Robin Collingwood (1889-1943) was born 17 years after Bertrand Russell and died 27 years before him. Given the style and content of Collingwood's philosophical work, this fact ought to seem surprising. For there is no apparent mark of Russell's influence, nor of those who influenced him, upon Collingwood's own philosophical corpus. For better or worse, he stands apart - even aloof - from the British analytical tradition exemplified by Russell. Or perhaps for better and worse: better, because he thereby created a distinctive style of philosophy, in which history, not science (or formal logic), was the model and focus of interest; worse, because his own thought lacks some of the clarity and rigour and analytical depth of the 'school' he opposed, or ignored. Not for him the dry deductions of Russell's Principia Mathematica: consciousness in history was what excited his interest.

LRB 16 August 1990 | PDF Download