

⁷⁹GT 254, for further of Swift's remarks on lawyers, see GT 229–31.

⁸⁰See Homer, The Odyssey, IX, 105ff, for a discussion of the Cyclops; for the Cyclops and Hobbes, see my ‘Hobbes on Human Nature and the Necessity of Manners’, Angelaki, 3 (1998) No. 1: 67–76.

⁸¹Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) 318; for recent discussion, see Terry Nardin, The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) 183–223.

⁸²Shirley Robin Letwin, ‘Morality and the Law’, Encounter, 43 (1974) 43.

⁸³NL 20.48.

⁸⁴Oakeshott, op. cit., 109.

⁸⁵Ibid., 127.

⁸⁶Homer, op. cit., IX, 105–10.

⁸⁷GT 239.

⁸⁸NL 40.14.

⁸⁹NL 38.74.

⁹⁰NL 38.77.

⁹¹NL 38.77.

⁹²NL 37.14.

⁹³George Orwell, ‘Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels’, in The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison (London: Secker & Warburg, 1998) Vol. 18, pp. 417–31; for a discussion of Orwell's view see, R. W. Beardsmore, ‘Learning from a Novel’, in Philosophy and the Arts, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures Vol. 6 (London: Macmillan, 1973) 23–46, esp. 43–6.

⁹⁴GT 240.

⁹⁵R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, op. cit., 157–64.

⁹⁶Ibid., 250.

⁹⁷R. G. Collingwood, ‘Man Goes Mad’, op. cit., 177.

⁹⁸‘What Civilization Means’, NL 499; Collingwood's discussion of civility as an ideal bears on his understanding of progress, see The Idea of History, op. cit., 321–34; the difficulties in Collingwood's determination not to allow civility to be construed independently of history are well illustrated in some remarks of Wittgenstein's. During a discussion with Benjamin Farrington in 1943, Wittgenstein commented, ‘when there is a change in the conditions in which people live, we may call it progress because it opens up new opportunities. But in the course of this change, opportunities which were there before may be lost. In one way it was progress; in another it was decline. A historical change may be progress and also be ruin. There is no method of weighing one against the other to justify speaking of “progress on the whole”’. Farrington said that even ‘with all the ugly sides of our civilization, I am sure I would rather live as we do now than have to live as the caveman did’. Wittgenstein replied: ‘Yes of course you would. But would the caveman?’ cited in James C. Klagge and Alfred Nordmann, editors, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Public and Private Occasions, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2003) 363.

⁹⁹Michael J. Sandel, ‘The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self’, Political Theory, 12 (February 1984) No 1: 81.

¹⁰⁰NL 36.92; the depth of Collingwood's commitment to the idea of the Yahoo as an abstraction is not easily ignored, see his comments at NL 30.72–30.76 where the Yahoo is described in either/or terminology.

¹⁰¹Orwell, op. cit., 429.

¹⁰²Ibid., 428.

¹⁰³NL 35.92.

¹⁰⁴R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925) 295.

¹⁰⁵Orwell, op. cit., 429.