Collingwood’s Metaphysics

This book explores R.G. Collingwood’s concept of metaphysics. It traces the evolution of Collingwood’s thought on metaphysics through his published work, posthumously published manuscripts and recently discovered course notes.

From 1933 to 1936, Collingwood’s thought shifted considerably from the more orthodox Hegelian treatment of metaphysics as the study of the general nature of reality to the more ‘historicist’ study of absolute presuppositions. This radical conversion hypothesis has been for a long time the single most important issue in the interpretation of Collingwood’s philosophy. This book provides a fresh reappraisal of his thinking on metaphysics during these crucial years. It argues that objective idealism is the key to unraveling the true scope of Collingwood’s metaphysics. This theory takes a mid- position between mainstream interpretations in the secondary literature and forms the background to many of Collingwood’s key ideas regarding metaphysics, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of history. The book also compares Collingwood’s concept of metaphysics to that of his predecessors, contemporaries and followers. The second part of the book focuses in detail on the similarities and differences between Collingwood’s metaphysics and, in chronological order, the views on metaphysics of Dilthey, Whitehead, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Berlin, Kołakowski, Strawson and Taylor.

Collingwood’s Metaphysics will be of interest to scholars and graduate students interested in Collingwood’s philosophy, 20th- century philosophy and metaphysics.

Guido Vanheeswijck is Emeritus Professor at the University of Antwerp and the Catholic University of Louvain, both in Belgium. He has published widely on metaphysics, philosophy of culture and philosophy of religion and is co- editor, with Mathieu Marion, of Realism and Idealism: Central Problems in Metaphysics (forthcoming 2025).