Rethinking Collingwood, Rethinking Hegel

The idea of rethinking plays a central role in the philosophy of R.G.Collingwood. In undertaking his philosophical analysis of history, Collingwood conceives of the study of past actions to consist in their rethinking by means of the historian's scrutiny of the evidence that he or she assembles in the present. Rethinking, for Collingwood, is also an apposite term to capture the reflective activity of philosophy insofar as it analyses the conditions and practices of human conduct and thought, and in so doing explains them by rehearsing their interconnections in systematic fashion. Throughout his career, Collingwood takes these two modes of rethinking to be interconnected. Notably, Collingwood conceives of his own practice of analysing the fundamental concepts of history as, in turn, presupposing the prior development of a tradition of historical thinking and analytical reflection upon the methods of history. He himself draws upon this tradition in his self-conscious process of rethinking it, which is exemplified in the main body of The Idea of History. Collingwood also understands the practice of rethinking as implying a critical perspective on preceding modes of thought, hi his formulaic notion of historical explanation as consisting in the re-enactment of past thought and in his affiliated notions of rethinking, Collingwood does not assume that the act of rethinking is to be regarded as the same act as the original piece of thinking that is to be understood. Thought is universal so that the same thought can be the object of different particular acts of thought. The differences between acts of thought remain, however, so that rethinking a previous thought is to rethink in a significantly new context in which the thinker is aware of the pastness of the thought rethought. This contextual awareness, for Collingwood, underlies the critical interrogation of past thinkers and thought and provides for the possibility of progress.