"Hegel and Collingwood," Westminister Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University, May 7, 2010.

10.00-11.00 - Kenneth Westphal (University of Kent), ‘Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit’ 11.00-12.00 - Arto Laitinen & Constantine Sandis (Helsinki Collegium & Oxford Brookes University), ‘Hegel on Purpose’ 12.00-12.45 – Lunch Break 12.45-13.45 - Gary Browning (Oxford Brookes University), ‘Collingwood’s Early Logic: Continuities & Discontinuities’ 13.45-14.00 – Coffee Break 14.00- 15.00 - Giuseppina D’Oro (Keele University), ‘Collingwood and the Idea of a Metaphysics Without Ontology’ 15.00 –16.00 Katerina Deligiorgi (University of Sussex), ‘Hegelian Determinism, Agency and Judgement’ Attendance is free and all are welcome, but please email csandis@brookes.ac.uk in advance as places are limited.

Blackburn, Simon. "Being and Time." THE NEW REPUBLIC April 3, 2010.

Inglis, Fred. History Man: the Life of R. G. Collingwood. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. Most contemporary philosophers think of their subject in an entirely unhistorical way. They conceive of themselves as investigating things such as the nature of thought, or truth, or reason, or meaning. They wonder what a language, or a mind, or a world is that thought and reason and the rest are possible. This conception of the investigation is entirely “a priori”: the problem would be the same as it perplexes us and as it perplexed Plato or Descartes. For Collingwood, this is all self-deception. What we may think of as a priori and timeless will be no such thing. It will be simply an application of the “absolute presuppositions” of our own period of thought. Those are the presuppositions that lie so far underneath the edifices we build that we cannot dig down to them. They remain invisible, if only because they would be at work determining the shape our digging would take, or what we could notice as we conducted it. We can never step on our own shadow. The only power that can reveal these presuppositions is that of time: later generations will see them, but we cannot. . . . Collingwood hated the dominant philosophy of his time because of its unhistorical nature. It is not possible even to do science, in his view, without presupposing history, since it is only through their records and their results that scientists can pick up and profit from the labors of their colleagues. But in principle, at least, it is possible to be a good scientist, at the cutting edge of a field, with little historical sense. Philosophy, by contrast, is concerned with thought--and as we have seen, Collingwood held that you cannot identify a thought unless you know to what question it was supposed to be an answer. The history of philosophy is therefore not a somewhat down-market curriculum option of no great interest to contemporary practitioners, just as the history of physics might exist alongside physics as something for retirement or bedtime. Instead Collingwood sees thought as something that is historically embodied: the idea of a worthwhile philosophy with no reflection on its own historical situation would be a contradiction. We can understand where we are only by understanding where we have been: how we got there, and the thoughts of those who would wish us to have got somewhere else. . . . Read the whole review here: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/being-and-time.

Johnson, Peter. Review of Fred Inglis, HISTORY MAN. NDPR (October 2009).

Inglis, Fred. History Man: the Life of R. G. Collingwood. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. Philosophical biography is as old as philosophy. In the third century Diogenes Laertius wrote wittily and informatively about the lives of philosophers, sometimes telling us about their work, sometimes about their often inglorious attempts to live a philosophic life. In our world few professional philosophers live, or even aspire to live, in the manner of a Socrates or an Aristotle, and even fewer, one suspects, would regard their lives as exemplary if they did. For most contemporary philosophers teaching philosophy in large modern universities, work is about much the same as a day at the office. Moreover, philosophers in our world make use of the work without needing to know a great deal about the life. Journals abound with articles on almost every philosophical topic imaginable. Routinely, philosophers, like scientists or historians, successfully exploit this material while remaining largely ignorant of the lives of those who produce it. And, yet, philosophical biography flourishes. Few major philosophers have not received the full biographical treatment. We should note that word major, for it acts as an assumption and a warning. The assumption is not only that major work in philosophy warrants a biography of the philosopher, but that the life will illuminate the work in ways that reflection on the work alone will fail to do. The warning arises from the assumption, since it is sometimes necessary to remind biographers that what makes a major philosopher is precisely the work alone. What uniquely attracts attention is the quality of the argument, the clarity and precision of the insight, the sustained demolition of a point of view or the spirit in which the philosophy is expressed, or, perhaps, some combination of all these. Even when an original philosophical voice explains what motivates it to do philosophy, or tells us why we should think philosophy worthwhile, we are listening in a different key. Philosophers sometimes write their own biographies. One such is R. G. Collingwood's An Autobiography, rightly considered a classic of its kind. In general, Collingwood had little time for biography. He thought it intrusive, vulgar and, even when well written, a form of writing that panders to the worst of readers' motives. Biography seeks the artist behind the art, the philosopher behind the philosophy, and in doing so peddles the illusion that it is the life which explains the work. Collingwood insists that his work stands apart. The Preface to Collingwood's Autobiography tells us exactly how it should be read -- "the autobiography of a man whose business is thinking should be the story of his thought" -- that is, the story of his philosophy as he saw it from the perspective of 1938, of how his ideas emerged and developed and how his search for a rapprochement between philosophy and history and theory and practice came to shape his intellectual life. We can be pretty sure that Collingwood would not have encouraged a biography. It may be, too, that at least a small motive for Collingwood writing his autobiography is that it spared him the attentions of a biographer. If there is any truth in this then Collingwood's ruse proved successful for some seventy years at least, until this year with the appearance of Fred Inglis's History Man: The Life of R. G. Collingwood, a work which gives Collingwood exactly the kind of scrutiny that, one suspects, he would have welcomed least. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17725.

Cfp: "The Empire of Idealism," R.G. Collingwood Society Conference, Monash University Conference Centre in Prato, Italy, July 19-22, 2010.

Philosophical Idealism dominated British and British Empire universities from the 1880s to the 1920s. At this time the influence of Idealism could also be found in America through figures such as Josiah Royce, and in Italy in the writings of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. As a body of thought Idealism was socially and politically engaged and inspired reform across fields such as education, social welfare, politics and international relations. The conference aims to explore not only the major figures of Idealism but also the social, educational and political influence of Idealism from the 1880s to the mid twentieth century in Britain, Australia, Canada, the United States, South Africa, New Zealand, India, and Italy. Papers would be particularly welcome on R. G. Collingwood's relationship to Idealism, or to any of the above issues or people. Abstracts of no more than 500 words to be sent by 15 December 2009 to the conference organisers: Associate Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Macquarie University, Sydney (mhughesw@humn.mq.edu.au) or Dr Ian Tregenza. Macquarie University, Sydney (ian.tregenza@mq.edu.au).

"Collingwood and Toulmin," Mind and Society 14, University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University, September 4-6, 2008.

Provisional Program: Thursday 4th September Evening – arrival, drinks and a meal (venues to be announced) Friday, 5th September 9.00 – 9.45: Professor Ivan Leudar, Psychology, Manchester University, Is psychology history? What can R. G. Collingwood do for Psychology today? 9.45 - 10.15: Discussion and Coffee 10.15 - 11.00: Dr Giuseppina D'Oro, Philosophy, Keele University, Re-enactment, Simulation and Folk-psychology 11.00 - 11.30: Discussion and Coffee 11.30 – 12.15: Professor Alan Costall, Psychology, Portsmouth University, Psychology as history: Frederic Bartlett and the myth and promise of 'Cambridge psychology' 12.15 – 12.45: Discussion and Coffee 12.45 - 2.15: Lunch 2.15 - 3.00: Professor John Pickstone, CHSTM, Manchester University, Collingwood, Whewell and Ways of Knowing: reflections on historicism and idealism in the study of science. 3.00 - 3.30: Discussion and Coffee 3.30 - 4.15: Michael Lynch, Cornell To be confirmed 4.15 – 5.00: Discussion and Coffee 5.00-5.45: General Discussion, 6.30 - Drink reception, Conference Dinner Saturday 6th September 9.00 – 10.00: Professor James Connelly, Politics, Hull University, From anthropology to metaphysics: Collingwood, culture and civilization. 10.00 – 10.30: Discussion and Coffee 10.30 - 11.15: Professor Baudouine Dupres, Institute of Social Sciences and Policy, Louvain "The Judge, the Spirits and the Law: Devil Possession, Personal Agency and Mind/Body Dichotomy in an Egyptian Courtroom" 11.15 - 11.45: Discussion and coffee 11.45 -12.30 Professor Wes Sharrock, Social Science, Manchester University, Perennial arguments about intelligibility and rationality in the philosophy of the social sciences. 12.30 - 13.00: Discussion and coffee 13.00 - 14.30: Lunch 14.30 – 15.15: Professor Mathieu Marion, Philosophy, Montreal University, Toulmin on Collingwood and Relativism: a Rejoinder. 15.15 - 15.45 Discussion and Coffee 15.45 - 17.45 Meeting Plenary - discussant Uffe Juul Jensen, Copenhagen University 18.00 Conference closes. Enquiries to Ivan Leudar: ivan.leudar@manchester.ac.uk.