Why Collingwood Matters: A Defence of Humanistic Understanding

R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943) was an English philosopher, historian and practicing archaeologist. His work, particularly in the philosophy of action and history, has been profoundly influential in the 20th and 21st century. Although the importance of his work is indisputable, this is the first book to consider how and why it actually matters.

Giussepina D’oro considers the importance of Collingwood as a thinker who thinks kaleidoscopically and, unlike lots of contemporary philosophers, refuses to focus on narrow, technical interests but instead, observes the whole world of thought. Why Collingwood Matters revives Collingwood’s conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis and shows how it informs his understanding of the mind, what it means to act, and what it means to understand the past historically. It also argues for the relevance of his metaphilosophical approach to the challenge posed by the Anthropocene and the global environmental crisis.

Both an elucidation of Collingwood’s thought and a lively exploration of it’s contemporary relevance, Why Collingwood Matters provides a much-needed examination of a 20th-century polymath.

Giuseppina D’oro is Reader in Philosophy, Keele University, UK. She is the author of Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (2014 2nd edition) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology (2017), Collingwood on Methodology (2018). D’oro is also the co-editor of the new edition of R.G. Collingwood’s Essay on Philosophical Method.