On the standard “Wollheimian” reading of Collingwood’s aesthetics, Collingwood held that something is art in the true sense of the word when it involves an act of “expression” – understood in a particular way – on the part of the artist, and that artworks in all art-forms are “ideal” entities that, while externalizable, exist first and foremost in the mind of the expressive artist. I begin by providing a fuller account of the Wollheimian reading. I then survey challenges to and defenses of this reading, identifying residual difficulties confronting anyone who seeks to defend Collingwood. I attempt to resolve these difficulties by developing the idea that we take at face value Collingwood’s (overlooked) claim that the work of art is identical to the expressive activity of the artist rather than being identical to the expressive product of that activity, reading this claim in light of Collingwood’s talk about the painter as one who “paints imaginatively.”

This chapter offers an exposition of Collingwood’s theory of imagination as presented in the commonly overlooked Book Two of The Principles of Art. I show how the standard objections to Collingwood’s view are relatively superficial, and also how the account in Book Two should be understood in the light of Collingwood’s remarks concerning the imagination in his earlier writings (especially Speculum Mentis and Outlines of a Philosophy of Art). For Collingwood, sense perception inseparably involves the imagination of possible objects of perception in any perceptual experience. Moreover, the imagination makes the sensory object thinkable – a position that blends Kantian and Humean motifs. Additionally, the crucial mark of the imaginary object is self-containment (“monadism”), a notion serving to clarify both Collingwood’s claim that the imagination is indifferent to reality or unreality and the conceptual connection, on his view, between imagination and art.

Despite R. G. Collingwood’s relation to British Idealism, a close reading of his subtle descriptions of imagination and expression reveals important points of contact with the phenomenological tradition. In the first section, I bring together Collingwood’s exploration of the role of imagination in art with Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of intentionality and expression. This provides insights into both thinkers’ attempts to describe lived experience and action, highlighting important aspects of their work overlooked by readers. In the second section, I explore how Collingwood and Merleau-Ponty both describe communication as an open and evolving movement of understanding that does not fall back upon a supposedly isolated consciousnesses, thereby eluding the threat of solipsism. In the third section, I outline the connection between Husserl’s identification of a “crisis” in the European sciences and Collingwood’s invocation against what he calls the “corruption of consciousness,” a particularly modern shirking of our responsibilities as expressive and active members of the community.

The word ‘Klavier’ occurs only twice in the texts of Schubert’s lieder, but both times in a prominent position – namely, in the titles of Christian Daniel Friedrich Schubart’s ‘An mein Klavier’ and Friedrich Schiller’s ‘Laura am Klavier’, both set to music in 1816 (respectively D342 and D388). The first poem deals with two figures – the narrative persona and his piano; the second with three – Laura, the piano and the narrative persona. In Schubart, the emphasis falls on the piano’s expressive potential; in Schiller, mainly on the impression it imparts. The two poems thus present the instrument in quite different, even antithetical, guises: introverted versus extroverted. Although Schubert turned to poems that were already a generation old (they were first published in 1785 and 1782, respectively) and had a different sound in mind compared to the two poets (this was an age of rapid evolution in keyboard instrument construction), the instrumental aesthetic displayed in Schubart’s and Schiller’s poems still applied with undiminished force in 1816. The antitheses marked by the poems Schubert chose with respect to the Klavier reveal the breadth of notions associated with the instruments that went by that name around 1800.

Although nowadays Vaughan Williams is sometimes associated in popular writing with a Romantic musical style, broadly conceived, this is a view that few of his contemporaries would have recognized. Indeed, his own understanding of the term suggests that he saw himself marking a break with the earlier, largely Germanic Romantic tradition that culminated in Wagner and Strauss.  Nevertheless, several important aspects of his musical and aesthetic views form strong continuity with earlier Romantic thought. These include viewing music as (1) self-expression; (2) the expression of a community; and (3) a revelation or intimation of the beyond.  The tension between these three, partially antithetical, conceptions of music informs his creative output in often productive ways that are teased out over the course of this chapter.

We conclude our book with brief summaries of our responses to the challenges we outlined in Chapter 2. We argue that the account we offer here shows promise and that the evidence is clear that, of all theories of utterance interpretation, relevance theory is uniquely positioned to accommodate emotion and affect.

This chapter introduces the two essential challenges in accommodating emotional communication within a theory of utterance interpretation: the challenge of description versus expression and the challenge of propositions and ineffability. We sketch the prehistory of philosophical thought and show how the sidelining of emotional communication in modern linguistic pragmatics is very much a consequence of the propositional foundations on which modern theories of semantics and pragmatics are built. Consequently, such theories have problems accounting for expression and ineffability. Two further challenges are also articulated. The first of these concerns the nature of the term pragmatics, and this chapter concludes with some background on what we mean by pragmatics in this book. The second concerns the nature of emotion itself: what is emotion? We turn to that challenge in the next chapter.

Chapter 1 defines the concepts of “protest” and “dissent.” It defends public protest on marketplace, self-government, autonomy, and tolerance grounds. The chapter explores the communicative and other characteristics of public protests and demonstrations. It examines public attitudes toward protest and protest movements and the state’s typically violent and negative responses to public protest. The chapter examines the typical purposes or goals of public protests. Finally, it responds to several arguments about protest “fatigue” and the continued efficacy of public protest as a means of democratic change.

Can there be something like a “Wittgensteinian” literary criticism? If so, what could it possibly be, given that Wittgenstein sought to make us give up the craving for generality? Through an analysis of “The Avoidance of Love,” Stanley Cavell’s epochal 1969 essay on King Lear, Toril Moi shows that a reader inspired by Wittgenstein does not have to set out to apply a given theory, or to answer certain “Wittgensteinian” questions. Rather it entails a wish to acknowledge the concerns of the text, and respond to them. For Wittgensteinian critics, the text is not an object to be “approached” but action and expression. The critic sets out to answer questions that matter to her, and stakes herself in her own perceptions and judgments in the act of reading. “The problem of the critic, as of the artist,” Cavell writes, “is not to discount his subjectivity, but to include it; not to overcome it in agreement, but to master it in exemplary ways.” To do this requires training. This chapter sets out the implications of all these claims, argues against formalist views of literature and reading, and insists on the fundamental role of human judgment, and acknowledgment in the work of criticism.