The dialectic of political theory and practice

pp. 120-143

in: Gary Browning, Rethinking R. G. Collingwood, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is upon Collingwood's final work, The New Leviathan. Analysis of this work highlights the interpretive dilemmas, which are occasioned by Collingwood's texts. Knox reads it as exhibiting the decline of Collingwood's philosophy, whereas other commentators, such as Donagan and Mink consider it to provide a sophisticated analysis of mind.¹ A number of its features combine to render it controversial. It emphasizes the historicity of its subject-matter, civilization. It analyzes mind and civilization via an account of the historical development of mind, society, politics and civilization. Its avowedly historical perspective raises questions over whether its standpoint is relativistic.²The New Leviathan is seen by some commentators to endorse the relativism and historicism that they ascribe to his later writings.³ It is also a manifestly practical work, since its theoretical explorations of mind and civilization are self-consciously directed to the purpose of sustaining British wartime commitment. At times it verges on propaganda, so that its theoretical perspective may be distorted.⁴