Since its appearance in 1981, History as a Science by Jan van der Dussen has been welcomed as a coherent and comprehensive study of the many aspects of Collingwood’s philosophy of history, including its development and reception. The book was the first to pay attention to Collingwood’s unpublished manuscripts, and to his work as an archaeologist and historian, herewith opening up a new angle in Collingwood studies. The republication of this volume meets an increasing demand to make the book available for future Collingwood scholars, and people interested in Collingwood’s philosophy. The present edition of History as a Science includes updated references to the published manuscripts and an added 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 consti tutes 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 Col lingwood 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.

Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943) was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, with his work spanning theory of knowledge, metaphysics, philosophy of art, philosophy of history, and social and political philosophy. The full range and reach of Collingwood's philosophical thought is covered by Peter Skagestad in this study. Following Collingwood's education and his Oxford career, Skagestad considers his relationship with prominent Italian philosophers Croce and De Ruggiero and the British idealists. Taking Collingwood's publications in order, he explains under what circumstances they were produced and the reception of his work by his contemporaries and by posterity, from Religion and Philosophy (1916) and Speculum Mentis (1923) to the posthumously published The Idea of History (1946). Featuring full coverage of Collingwood's philosophy of art, Skagestad also considers his argument, in response to A. J. Ayer, that metaphysics is the historical study of absolute presuppositions. Most importantly, Skagestad reveals how relevant Collingwood is today, through his concept of barbarism as a perceptive diagnosis of totalitarianism and his prescient warning of the rise of populism in the 21st century.

Michael Oakeshott has long been recognized as one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century, but until now no single volume has been able to examine all the facets of his wide-ranging philosophy with sufficient depth, expertise, and authority. The essays collected here cover all aspects of Oakeshott’s thought, from his theory of knowledge and philosophies of history, religion, art, and education to his reflections on morality, politics, and law. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Corey Abel, David Boucher, Elizabeth Corey, Robert Devigne, Timothy Fuller, Steven Gerencser, Robert Grant, Noel Malcolm, Kenneth McIntyre, Kenneth Minogue, Noël O’Sullivan, Geoffrey Thomas, and Martyn Thompson.

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.

This book is volume one of a two-part series (volumes sold separately). 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.

Rethinking R.G. Collingwood reviews Collingwood's thought via his own rethinking of Hegel. It establishes the revisionary character of Collingwood's defence of liberal civilization in theory and practice. Collingwood is seen as avoiding the pitfalls of Hegel's teleological historicism by developing an open and contestable reading of the rationality of liberal civilization, which neither reduces practice to theory nor philosophy to history. The contemporary relevance of Collingwood's standpoint is demonstrated by comparing it with those of recent defenders and critics of liberalism Rawls, Lyotard and MacIntyre.