Collingwood's main thing is the rejection of methodological/epistemological unity. He doesn't believe that the natural world and the human world can be understood in the same way.
This is true primarily with the question of rules. Natural science can produce rules and doctrines. Historical study can not. That isn't what it wants to do and it shouldn't try.
It instead provides insight and mental training, both acquired through a process of simulating past thoughts that provide synthetic experience.
The real benefit of historical thinking is a unique moral perspective and attitude.
The core element of this moral outlook is identical to the core element of his epistemological outlook. That is to say that it center on the question of rules. In trying to understand the human world in terms of rules (like science), we also try to understand our moral actions in terms of rules. Historical thinking, on the other hand, views the human world not in terms of rules, but in terms of simulation, that is as particular and unique instead of general or theoretical.
This is the distinction Collingwood makes between theoretical and practical reason.
We explain other people's actions (theoretical) in the same way that we explain our own actions (practical). When we view our own choices not in terms of rules, but in terms of particularity, we also see other people in terms of particularity. We are not a kind of person, and other people are not kinds of people.
History and duty.
From an epistemological outlook (history) to a moral one (duty).
No comments:
Post a Comment