'Speculum Mentis' and 'Experience and its Modes': A Comparison

Neill, Edmund (2024) 'Speculum Mentis' and 'Experience and its Modes': A Comparison. Collingwood and British Idealism Studies. ISSN 1744 9413 (In Press)

Abstract

This article seeks to compare R. G. Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis (1924) with Michael Oakeshott’s Experience and its Modes (1933). To do so it pursues two strategies. First, it sets both texts in the context of late nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophy, outlining the major challenges to the Idealist tradition in this period – since this was the tradition within which Collingwood and Oakeshott worked. In particular, it draws attention to the rise of positivism, namely the belief that properly devised scientific procedures offered the only correct way of understanding both natural and human phenomena. Then it seeks to delineate the nature of neo-Kantianism, an attempt to retain a unified approach to natural and social sciences – whilst admitting that there are also some important differences between them. Furthermore, it also notes the importance of the advent of more radical pluralism – in other words that there is no rational way of mediating between natural and social sciences – and the related development of Lebensphilosophie which advocated a more intuitive and practical approach to human decision-making, rejecting the ability of philosophy to adjudicate over such questions. Second, the article examines the different ways in which Collingwood and Oakeshott responded to these challenges to reassert the plausibility of philosophical Idealism, and in particular the degree to which they continued to uphold the idea that philosophy could be the arbiter of all disciplines. The article notes that Speculum Mentis and Experience and its Modes put forward similar arguments to some extent – highlighting the importance of ‘provinces’ or ‘modes’ of understanding more than previous British Idealists, the abstract nature of scientific understanding, and the limits (as well as the possibilities) of philosophizing. But it also highlights Collingwood and Oakeshott’s different approaches – not least to the relationship between philosophy and practice, of the modes to one another, and the degree to which modernity should be regarded as a crisis. By relating these differences to the context of late nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophy, the article aims to provide a better understanding of why they occurred in Speculum Mentis and Experience and its Modes.

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