On The Logic Of Question And Answer Of Collingwood In The View Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Collingwood (1889--1943), the famous historian and philosopher in early 20th century of Britain, brought many thoughts on history and philosophy which had a profound influence. In the past years, research on Collingwood in China was mainly focused on history, which stressed the importance of his re-enactment theory, but at the same time ignored his remarkable contribution to philosophy. However, with the development of Philosophical Hermeneutics, Collingwood's status in philosophy attracted people's interests gradually, especially his logic of question and answer. Therefore, this article intends to discuss logic of question and answer specifically, and makes a further revelation about this logic's status and sense in historical philosophy. This research is aimed at making fully aware of the logic of question and answer, as well as knowing its important influence on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. This article consists three parts:Partâ… mainly focus on the philosophical background and theory source of Collingwood's logic of question and answer. From the philosophical background, the logic of question and answer was mainly brought to against the realism's propositional logic. Propositional logic emphasizes that true and false is determined by the proposition itself, which ignored the historical aspect of the proposition. However, logic of question and answer insists that true and false is determined by the unity of question and answer. The logic of question and answer is also established on the foundation of three principles of Collingwood's historical research. From his theory source, Collingwood is influenced by historians such as Dilthey and Croce, and he is also influenced by philosophers such as Socrates and Bacon.Partâ…¡focuses on the content of logic of question and answer. It is naturally a presupposition which contains senses. What important is what is presupposing rather than true and false. And Collingwood distinguished two kinds of presupposition: relative presupposition and absolute presupposition. In his opinion Metaphysics is the science of studying absolute presupposition. Logic of question and answer contains two parts: posing question and answering question. Posing question needs two processes: separation and arrangement, and answering question should be in a correct order. It also has three characters: correlation, openness and historical. And Collingwood used this theory to explain metaphysics, especially to reveal the task of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the science which research on absolute presupposition.Partâ…¢focuses on the interpretation of logic of question and answer from the aspect of philosophical hermeneutics. Collingwood proposed that history research should be included second-order history, which embodied his respect on authority and tradition. He also proposed that re-enactment of question in the logic question and answer, which is similar to merging of horizon in the philosophical hermeneutics. Collingwood proposed theory of true and false which is different from the traditional theory. He thought that true and false belonged to the unity of question and answer,which is similar to the truth theory in philosophical hermeneutics.Logic of question and answer influenced the development of, especially the development of philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer said that Collingwood was the person who ended the argument about eternal questions between the Oxford realists and classical philosophers.