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Chapter 8 - Presuppositional Analysis and the Goal of Metaphysical Inquiry

from Part II - Issues in Collingwood’s Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2024

David Collins
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge
Christopher Williams
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
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Summary

Metaphysics is often understood as an inquiry into the fundamental structures of reality. Collingwood, by contrast, defends a view of metaphysics on which its role is not to advance knowledge of fundamental reality but to deepen our understanding of the presuppositions on which knowledge rests. On Collingwood’s view, knowledge requires explanation, explanations are answers to questions, and questions rest on presuppositions. The metaphysician’s task is to trace the entailment relations that hold between answers, the questions they seek to answer, and the presuppositions that give rise to the questions characteristic of different forms of knowledge. This exposes misunderstandings which arise when answers to a question of one kind are erroneously taken to be in conflict with answers to questions of a different kind, ones resting on different presuppositions and pursuing different explanatory goals. This chapter outlines Collingwood’s conception of presuppositional analysis and his distinctive views of the role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics. It also explores affinities between Collingwood’s conception of metaphysics and Wittgenstein’s hinge epistemology.

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Interpreting R. G. Collingwood
Critical Essays
, pp. 143 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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