Reviews for Roman Empire (Oxford History Study Units)

The average rating for Roman Empire (Oxford History Study Units) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-08 00:00:00 Richard Cecconi This is a highly specialized topic written for a book. Readers (who are not historians) will find themselves completely at the mercy of the author: his choice of topics, his analysis on other historians approach, his refutations and arguments. However I believe Collingwood intended this book for the lay audiences. His main points were repeatedly reiterated throughout the book. And he used common and shared experiences to drive his ideas home; that history is a different kind of science than what's being oftenly accepted, but its a science nevertheless; and historical thought is achieved by reenacting the historical events in one's own mind and reliven it. I view the Idea of History as a book that describes whats going on inside a historian's mind: his hopes and fears, his assertions and contentions, and the pursuit of objectivity within an intrinsically subjective-minded kind of inquiry.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-02-12 00:00:00 Moignard Nicolas A book anyone who is - or pretends to be - a historian must read. That is not to say it will be easy for many historians to read, or that they will agree with its conclusions. It is a difficult work, a work of genuine philosophy; and Collingwood's conception of history seems to contradict much of what historians think about their craft and their subject. The first part of the book is taken up with Collingwood's account of the development of history as an entity in its own right, that is one with a defined subject and object. For Collingwood this means history's evolution from various annalistic, political, and theological approaches, and in modern times its escape from the grip of scientism and naturalism. In other words, his concern is with history's maturation as philosophically viable, independent, and complete. History, that is, for and by its own sake. The real substance of the book is Collingwood's analysis of history from this philosophical viewpoint. The influence of idealism is apparent (Collingwood was one of the British idealists), and the philosophy itself is too rich and complicated for exegesis here. Two main ideas underpin the edifice. The first is the notion that the past has no independent existence, having ceased to be the moment it passed into whatever temporal oblivion things that have occurred pass into. (It need not be pointed out that the philosophy of time is itself hugely controversial, but Collingwood only introduces that to the extent it impinges on his enterprise, and no more.) The past can only be known in the present, because all that is known of it is what of it that has persisted into the present. We can know of it only what is left. Because of this Collingwood argues that history ends in the present; the historian's task is to understand how it came to be, but can say nothing about the future because it no more exists than the past. It is how the historian goes about doing all this that is surely the most controversial aspect of his philosophy of history. Because the past itself does not exist, and all that is known of the past is based on the evidence of it that exists in the present, Collingwood asserts that all history is a reconstruction of the past, an imaginative reconstruction which takes place in the historian's mind. And what the historian reconstructs is not events or actions, for those are lost, but the thought that went into those events or actions. For Collingwood, "All history is the history of thought" (215). The only way to know the thought of the past is to recreate it in one's own mind; that is history. Hence Collingwood's lapidary assertion, a stone cast into the very foundations of history itself: "The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own mind" (ibid.) A stunning claim, and a controversial one. It raises all sorts of issues, such as what constitutes a thought, what an event is, whether humans in the present can re-think the thoughts of humans in earlier centuries if their thought processes are incommensurate (which introduces the vexed question of the unity and uniformity of human nature), and so forth. One can challenge Collingwood's philosophy of history both on its premises and its conclusions. But from his premises his conclusions are entailed logically. For they all flow from the basic premise upon which the entire structure is erected: history is by necessity philosophical for it is a product of the human mind. It is created by humans thinking, by our mental processes. To use one's mind, for Collingwood, is to act philosophically. History and philosophy are in this respect, for him, identical. This is implied throughout the main text, but is most forcefully established in the essays and lecture notes which were added to the 1994 edition. Here Collingwood makes clear, in powerfully protreptic fashion, his conviction that history without philosophy is a nullity. "The philosophy of history, then, is the exposition of the transcendental concept of history, the study of history as a universal and necessary form of mental activity" he writes at the end of his essay on "The Idea of a Philosophy of Something" (357). From this arise profound metaphysical, epistemological, and moral consequences. Metaphysical, for history is an attempt to unite in the concrete reality of the present the wholly ideal existences of the past and the future. "The past is in no sense whatever actual. It is wholly ideal" (403). The present itself is is only a momentary phenomenon, the point at which the two unrealities meet. "The present is composed in this way of two ideal elements, past and future" (405). Epistemological consequences stem from the metaphysical, for the unreality of the past constrains our ability to know it. "History, regarded as knowledge of past fact, is unattainable" (394). What we are really trying to know, of course, is the present. The past is "necessary" while the future is "possible." It is the present alone that is "actual" (412-3). It is probably the most controversial proposition in all history (the discipline, not the subject), whether we study the past for its own sake or our own, but Collingwood eminently, sensibly, chooses the only way he must: "The purpose of history is to enable us to know (and therefore to act relatively to) the present" (406). All history leads up to the present; we seek to comprehend it by "reconstructing its determining conditions" (420). And comprehend it we must, for it is innate in our humanity. It is part of what makes it human. And this brings us to the moral consequences of Collingwood's conception of history. "History is one of the necessary and transcendental modes of mind's activity, and the common property of all minds." (422). That is why history is, and must be, philosophical: it emanates from our minds. We apprehend the world through thought, and no thought is more crucial than that by which we reconstruct the making of the world we inhabit, that is, the present. Every past that was once a present was itself reconstructed in that way. So it is that Collingwood can declare that all history is the re-enactment of past thought. Philosophy and history are both concerned with thought. "In a very real sense," therefore, "they are and must be the same. For their problem is the same." (422). Indeed, history is the "immediate and direct source of all philosophical problems." History requires philosophy, but so does philosophy require history. Without history, philosophy lacks sustenance and withers. Nurture a historical consciousness, though, and you have all, save its own methodology, "that philosophy needs. All philosophy is the philosophy of history." They are one and the same; two sides of the same coin, a symbiosis that originates in the human mind itself. Not only does Collingwood vindicate history as a way of understanding the world, he vindicates humans as beings compelled to understand the world through history. Of all the consequences of Collingwood's philosophy of history, this is surely the most important. History is philosophy because it must be; we make it so. History exists because humanity does; it emerges from our perspective on the world. I think, therefore I am. And because I am, I think historically. Everyman is his own historian. And every historian, according to Collingwood, is his own philosopher. Whatever else one may think of Collingwood's philosophy, on this essential point he is entirely correct. For not only is every historian his own philosopher, he must be, if he is ever to be worthy of the name. (Originally written 1 August 2010, edited 28 June 2011)