The New Leviathan: Or Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism - Hardcover

Collingwood, R. G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198239815 ISBN 13: 9780198239819

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1993

Synopsis

The New Leviathan, originally published in 1942, a few months before the author's death, is the book which R. G. Collingwood chose to write in preference to completing his life's work on the philosophy of history. It was a reaction to the Second World War and the threat which Nazism and Fascism constituted to civilization. The book draws upon many years of work in moral and political philosophy and attempts to establish the multiple and complex connections between the levels of consciousness, society, civilization, and barbarism. Collingwood argues that traditional social contract theory has failed to account for the continuing existence of the non-social community and its relation to the social community in the body politic. He is also critical of the tendency within ethics to confound right and duty. The publication of additional manuscript material in this revised edition demonstrates in more detail how Collingwood was determined to show that right and duty occupy different levels of rational practical consciousness. The additional material also contains Collingwood's unequivocal rejection of relativism.

About this title

About the Author

The late R. G. Collingwood was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at University of Oxford.

Review

"In his respectful and informative introduction David Boucher shows how The New Leviathan and the additional material appended to it fit in with Collingwood's thought as a whole."--History of Political Thought

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0198239815
• ISBN 13: 9780198239819
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 586
• Editor: Boucher David