St. Augustine's Press
Collingwood’s mature work of metaphysics seeks to overhaul the notion of
philosophical method, assigning philosophy the task of “thinking out the idea of
an object that shall completely satisfy the demands of reason.” He saw natural science and history falling short in their accounts of our knowledge and limited in their aims. Propositions in philosophy, he believes, must have the scope of both
natural science and history, to be both universal and categorical. The Essay is
particularly interesting as an embodiment of the idealistic metaphysics Collingwood abandoned in later life.
“One of the finest restatements of contemporary British philosophy of a Platonic and Hegelian metaphysic viewed from a modern standpoint.” – Times Literary Supplement
1-85506-392-1 1995 $22.00tx
240 pp., paperback, 1933 edition
Key Texts