Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943), 'The Best Known Neglected Thinker of Our Time': a Meditation on His Life & Work V 2.0

Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943), 'the best known neglected thinker of our time': a meditation on his life & work v 2.0

Derek Barker

Collingwood believed you should never reject any philosopher's work until you have read it at first hand. But there are grave difficulties with this: Collingwood's own views altered from book to book. Does his belief entail reading the whole of a philosopher's work before you comment on it? Anyway this is the reason I am simply offering you a meditation on his life, and aspects of his philosophy today.

Biography Robin Collingwood was a philosopher, an archaeologist of Roman Britain and a polymath, but is now largely forgotten by the public. He was born in Cartmel, Cumbria, his parents being William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932) and Edith Collingwood. They were both considerable artists, Edith being a talented miniaturist and musician. William was also an archaeologist and (from 1905-11) Professor of Fine Art at Reading University. He had been John Ruskin's biographer and his last secretary until Ruskin's death in 1900. WG Collingwood's significance mustn't be underrated: Thomas Williams's recent book Viking Britain discusses WGC at some length but RGC doesn't even rate a mention. WGC taught his son Latin at the age of 4 and Greek at 6; he was very influential in his son's educational development.

Robin Collingwood had three long-lived sisters who all enjoyed an extra 20 years of life: Barbara (1887-1961) an artist (daughter b.1926 → Janet Gnosspelius, sculptor d.2010). Dora (1886-1964) was also an artist who married Dr Ernest Altounyan and lived in Syria at one time (daughter → Mavis Guzelian artist, d.1998). Ursula (1891-1962) aka 'the Kid' ; she married Reggie Luard-Selby sometime the vicar of Ambleside and Troutbeck, and became a midwife. Remarkably both Dora and Barbara were proposed to by family friend Arthur Ransome, twice: neither accepted. Dora's offspring are the archetypes of the children in Swallows & Amazons.

The Collingwoods were not a wealthy family although seemingly they had a cook and gardener. A close family friend, Miss Emma Holt, paid for Robin's education at Rugby School & University College, Oxford with money inherited from a Liverpool shipping firm. (I wish he could have sounded more grateful about that, but he did always try to win scholarships). He studied classics and philosophy ('Mods & Greats') at Oxford, and was extremely well read generally. He claimed in his Autobiography to have been a rebel at Rugby but these statements have not generally been taken at face value. Be that as it may he certainly seemed happy to remain an academic philosopher and rose to become a fellow of Pembroke College, and Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy at Oxford, for a few years before the Second World War. His worst enemy couldn't have denied that he was a prolific writer and a highly successful undergraduate teacher. His views were less influential among his own contemporary colleagues.

In 1918 Collingwood married Ethel Winifred Graham (1885-1973) at Skipness, Argyll: they had a son (William Robert 'Bill') who committed suicide in 1975, and a daughter (Ursula Ruth Parry) who very sadly died in childbirth in 1943 shortly after her father's death. I am

1 sure that Collingwood would have felt that religion, and in his case the Christian religion, was at the heart of liberal and civilised life. That being the case in is surprising (to me at least) that Collingwood divorced in 1941 and the following year re-married Kathleen Frances 'Kate' Edwardes (1911-1980) an actress who was 20 years younger than him, and with whom he may have had a 'lengthy affair'. No biographical sketch I have read deals with this incident in any detail. They had a child Teresa in 1942. She is Teresa Smith, an Oxford academic, who is still living. As an example of how little this episode is discussed - in a recent re-issuing of the Autobiography many pages are spent discussing the book's publication history but Kate Edwards is briefly mentioned only once although, or perhaps because, one of the two editors is her daughter. The significance of this is that, after his death, some influential archaeological authorities may have been influenced in their negative opinions by their high regard for Ethel Collingwood. In some ways the reluctance to describe this romantic episode is faithful to Collingwood's own practice. His emotional life is almost entirely missing from his writings.

At the end of his life Collingwood opposed fascism and the appeasement policy of the UK government (see Autobiography). Possibly his new political consciousness reflected the effect of his second wife's opinions. His views were seen as highly controversial at the time but now appears perfectly reasonable. It is a classic example of how the contemporary meaning of a text may not at all be the one intended by its original author. Collingwood died young at Ulveston, Lancs after a poorly explained illness (possibly repeated hypertensive strokes) towards the end of his life, say after 1938. He seems to have appreciated that he would not make old bones for in the last few years he went on boat trips to the Mediterranean and to Indonesia. He died in 1943 and is now buried at St Andrew's, Coniston with his first wife and daughter.

My personal philosophical search Ideally I look for clear answers to several philosophical questions: • Is the external world real? • Do other minds exist aside from my own? • What is the nature of mind and what is its relation to the external world? • Can philosophy inform us about the ultimate nature of the universe? • Which is the proper question: 'why is the world the way it is' or 'why do we see the world the way we do'? (Kant) • Famously, according to Sir Francis Bacon, a jesting Pilate asked Jesus 'what is truth', but would not wait for an answer. So, 'what is truth'? • Does a desire to behave ethically have any philosophical basis? I find Chomsky's 'principle of universality' a good guide to any responsible ethical system but I have found it difficult to defend this rationally against the totally self-interested.

What I find difficult is that highly able philosophers seem to have developed different 'world views', and don't seem to be able or willing to explain simply how they have come to totally different conclusions from other thinkers who are equally talented. Collingwood is no exception to this. His reputation as a philosopher rests on his thoughts about art, history and the nature of philosophy. There seem to be three 'schools' of philosophy relevant to Robin Collingwood's career:

Realism: Knowing makes no difference to what is known, which continues independently.

2 Collingwood believed that to be logically certain of this statement you would need to know the state of 'that which is known' both before and after you knew it - to assess whether there had been any change. Clearly a logical impossibility. Personally I am bothered that everything we know about black holes depends ultimately on men and women in white coats looking at dials and perhaps it is as well that Collingwood didn't have to contend with quantum physics.

To a Realist 'knowledge' effectively equaled scientific knowledge. Realism is uninterested in morals or the 'common good' which it reduces to psychological impulses. Collingwood was utterly opposed to these ideas and I can see that convinced realists must find it hard to explain what 'knowledge' or 'the mind' actually are. The now largely forgotten older contemporary of Collingwood's, HA Pritchard, was a noted realist philosopher at Oxford, and Professor of Moral Philosophy. The two men seem to have cordially hated each other.

Collingwood considered that realists had developed highly effective techniques for criticising and undermining the beliefs of others, without introducing anything positive themselves. He regarded the influence of realism at Oxford to be 'pernicious and corroding'. He seemed to be concerned by the damage done by realism because he assumed that philosophy students would conduct their subsequent lives on the basis of the philosophical principles they had learned at Oxford. Personally I would need much convincing that taught philosophy has so much influence. Collingwood studied ethics, whereas Bertrand Russell wished to remove ethics from philosophy altogether: but they both left wives and went off with pretty girls. I fancy that logical positivist AJ Ayer did the same. Does belief really affect behaviour?

Idealism: Reality, as humans experience it, is a fundamentally mental, or otherwise immaterial process. Idealism manifests as a scepticism about the possibility of 'knowing' any mind-independent thing. This idea would seem to be much closer to Collingwood's views; he would certainly have claimed that philosophy should be 'thinking about thinking'. But then it's hard to see how a thorough-going idealist could take much pleasure in history. Surely if questioning concerning the nature of the world is to make any sense as an activity then there must be something external to us about which such questions can plausibly be asked. For there to be knowledge there must be something to be known.

Analytical language philosophy: Gilbert Ryle (who followed Collingwood as the Waynflete professor), Ludwig Wittgenstein and AJ Ayer are examples of this school. Such philosophers search for objects whose nature is neither physical nor mental, and ask 'what is the correspondence between language and the world'? Collingwood would have been disturbed by ALP's claims to moral neutrality and Collingwood did not believe the world could be made intelligible by 'analysing sentences'. He also considered that our development of language was linked to our development of consciousness.

Collingwood's archaeology Collingwood was taught by his father and by the Roman archaeologist F.J Haverfield (who died in 1919): he may have been Haverfield's only pupil to survive the Great War. He himself served in naval intelligence but his poor eyesight prevented a more active role. Collingwood came to believe that the excavation process should answer a series of questions, not just establish 'what is there' (unlike Augustus Pitt-Rivers) but actually large scale 'random' investigation (eg in advance of a motorway extension) can be equally

3 informative. He was a good practical excavator, especially in the NW UK, Hadrian's Wall and the Lakes. He excavated Galeva – Ambleside Roman Fort – 1914-20. He was the joint author of: Inscriptions of Roman Britain and (with Myres) the Oxford History of England's Roman Britain and the English Settlements.

Collingwood's philosophy General 'the important question to ask of any statement is not whether it is true or false, but what it means'. Philosophy must be the philosophy of life. It mustn't neglect the way human activities are actually undertaken (a very important concern in the philosophy of language). Collingwood did wish to reconcile theory and practice. He believed that the way a person acts is profoundly affected by how he or she thinks. He didn't agree with Marx's philosophy but applauded Marx's wish to change the world.

He considered that the concepts philosophy deals with are not explicable by the methods of classification appropriate to science, nor could you ever judge an answer without knowing what question was being asked. To repeat: the truth or falsity of a statement cannot be judged without knowing the question it answers. One criticism of his view is that, even if true, it is rather derivative of other philosphers' work. But I think that anyway it is fair to say that it has not been generally accepted.

He stated that certain 'presuppositions' are so fundamental that true/false criteria do not apply to them. But rather unfairly he didn't seem prepared to allow the realist belief that 'Knowing makes no difference to what is known' to be considered as a presupposition. I think he is largely correct in his analysis, but I struggle to demonstrate this rationally. My own personal list would include: • Cause and effect • Time's arrow • The external world being in some sense real • Uniformitarianism

Collingwood believed that the problems faced by philosophers were different at different eras. This is very similar, if I understand them correctly, to the views of modern French philosopher Michel Foucault. The contemporary historical conditions impose unconscious rules on thought which tend to be regarded as 'common sense': thus thought has its own archaeology. Collingwood valued a critical view of the chief forms of human experience. Here he believed in 'unity of the mind': no mental activity is really separable from any other (art, religion, science, history & philosophy).

Philosophy of History Collingwood believed that philosophy had a history and its study was the prime function of a philosopher. Collingwood opposed 'cut and paste' historical writing; the real historian's job was to reconstruct the past. To confine knowledge about the past to testimony, in the form of recorded observations, is to adopt a 'realist' approach. A historian must 'reconstruct' history by using 'historical imagination' to 're-enact' the thought processes of historical persons, based on the available evidence. (If I have understood him correctly I could not possibly believe this. I think we may be able to construct a past world, but not enter into

4 individual minds from the past).'All history is the history of thought' he wrote: history (or archaeology) differed from geology or astronomy because everything you uncovered has a purpose. I see history, science and philosophy all describing the world in their own way but I can't see that one technique is obviously superior to the others.

Collingwood argued that the past is not dead but living in the present (I do agree with this) but his reconstructions of the past involved 'interpolations' which seem too close to historical fiction for my liking. Finally he believed that 'when historians understand what happened they also understand why it happened'. This does not seem to me to be common sense; it is too close to idealism.

Metaphysics Collingwood was interested in the presuppositions philosophers made, like God or Nature, which he considered did not admit of proof. This leads on to the idea that systems of belief do not depend on realist foundations external to them. The 'science' which detected the 'absolute presuppositions of intellectual and practical life' was metaphysics.

For someone who believed all this Collingwood was seemingly reluctant to describe the ways in which other thinkers had contributed to his own thoughts. Famously he hardly mentions Ruskin, whom he would have met as a small boy, but Ruskin's own beliefs were often unquestioning, and even anti-intellectual. An example of this is a letter of Ruskin's in 1876, in which he, Ruskin, did 'not think the question of the Trinity or Unity (of God) was one for Man to discuss'.

Aesthetics Collingwood wished to explain what art is and why it is important. A work of art originates as a idea in the artist's mind. An important social role for artists is to clarify and articulate the emotions of their community.

He saw close parallels between art and language. Since he believed that art consists of unconstrained imagination, and revealed truth about the world, my own personal little pencil sketches would not be considered 'true art' but rather 'art as entertainment or amusement'. In his autobiography he devotes several pages to his hatred of Gilbert Scott's Albert Memorial without explaining why he felt this. (Personally I think it is an impressive piece of over the top Victoriana which probably expresses the Queen's feelings fairly accurately).

Conclusions I believe 'philosophical discussion' of an issue is of value even if no definitive answer is ever obtained. I sympthise with Collingwood's view that philosophy must be the philosophy of life, and that it must study the way human activities are actually undertaken. It does appear that most of us do indeed have 'absolute presuppositions of intellectual and practical life', although we may not agree what they are. That philosophers face different problems at different eras must surely be true. An Athenian philosopher wishing to live a good and ethical life would have few problems with slavery, or with women as second class citizens. I was trained to believe that every archaeological investigation should be undertaken to seek an answer to a stated problem which is still the widely accepted modern view even if not universally true.

5 Supposing I had written an archaeological essay. Collingwood would recognise presuppositions I had adopted (perhaps unconsciously) and any logical errors I had made. He would know what parts of my writing depended on empirical observations, and would be well aware that all the ancient objects I described had a purposeful origin. I believe I would find his comments all quite helpful. In the same way a statistician might make some useful contributions to a similar paper.

Collingwood wrote that realists had developed highly effective techniques for criticising and undermining other's beliefs, without introducing anything positive themselves. I don't know enough of the Realists to say whether this is a fair judgement or not but I have observed this type of behaviour in other groups. Is there a faint echo of the clash between realism and idealism into today's controversies over gender identification? Is how we look more, or less, important than how we feel? I would say that this is a problem for psychology but Collingwood was especially scathing on that science!

References No entirely satisfactory biography exists and Collingwood's own autobiography is not, in the usual sense, an autobiography at all, although there is much information about his childhood and schooling. Kate Edwardes deposited many of his papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford over which Teresa Smith still exercises some control I believe. She is one of the editors of:

RG Collingwood: an autobiography and other writings (eds. David Boucher & Teresa Smith) OUP 2013

If you wished to study further I would start with this work. Also helpful would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._G._Collingwood

A visit to the Armitt Museum, Ambleside, Cumbria

An Autobiography. RG Collingwood: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1978 (rep.2002).

RG Collingwood: an introduction. Peter Johnson: Thoemmes Press, 1998.

History Man: the life of RG Collingwood. Princeton UP, 2002.

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