« But what does ‘survive’ mean?” R.G. Collingwood’s paradoxical philosophy of history according to Paul Ricoeur

de Guillebon, Baudouin
(2024) December Conference - British Idealism and Collingwood Studies — Location: Gregynog Hall, Powys (Cardiff University) (15.December.2024)

Files

Englishpresentation-CollingwoodRicoeur.pdf
  • Open Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 286.47 KB
Download

Details

Authors
Abstract
“But what does ‘survive’ mean?” This question is asked by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur in his famous book Time and Narrative in a paragraph dedicated to Collingwood’s philosophy of history. This question arises after a presentation of Collingwood’s doctrine of “re-enactment” which appears to be, in Ricoeur’s opinion, paradoxical. Indeed, according to Ricoeur’s demonstration, the results of the act of “re-enactment” are unsatisfactory and even counter-productive because the very notion of temporality seems to be canceled. To Ricoeur’s point of view, there is a contradiction between the possibility of seizing thoughts of the past as they were and the idea of a survival of past thought in the present which implies modifications of the past, and the notion of process. Hence, Collingwood would maintain a double thesis the parts of which are opposed: an identification of present and past thought on the one hand, a temporal process of survival of the past in the present in the other hand. According to Ricoeur, those two theses cannot work together, and the re-enactment is performed at the expense of the temporal distance. Thus, in Ricoeur hermeneutics’ approach, Collingwood’s philosophy of history leads to the impossibility of knowing the past “as other than my own”, to quote Ricoeur.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

de Guillebon, B. (2024). « But what does ‘survive’ mean?” R.G. Collingwood’s paradoxical philosophy of history according to Paul Ricoeur. December Conference - British Idealism and Collingwood Studies, Gregynog Hall, Powys (Cardiff University).