SOURCE: "Collingwood and the Idea of Progress," in History and Theory, Vol. XXIX, No. 4, 1990, pp. 21-41.

In the following essay, van der Dussen examines Collingwood's view of the idea of progress as both epistemological and metaphysical in nature.

I

At the beginning of the chapter in his autobiography entitled "The Need for a Philosophy of History" Collingwood claims that two branches of philosophical inquiry need special attention. Besides epistemological problems related to historical knowledge he mentions in this connection "metaphysical problems, concerned with the nature of the historian's subject matter: the elucidation of terms like event, process, progress, civilization, and so forth" (Aut, 77). [In the text the following abbreviations are used for Collingwood's works: EPM: An Essay on Philosophical Method; Aut: An Autobiography; EM: An Essay on Metaphysics; NL: The New Leviathan; IN: The Idea of Nature; IH: The Idea of History. From R. G. Collingwood: Essays in...