This study attempts to demonstrate that there is a new turn in
Collingwood's philosophy of history in and after 1935 and that this new
turn is the result of Collingwood working out his theory of absolute presuppositions
in the early 1930's. Collingwood's unpublished manuscripts
are examined in order to assist us in justifying this claim. A clarification
of the theory of absolute presuppositions follows our attempt to
situate this theory in Collingwood's intellectual development. After
arguing that absolute presuppositions are logico-regulative entities,
we suggest that Collingwood is a foundationalist in a unique sense and
that he can solve the problem of conceptual change in consistently rational
terms. Although we argue against the view that there are radical discontinuities
in his thought, we contend that Collingwood's principles of
metaphysics, uncovered in the early 1930's, throw new light on his analysis
of history in The Idea Of History. We argue that absolute presuppositions
underlie all attempts at a theory of historical explanation. We attempt
to show that absolute presuppositions logically regulate the historical
imagination and that the historical imagination has changed over time
as the result of absolute presuppositions changing. We argue that there
is a logico-regulative relationship of absolute presuppositions to historical
evidence over time. We also argue that it is necessary to account for
Collingwood's acceptance of the incommensurate thesis in 1925 and his rejection of this thesis in 1936 for question-and-answer complexes. We
claim that it was Collingwood's newly uncovered principles of metaphysics
in the early 1930's that account for his about-face on the subject of rethinking
question-and-answer complexes. Collingwood still accepted the
incommensurate thesis for contexts of irrmediacy, and so his new position
was not a radical change, but his principles of metaphysics did provide
a ground or basis for the possibility of re-thinking an identical questionand-
answer complex. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/15744 |
| Date | January 1986 |
| Creators | Luckman, John |
| Contributors | Shalom, A., Philosophy |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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