Book contents
- Interpreting R. G. Collingwood
- Interpreting R. G. Collingwood
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Situating Collingwood: Beyond Idealism
- Part II Issues in Collingwood’s Philosophy
- Chapter 7 Collingwood’s Logic of Question and Answer
- Chapter 8 Presuppositional Analysis and the Goal of Metaphysical Inquiry
- Chapter 9 Is Collingwood a Process Philosopher?
- Chapter 10 Collingwood on Imagination
- Chapter 11 Collingwood on “Painting Imaginatively” and the Expressive Nature of the Artwork
- Chapter 12 Collingwood’s Influence on Baxandall
- Chapter 13 “Reconsidering Questions of Principle”: Collingwood and the Revival of Celtic Art
- Chapter 14 What Is Living and What Is Dead in Collingwood’s New Leviathan?
- Bibliography
- Index
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
- Interpreting R. G. Collingwood
- Interpreting R. G. Collingwood
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Situating Collingwood: Beyond Idealism
- Part II Issues in Collingwood’s Philosophy
- Chapter 7 Collingwood’s Logic of Question and Answer
- Chapter 8 Presuppositional Analysis and the Goal of Metaphysical Inquiry
- Chapter 9 Is Collingwood a Process Philosopher?
- Chapter 10 Collingwood on Imagination
- Chapter 11 Collingwood on “Painting Imaginatively” and the Expressive Nature of the Artwork
- Chapter 12 Collingwood’s Influence on Baxandall
- Chapter 13 “Reconsidering Questions of Principle”: Collingwood and the Revival of Celtic Art
- Chapter 14 What Is Living and What Is Dead in Collingwood’s New Leviathan?
- Bibliography
- Index
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. CollingwoodCritical Essays, pp. 143 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024