Abstract

This paper argues that Collingwood's theories of logic and metaphysics ought to be understood in the context of a diagnosis of a crisis in modern Western civilisation and a response to this problem in the form of a dialectical and historical philosophy.The crisis of civilisation is explained as the failure of contemporary civilisation to significantly move beyond a dependency on a Platonic philosophy of being. The solution, it is proposed, is the development of a philosophy of becoming, which reconciles normative thinking with historical change. Collingwood's reform of logic and metaphysics is supplemented by a broader philosophy of history where the criteria for value and truth are located, not in an ideal transcendent world, but in a 'way of life' in the widest sense.Collingwood's answer to the crisis of Western civilisation, I contend, is a theory of culture as process, historicity and identity realising itself by undergoing diversity. This interpretation of Collingwood's philosophy is developed through a comparison with the historicist philosophy of Ortega y Gasset and a contrast with Nietzsche