SOURCE: "From Facts to Thoughts: Collingwood's Views on the Nature of History," in Philosophy, Vol. XXXV, No. 133, April, 1960, pp. 122-37.

In the following essay, Rotenstreich provides an analysis of Collingwood's views regarding history as a set of facts and as an object of knowledge.

1

There is a common distinction between two aspects of history: history as the object dealt with and history as the way of dealing with the object. Within the "objective" aspect of history one may distinguish between the attempt to define the object as man and the attempt to define it as process. Within the "subjective" aspect there is the prevailing tendency to put forward the nature of the conceptual method as one employing individual concepts.

Collingwood's view of the nature of history, in spite of the many-sided development it underwent, can hardly be classified in accordance with these distinctions. He dealt with the two...