Mind, History, and Dialetic: The Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood by Louis Mink

An overview of Collingwood's project

In this work, Louis Mink proves himself a sympathetic but not uncritical expositor of Collingwood's thought. Mink recognizes that Collingwood was a systematic thinker and that Collingwood was also economical in his writing–not often repeating contentions or arguments from book to book. And, of course, Collingwood’s thought developed over time. 

Mink identifies Speculum Mentis (1923) as the template of for Collingwood's later thinking, and he then reveals how RGC (Collingwood) alters and details that map in his later works. I’ve read all of RGC’s major works except Religion and Philosophy (1916), An Essay on Philosophical Method (1932), and An Essay on Metaphysics (1940). By having completed Mink's book, I've gained a greater sense of what I'm missing and how these works tie together in Collingwood's overall project. 

For instance, Mink clarifies Collingwood's ideas about "the logic of question and answer," which, as Mink demonstrates, is not a (propositional) logic at all, but a theory of inquiry. Mink also clarifies Collingwood's notion of "absolute presuppositions," another one of Collingwood's concepts that is often misunderstood and widely criticized, but that makes sense with Collingwood's larger scheme. Mink also addresses many of the sticking points found in The Idea of History (1946--posthumous publication). The way that Mink unpacks some the peculiarities of Collingwood's insights can save readers from the gamut of responses often suffered when reading and contemplating The Ideas of History initially. In my experience, these responses can run from thinking "unique" to "brilliant" to "really? to "dogmatic and arbitrary" to "nonsense!"--all concerning one concept or argument! Mink's efforts to place these ideas, such as "all history is the history of thought," in the context of Collingwood's entire opus allows the reader to (perhaps) return to the initial response of "unique" and "brilliant" that may well have been justified in the first place, Mink's effort may also spares us from suffering unjustified reams of critical complaints based on faulty assumptions. All of this is not to say that Mink isn't critical, but only that he makes sure that he's dug as deeply as possible to get at the fundamental insights that Collingwood has attempted to convey before he levels any criticism.  

One other point of value also worth adding is that Mink briefly explores similarities between Collingwood's thought and that of pragmatism and existentialism. Collingwood didn't directly address these contemporary philosophical schools, but Mink points out some striking similarities. For my part, I also see some intriguing similarities between Collingwood's thought and that of Hannah Arendt, herself a unique offspring of the German existentialist school of thought, especially regarding the topics of political action, the crisis of the 20th-century, and democracy. 

I’ve read only a couple of other book-length considerations of RGC’s work (one focused on The Ideas of History & the Fred Inglis biography, History Man), but Mink’s book has provided the most thorough and well-presented roadmap of Collingwood’s project as a whole that I can imagine anyone writing in a single, 268-page text.