The Formative Years of R. G. Collingwood
Collingwood and Hegel R. G. Collingwood was a lonely thinker. Begrudgingly admired by some and bludgeoned by others, he failed to train a single disciple, just as he failed to communicate to the reading public his vision of the unity of experience. This f
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THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF R . G. COLLINGWOOD by
WILLIAM M. JOHNSTON
.. .. MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1967
C Copyright I967 by Marlinus Nijho/t, The Hague, N t lherlands
A ll rights reserved, in cluding IM rigllt 10 translcde or 10 rt produce Ihis book or parts Iherto/ in any for m ISBN 978· 94· 011 ·8678·0 ISBN 978· 94·011 . 948J ·5 (eBoot) DOI JO.JOO7/978· 94·011 . 948J ·5
Denkst du nun wieder zu bilden, 0 Freund? Die Schule der Griechen Blieb noch offen, das Tor schlossen die Jahre nicht zu. Ich, der Lehrer, bin ewig jung, und liebe die Jungen. -Goethe, Römische Elegien, XII
PREFACE Collingwood and Hegel
R. G. Collingwood was a lonely thinker. Begrudgingly admired by some and bludgeoned by others, he failed to train a single disciple, just as he failed to communicate to the reading public his vision of the unity of experience. This failure stands in stark contrast to the success of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who won many disciples to a very similar point-of-view and whose influence on subsequent thought, having been rediscovered since 1920, has not yet been adequately explored. Collingwood and Hegel share three fundamental similarities: both men held overwhelming admiration of the Greeks, both possessed uniquely broad knowledge of academic controversies of their day, and both were inalterably convinced that human experience constitutes a single whole. If experts find Collingwood's vision of wholeness less satisfactory than Hegel's, much of the fault lies in the atmosphere in which Collingwood labored. Oxford in the 1920'S and 1930's, sceptical and specialized, was not the enthusiastic Heidelberg and Berlin of 1816 to 183I. What is important in Collingwood is not that he fell short of Hegel but that working under adverse conditions he came so elose. Indeed those unfamiliar with Hegel will find in Collingwood's early works, especially in Speculum M entis, a useful introduction to the great German. In the present study Hegel is mentioned but seldom. This is not to deny affinity between the two rnen, but rather to underscore a further point. Collingwood did not achieve avision of the unity of experience by setting out to resurrect Hegel. Indeed the vision came to hirn not from books at all. Rather it was transmitted to hirn by his father, who had received it from J ohn Ruskin. If Collingwood reincarnated many of Hegel's achievements and still more of his goals, the capacity to do so came not from Hegel but from Ruskin. How Ruskin unwittingly
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PREFACE
contributed to twentieth-century Hegelianism is the story which unfolds in these pages. I am indebted to many teachers who have guided my own attempts, however one-sided, to grasp the wholeness of experience. I should like to express my gratitude especially to Professor Heiko A. Oberman, formerly of Harvard University, now of the University of Tübingen, who taught me what it means to be a scholar in the history of ideas, to Professor John Rodman, formerly of Harvard University, now of Pitzer College, Claremont, California, who illumined my path in
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