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History as Re-enactment: R. G. Collingwood's Idea of History - Hardcover

Dray, William H.

 
9780198242932: History as Re-enactment: R. G. Collingwood's Idea of History
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 019824293X ISBN 13: 9780198242932
Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1996

Synopsis

This book explains and defends a central ideas in the theory of history put forward by R. G. Collingwood, perhaps the foremost philosopher of history in the 20th century. Professor Dray analyses critically the idea of re-enactment, explores the limits of its applicability, and determines its relationship to other key Collingwoodian ideas, such as the role of imagination in historical thinking, and the indispensability of a point of view.

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About the Author

William H. Dray has been Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada.

From the Back Cover

A central motif of R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history is the idea that historical understanding requires a re-enactment of past experience. However, there have been sharp disagreements about the acceptability of this idea, and even its meaning. This book aims to advance the critical discussion in three ways: by analysing the idea itself further, concentrating especially upon the contrast which Collingwood drew between it and scientific understanding; by exploring the limits of its applicability to what historians ordinarily consider their proper subject-matter; and by clarifying the relationship between it and some other key Collingwoodian ideas, such as the place of imagination in historical inquiry, the sense in which history deals with the individual, the essential perspectivity of historical judgement, and the importance of narrative and periodization in historical thinking. Professor Dray defends Collingwood against a good deal of recent criticism, while pointing to ways in which his position requires revision or development. History as Re-enactment draws upon a wide range of Collingwood's published writings, and makes considerable use of his unpublished manuscripts. It is the most systematic study yet of this central doctrine of Collingwood's philosophy of history, and will stand as a landmark in Collingwood studies.

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Publisher
Clarendon Press
Publication date
1996
Language
English
ISBN 10 
019824293X
ISBN 13 
9780198242932
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
360