Conclusion

philosophy, politics and the unity of theory and practice

Amy E. Varela

pp. 144-173

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

Abstract

Collingwood's first major work Speculum Mentis privileges philosophy in taking it to be the pre-eminent conscious activity. Philosophy conceives the world to be coeval with the activity of consciousness. The process of becoming aware of the world corrects the perspectives of subordinate modes of consciousness such as science, art, history and religion, which enact but misperceive the reciprocity of world and consciousness. Philosophy's reflexive celebration of its apprehension of the role of consciousness raises a number of questions over its interpretation of experience and its evaluation of forms of consciousness. The temptation to dismiss Speculum Mentis as a piece of youthful and exuberant idealism that rejects the objectivity of the world should be resisted. Collingwood's reluctance to identify himself as an idealist derives from his appreciation of how its label is liable to misrepresentation as a form of world-denying subjectivism. He is at pains to distance himself from such a categorization throughout his career. In Speculum Mentis Collingwood subscribes to an objective idealism that assumes the world to be independent and objective, and yet to be correlated to the succession of ways by which it is apprehended. If Speculum Mentis does not succumb to subjectivism, its deprecation of non-philosophical forms of experience reduces the complexity of experience.