Collingwood’s Historical Re-Enactment Theory Research

Robin George Collingwood (1889—1943), no doubt, is one of the greatest British philosophers and historians in the 20th century. The Ideal of History which was contributed by his disciple T. M. knox made him famous quickly. Collingwood criticize the traditional speculative philosophy, which theory starting from the fundamental ontology. He turned the study of philosophy of history towards to a new direction. As the late 1970’s shifting of ’narrative history’ in the history study to strength constantly, He was even regarded as a spirit godfather by a part of postmodern historians. But as Collingwood’s other works published, especially his voluminous compositions were disclosed, more and more studiers admitted that all the studies only based on The Ideal of History are poor, these narrow research covered Collingwood’s true appearance.About the philosophy of history, Collingwood putted forward many famous assumptions, such as ’the Logic of question and answer’,’all history is the history of thought’ and ’Historical Re-Enactment’, etc. This article will focus on making the new interpretation of Collingwood’s historical re-enactment theory. On the one hand, this is because, according to Collingwood, historical re-enactment is the last link of his history thought, it is the full generalizations of other theories. On the other hand because of the theory of historical re-enactment had received the most reviled till now. By focusing on analysis of this theory, it will be able to cross-cutting Collingwood’s thought development, by finish the work, we can then integrate and dispel those paradox, this way does not mean that we can eliminate those paradox, on the contrary, we may be just reach a compromise in which all the models of cognition can co-exists with other one harmoniously, and then re-find his theoretical basis.In recent years, as for Collingwood’s new works increasingly contributed, his image has become more and more true. This article will combine those recent research results at home and abroad, sets out my view about Collingwood’s theory of historical re-enactment from his theory basis, aiming at eliminate most misunderstanding. This paper’s basic structure will be show up as follows:The Preface will be divided three parts. First of all, I will briefly introduce Collingwood personal information and his own writing history, Particular the publishing history what associated with our research works on the topics. Secondly I will introduce the domestic and foreign research situation. Finally I will point out my own basic research ideas, research methods and the shortcoming in this paper.The first chapter will focus on expounding Historical Re-Enactment’s fundamental connotation, showed up Collingwood’s special theory analysis skills in this paper. At the same time, those critical opinions to Collingwood’s historical re-enactment theory will be summarized and classified in this part, I will also refute them in accordance with the theory of Collingwood’s historical re-enactment in order to show why these researchers prefer to make wrong evaluation what is based on the understanding and what should not be ignored.The second chapter will be divided into two parts, I hope myself can answer such questions as ’why Collingwood will put forward the theory of historical re-enactment’ or ’what contents are related to the theory of historical re-enactment’ etc. In the previous section, I will mainly analyzes Collingwood’s theory origin in different periods, in the following work, it can be summarized as justly two periods, first one include the intellectuals such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Benedetto Croce, the Green School, etc. Second one include the great men such as Immanuel Kant, The British empiricism tradition philosophers, and Robin George Collingwood’s father William George Collingwood, etc. The motivation behind the action is to find mostly theoretical factors and social factors which lead to different interpretations of Collingwood’s thoughts during various periods. I hope to combining the background to trim Collingwood own works, and then restore the real path of growth of his theory. In the later section, I will detailed summarize Collingwood’s writing history, then divide the whole development periods of Collingwood’s historical enactment theory into three or more successive period. Time horizon of my studying from 1915 till Collingwood’s afterlife. During the studying, I will point up the turning points and remarking books in every period. I hope we can answer that both questions asked ahead.In the third chapter, I will do the research on cognition and evaluation of Collingwood’s theory of historical enactment objectively. I. e. during this chapter I will try to transform the angle of view, to analysis the causes of misunderstanding on Collingwood’s thoughts from the perspective of general interpreters or readers. Firstly Collingwood’s own multilateral theory development is amenable. Secondly the studies’ changing outlook in various times also play an important role. I will generate and summarize the basis interpretation models, and through back to the theory of basic presupposition to think and balance the interpretation of the different models. About how to evaluate Collingwood’s such theory, I want to build up combination with 20th century’s special background (especially the great changes of psychology in this period), in fact, I want to find out the hidden link between R. G. Collingwood’s thought way and the Ages Idea which can be equal to the Scientific world view, then we should analyze the theory logically, underline its border and obtain the basis of an evaluation. In spite of Collingwood looked as alone during his time, himself also often emphasize the differences with others intellectuals in the 20th century, but he also easily impressed by the ages idea, so we can doubt that one kind of objective psychologies was hidden in the core of his historical re-enactment theory.In conclusion, I will clear up own research methods and principles on the basis of summarizing predecessors’ research, interpret my own hermeneutic standpoint, then deduce the conclusions. Also, I will show up the inspiration which bring by the study. As the core of the whole study, the analysis tool of basis theory to Collingwood’s historical re-enactment theory can be widely used in the research field of the study of intellectual history and historical theory. What to analyze the foundation of Collingwood’s historical re-enactment theory, is to find out the experiential basis in Collingwood’s theory. All of these need to be suitable for the law of cognition and the theory development rule.