All History is, More or Less, Intellectual History: R. G. Collingwood’s Contribution to the Theory and Methodology of Intellectual History

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Notes

¹ Collingwood, The Idea of History, revised edition, edited with an introduction by J. van der Dussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 7–9.

² M. Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2. For a more detailed account of Bevir’s merits (and flaws) as a theorist of intellectual history, see A. Megill, ‘Imagining the History of Ideas’, Rethinking History, 4 (2000), 333–40.

³ G. Hermerén, Influence in Art and Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 156–262.

⁴ Hermerén, Influence in Art and Literature, 4–5.

⁵ Hermerén, Influence in Art and Literature, 320–1. On the usability of the influence model, see also F. Oakley, ‘“Anxieties of Influence”: Skinner, Figgis, Conciliarism and Early Modern Constitutionalism’, Past & Present, 151 (1996), 60–110 and C. Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts. An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 129–41.

⁶ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 313.

⁷ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 69.

⁸ Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), 128.

⁹ Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, 128–9.

¹⁰ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 71.

¹¹ Collingwood, An Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 74.

¹² Collingwood, An Autobiography, 4.

¹³ R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, revised edition, edited with an introduction by R. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 31.

¹⁴ Collingwood, An Autobiography, 66–7.

¹⁵ L. O. Mink, ‘Collingwood’s Dialectic of History’, History & Theory, 7 (1968), 3–37 (25). For a more detailed account of Collingwood’s logic of question and answer, see S. Helgeby, Action as History: The Historical Thought of R. G. Collingwood (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004), 77–100, and especially of absolute presuppositions, see J. Connelly, Metaphysics, Method and Politics: The Political Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003), 97–157.

¹⁶ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 282.

¹⁷ R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of History and Other Writings in Philosophy of History, edited with an introduction by W. H. Dray and W. J. van der Dussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 68.

¹⁸ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 309.

²¹ Skinner, Visions of Politics, 47.

¹⁹ Q. Skinner, ‘Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts’, in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, edited by J. Tully (Oxford and Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 78. See also Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 27–56 and 140–4; cf. Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas, esp. chs 2, 4 and 5.

²⁰ Skinner, Visions of Politics, 43. Mark Bevir has also urged historians to adopt ‘semantic holism’, i.e. to explain ‘beliefs, and also actions, by showing how they were reasonable given their relationship to other relevant beliefs and actions’, Bevir, ‘The Role of Contexts in Understanding and Explanation’, Human Studies, 23:4 (2000), 395–411 (401).

²² Collingwood, The Principles of History, 67–8.

²³ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 215.

²⁴ Skinner, Visions of Politics, 47.

²⁵ D. Boucher, ‘In Defence of Collingwood: Perspectives from Philosophy and the History of Ideas’, in R. G. Collingwood, The Philosophy of Enchantment. Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism, and Anthropology, edited by D. Boucher, W. James and P. Smallwood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ci–cii.

²⁶ K. R. Stueber, ‘Agency and Objectivity of Historical Narratives’, in The Philosophy of History: A Re‐examination, edited by W. Sweet (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 197–222 (200–1, 204).

²⁷ W. H. Walsh, ‘The Causation of Ideas’, History and Theory, 14:2 (1975), 186–99 (193).

²⁸ K. R. Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 3–4.

²⁹ Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy, 2 and 21. See also Stueber, ‘Reasons, Generalizations, Empathy, and Narratives: The Epistemic Structure of Action Explanation’, History and Theory, 47:1 (2008), 31–43.

³⁰ Bevir, ‘The Role of Contexts in Understanding and Explanation’, 405–7. See also Bevir, Logic, 221–64. The present conflict concerning ‘intelligent design’ is, likewise, a conflict of beliefs, of what it is rational to believe.

³² Collingwood, The Idea of History, 317.

³¹ Walsh, ‘The Causation of Ideas’, 192.

³³ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 200. For further examples, see 115–16, 215, 223 and 283.

³⁴ Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy, 202.

³⁵ Collingwood, The Principles of History, 68.

³⁶ Bevir, Logic, 178.

³⁷ M. C. Lemon, The Discipline of History and the History of Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 176, 192 and 246–7. See also Bevir, Logic, 232.

³⁸ F. Gilbert, ‘Intellectual History: Its Aims and Methods’, Daedalus 100:1 (1971), 80–97 (94).

³⁹ Walsh, ‘The Causation of Ideas’, 192.

⁴⁰ Collingwood, An Autobiography, 1.

⁴¹ Collingwood, The Principles of History, 69.

⁴² Collingwood, The Idea of History, 315.

⁴³ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 218.

⁴⁴ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 10.

⁴⁶ Skinner, Visions of Politics, 126; see also 6–7, 26, 50, 54–5, 87–9 and Q. Skinner, ‘On Encountering the past’, an interview published in Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought, 6 (2002), 32–63 (57).

⁴⁵ A. Brett, ‘What is Intellectual History’, in What is History Now?, edited by D. Cannadine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 128. See also D. R. Kelley, ‘What is Happening to the History of Ideas?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 51:1 (1990), 3–25 (25).

⁴⁷ B. Southgate, ‘Intellectual History/History of Ideas’, in Writing History. Theory & Practice, edited by S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (London: Arnold, 2003), 248.

⁴⁸ Collingwood, The Idea of History, 1.