Chapter 3.5: Collingwood, the re-enactment of history

[Music] at the beginning of this series of lectures I asked the question what do we need in order to understand history in this lecture I want to talk about RG Collingwood a British historian and philosopher of the first half of the 20th century we will see that his answer to the question is in a sense a variation on Hegel's as well as a variation on the ideas of the hermeneutics estill tie who we will meet in a later lecture but to begin with Collingwood makes an assertion that might make the entire question about understanding history seem useless for Collingwood insists that history doesn't exist history doesn't exist that sounds like a radical claim but Collingwood thinks it's only common sense the past simply doesn't exist it used to exist but it no longer does Julius Caesar doesn't exist anymore nor does your own childhood or the moment when I was making this film the past doesn't exist the future doesn't exist the only thing that's real is the present all right maybe that is con sense but if only the present is real then what is it that the historian is studying well obviously he is studying the only thing that he could be studying the present whether it is archives or archaeological objects or ancient texts or even books by other historians the historian is always investigating things in the present and from those present things Collingwood tells us the historian constructs history he studies texts and inscriptions and pottery and buildings and so on and in that way he creates an idea of say the Roman Empire under Augustus so history is an idea that is constructed by the historian now of course the historian does not construct this idea in a random way or by using his imagination he is not a novelist or a filmmaker now what historian tries to do is to create a story a narrative which makes maximal sense of all the historical traces that he finds in the present history is a story that the historian tells in order to understand what he finds in the present this is quite abstract so let's look at two examples in the first case a historian reads in the works of the ancient Greek author Herodotus that the Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece with an army of more than two million soldiers historian also has sources about the technology of the periods about the geography of Persia and of Greece and about the difficulties that even modern armies have in keeping their people supplied thinking is through he concludes that the number that Herodotus mentions is impossibly high Dirk sees could not possibly have managed food and water supplies for so many people on his journey to Greece said now the historian has to construct the most plausible story which explains all his data a story that will involve an educated guess about the real size of the Persian army and also an explanation of why Herodotus came up with his apparently wrong number that's the way a historian works he can't investigate the Persian army since it doesn't exist anymore but he can investigate the sources that are presently available to him and try to explain how those sources came to be the way they are in our second example we imagine that someone comes up to the historian and asks well historian what was the favorite color of the first Roman soldier to set foot on British shores of course the historian doesn't know that but according to Collinwood it's not even a real historical question because there is no trace in the present of whatever this guy's taste in colors might have been since history is a narrative that the historian comes up with to explain the present something that has left no trace in the present at all is simply not part of history historians don't talk about it they don't want to talk about it and they shouldn't talk about it it's simply not a subject for historical research so again history is a narrative that the historian reconstructs from the traces that he finds in the present in order to understand those traces but what does that narrative look like here Collingwood agrees with Hegel's idea that the historian has to show us that the logic that underlies history but where Hegel things about the logical development of big underlying concepts like freedom collingwood is focusing more on the logical aspects of individual human behavior in order to understand this we need to understand a distinction that is extremely important to calling one roots thought the distinction between events and actions an event an event like the eruption of a volcano is something that we can explain by giving its causes an action on the other hand like my walking up to someone and hitting them is something that we explain by giving its reasons so in the case of the eruption one course will be a high pressure in the hot layers of the earth and another course will be the weakness in the Earth's crust underneath the volcano which allowed the magma to come up in the case of me hitting someone the reason might be that this person had been spreading slender's about my love life okay but what is the difference between a cause and a reason well one difference is that a cause is either there or not there but it can't be a good or a bad calls while reasons can always be good or bad reasons it make makes perfect sense to wonder whether I should or should not have hit this person given that he had slandered me maybe it was a good reason maybe it was a bad reason but it makes no sense to wonder whether the volcano should have erupted given the pressure and a weakness of the crust volcanoes just erupt in those circumstances a second difference between events and actions which is closely related to the first is that causes which we use to explain events figure in causal laws whenever the pressure is this high and the crust is this week there is going to be an eruption that's the kind of law that Hampel likes but reasons don't figure in such laws there is always a decision involved I thought that this guy had slandered me but it was still up to me to either hit him or not hit him there is no law that predicts what will happen every time to strengthen our grip on the distinction between reasons and causes imagine the following if this guy whom I have just hit demands why I hit him I could say well some electrical signals traveled from my brain to my arm muscle which then contract and this caused my fist to move towards your head that would be a causal explanation sure if these nerve signals travel to my arm then my fist will indeed hit his head but of course this guy doesn't want a causal explanation he wants to know my reasons that is he wants a rational explanation he wants to know why hitting him was the logical thing for me to do and if it turns out that I had no reasons that it was just an involuntary spasm then we would have to conclude that it wasn't an action at all just like the beating of my heart isn't an action is not something that I am doing now why is all of that important because according to Collingwood historians are always interested in human actions physicists geologists astronomers biologists and so on that is natural scientists in general are trying to explain events but historians are always trying to understand human actions why did Herodotus write down this number why did Napoleon invade Russia and this means that a historian is never looking for causes and laws but is always looking for reasons a historian wants to construct a narrative that shows that it was logical for Herodotus or for Napoleon to do what they actually did given their beliefs their desires their background the kind of person they were of course they would act in this way a historian only understands history if he can get to that of course if he can tell a story about the historical people that shows that it was logical for them to act in the way they acted the term that Collinwood uses to describe this understanding of history is reenactment this means to place yourself in the shoes of the historical person in such a way that you can recreate their thought processes processes in your own mind and can thus grasp how they came to the conclusions that they did if you can do that then you understand why they acted as they did and only then do you understand history so whereas Hempel thought that history worked just like the natural sciences and thus needed to use causal laws collingwood makes a sharp distinction between the natural sciences which explain events using causes and history which explains actions using reasons historical explanations don't use laws they involve the historian thinking like the person he is investigating going through their thought processes and understanding why it was logical for that person at that time to think and act as they did

Channel: Leiden University - Faculty of Humanities

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Keywords: Universiteit Leiden, Leiden University (College/University), Humanities (field of study), Geesteswetenschappen, Bachelor, Education, gijsbers, victor, wetenschapsfilosofie

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Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017