Robin george collingwood biography of michael

Sources which make claims that do not align with current understandings of the world were still created by rational humans who had reason for creating them. Therefore, these sources are valuable and ought to be investigated further in order to get at the historical context in which they were created and for what reason. The Principles of Art comprises Collingwood's most developed treatment of aesthetic questions.

Collingwood held following Benedetto Croce that works of art are essentially expressions of emotion. For Collingwood, an important social role for artists is to clarify and articulate emotions from their community. Collingwood considered 'magic' to be a form of art, as opposed to superstition or 'bad science'. Magic for Collingwood is a practical exercise to bring about a certain emotional state.

For example magic like a war dance before a battle is a ritual whereby the warriors work themselves up into a particular emotive state in order to do battle. Collingwood developed a position later known as aesthetic expressivism not to be confused with various other views typically called expressivism , a thesis first developed by Croce. In politics Collingwood defended the ideals of what he called liberalism "in its Continental sense":.

The essence of this conception is In his Autobiography , Collingwood confessed that his politics had always been "democratic" and "liberal", and shared Guido de Ruggiero 's opinion that socialism had rendered a great service to liberalism by pointing out the shortcomings of laissez-faire economics. Collingwood was not just a philosopher of history but also a practising historian and archaeologist.

He was, during his time, a leading authority on Roman Britain : he spent his term time at Oxford teaching philosophy but devoted his long vacations to archaeology. He began work along Hadrian's Wall. The family home was at Coniston in the Lake District and his father was a leading figure in the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological Society.

Collingwood was drawn in on a number of excavations and put forward the theory that Hadrian's Wall was not so much a fighting platform but an elevated sentry walk. He was very active in the Wall Pilgrimage for which he prepared the ninth edition of Bruce 's Handbook. His final and most controversial excavation in Cumbria was that of a circular ring ditch near Penrith known as King Arthur's Round Table in It appeared to be a Neolithic henge monument, and Collingwood's excavations, failing to find conclusive evidence of Neolithic activity, nevertheless found the base of two stone pillars, a possible cremation trench and some post holes.

Sadly, his subsequent ill health prevented him undertaking a second season so the work was handed over to the German prehistorian Gerhard Bersu , who queried some of Collingwood's findings. However, recently, Grace Simpson, the daughter of the excavator F. Simpson, has queried Bersu's work and largely rehabilitated Collingwood as an excavator. He also began what was to be the major work of his archaeological career, preparing a corpus of the Roman Inscriptions of Britain , which involved travelling all over Britain to see the inscriptions and draw them; he eventually prepared drawings of nearly inscriptions.

It was finally published in by his student R. He also published two major archaeological works. The first was The Archaeology of Roman Britain , a handbook in sixteen chapters covering first the archaeological sites fortresses, towns and temples and portable antiquities inscriptions, coins, pottery and brooches. Mortimer Wheeler in a review, [ 22 ] remarked that "it seemed at first a trifle off beat that he should immerse himself in so much museum-like detail However, his most important work was his contribution to the first volume of the Oxford History of England, Roman Britain and the English Settlements , of which he wrote the major part, Nowell Myres adding the second smaller part on English settlements.

The book was in many ways revolutionary for it set out to write the story of Roman Britain from an archaeological rather than a historical viewpoint, putting into practice his own belief in 'Question and Answer' archaeology. The result was alluring and influential. However, as Ian Richmond wrote, 'The general reader may discover too late that it has one major defect.

It does not sufficiently distinguish between objective and subjective and combines both in a subtle and apparently objective presentation'. The most notorious passage is that on Romano-British art: "the impression that constantly haunts the archaeologist, like a bad smell, is that of an ugliness that plagues the place like a London fog".

Collingwood's most important contribution to British archaeology was his insistence on Question and Answer archaeology: excavations should not take place unless there is a question to be answered. It is a philosophy which, as Anthony Birley points out, [ 25 ] has been incorporated by English Heritage into the conditions for Scheduled Monuments Consent.

Still, it has always been surprising that the proponents of the "new" archaeology in the s and the 70s have entirely ignored the work of Collingwood, the one major archaeologist who was also a major professional philosopher. He has been described as an early proponent of archaeological theory. Outside archaeology and philosophy, he also published the travel book The First Mate's Log of a Voyage to Greece , an account of a yachting voyage in the Mediterranean, in the company of several of his students.

Arthur Ransome was a family friend, and learned to sail in their boat, subsequently teaching his sibling's children to sail. Ransome loosely based the Swallows in Swallows and Amazons series on his sibling's children. Nevertheless, his ideas continue to influence historical methodology and the understanding of history as a discipline. Collingwood's enduring legacy lies in his profound insights into the nature of historical inquiry and the interplay between past and present.

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Robin george collingwood biography of michael

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