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136 pages

English

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This book is volume one of a two-part series. Taken together, the two volumes of A Philosopher at War examine the political thought of the philosopher and archaeologist, R.G. Collingwood, against the background of the First and Second World Wars. Collingwood served in Admiralty Intelligence during the First World War and although he was not physically robust enough to play an active role in the Second World War, he was swift to condemn the policies of appeasement which he thought largely responsible for bringing it about. The author uses a blend of political philosophy, history and discussion of political policy to uncover what Collingwood says about the First World War, the Peace Treaty which followed it, and the crises which led to the Second World War in 1939, together with the response he mustered to it before his death in 1943. The aim is to reveal the kind of liberalism he valued and explain why he valued it. By 1940 Collingwood came to see that a liberalism separated from Christianity would be unable to meet the combined evils of Fascism and Nazism. How Collingwood arrived at this position, and how viable he finally considered it, is the story told in these volumes.

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Philosophie et théologie

Western philosophy

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	05 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781845406646
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0550€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title page
A PHILOSOPHER AND APPEASEMENT
R. G. Collingwood and the Second World War
A Philosopher at War Volume Two
Peter Johnson

Copyright page
Copyright © Peter Johnson 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Originally published in the UK by
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Originally distributed in the USA by
Ingram Book Company,
One Ingram Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086, USA
2013 digital version by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

Acknowledgments
My thanks are due to my fellow Stakhanovites in the study of Collingwood, David Boucher and James Connelly, who over many years have inspired me to greater efforts, if not rewards. Their help in bringing this two-volume project to completion is much appreciated. Matthew Townend selflessly provided me with the results of his labours in the W. G. Collingwood archives which led to the solution of at least one difficult problem. The Naval Historical Branch (now based in Portsmouth) responded charmingly to my enquiry about I. D. 32 by saying that probably I knew more about it than they did, a comment which still does not wholly convince me. There is a book to be written exclusively on I. D. 32, but it will have to be tackled by an author whose grasp of the mysteries of British Intelligence during the First World War is greater than mine.
My interest in Collingwood began with research in University College Swansea, then a constituent college of the University of Wales, under the supervision of the late Professor W. H. Greenleaf who was both a fine political historian and political philosopher. Jack’s supervision sessions were awe-inspiring in their concentration, historical detail, and length. My focus of attention then was in Collingwood as a political philosopher. In this study Collingwood remains very much centre stage, but with the political events of his time, dramatic and world changing as many of them were, making their appearance as Collingwood, the philosopher, responded to them in his thought. Quite a few years after those Friday evening seminars with Jack in which I would dwell on the arguments it is not a little ironic that I should now write a book in which events and Collingwood’s arguments go hand in hand. Almost certainly, Jack taught me better than I knew.
British political history in the 1930s is a heavily congested field, and among historians appeasement remains nearly as contentious a topic as it was at the time. I have dipped cautiously into this literature, deploying it when it serves the needs of the narrative and argument. My thanks are due to the historians whose works have shed light on the problems I tackle. Where I stumble over personalities and events the fault remains my own. A study which combines philosophy with history, even if in unequal measure, is sure to place heavy demands on research material and my thanks are due to the staff in the libraries I have used for their efficiency and helpfulness, especially the staff in Inter-Library Loans in the University of Southampton Library whose devotion to duty seemed limitless. Where I needed books to own rather than borrow, October Books in Southampton never let me down and they were supported by many serendipitous finds, especially in modern history, in charity shops across the South Coast. Speaking of books, I would also like to thank Imprint Academic for producing the books with cover photographs which match their subject-matter so appropriately.
My wife, Sue, earns a special mention in dispatches for strengthening my resolve when I woke her at 4.30am one cold and dark January morning to say that the computer had wickedly shown me that there was more than one way of losing 20,000 words of text. For a confirmed Biro man the discipline required to stay at the task was more than I usually think myself capable of. Friends rallied round at this difficult time, especially Tony and Jean Palmer, my jewels in The Crown Inn at Highfield, Southampton, who I am sure were so keen to get their hands on the finished books that they were prepared to sacrifice anything - well, almost anything - to encourage me back to work.
Finally, and since the members of the Department of Philosophy in the University of Southampton persist in the practice of acknowledging the role of public houses in facilitating their various publications, I would like to thank the Shirley Hotel in Southampton for providing the necessary pick-me-ups after my usual pre-dawn writing start and for letting me know that there is at least one pub in Britain in which the atmosphere of the Cardiff pubs of my youth has not been entirely lost.

Epigraph
As the organ of his own society’s self-criticism the philosopher finds himself called to follow Socrates in the calling that led Socrates to condemnation and death. That call came from Delphi; and the philosopher who makes his pilgrimage to Delphi sees there not merely the place where long ago an event happened which was important in its time and may still interest the historian, but the place whence issued the call he still hears: a call which, to one who can hear it, is still being uttered among the fallen stones of the temple and is still echoing from the ‘pathless peaks of the daughters of Parnassus.’
- R. G. Collingwood, The First Mate’s Log of a Voyage to Greece in the Schooner Yacht Fleur De Lys in 1939 , Oxford University Press, London, 1940, p63, entry dated 14 July 1939.
No one I imagine can think that the arrangements made at Munich were anything but the choice of the lesser of two horrible evils...with the development of the air the capacity of this country as it existed in the XIX century, based on sea power, to do the cosmopolitan policeman no longer stands...we have not been as wrong and unprincipled as you think...a hideous choice of evils...I could not have prevented a worse fate for Czechoslovakia...and if I had sought that remedy, it would have been at the price of immeasurable suffering imposed on the world, and the probable disruption of the British Empire, which may yet perhaps be a rallying point of sanity for a mad civilization.
- Lord Halifax, British Foreign Secretary at the time of the Munich crisis, writing in a letter to Lord Francis Scott 18 October 1938, as cited in Andrew Roberts, ‘The Holy Fox’ A Biography of Lord Halifax , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1991, p124.

Introduction
When R. G. Collingwood returned to Oxford in the late summer of 1919 his project of bringing philosophy into proximity with life was a work in progress. He had, it is true, given a number of public addresses on religious and political subjects, but these were fed as much by his Anglican faith as a settled view of what philosophy is and can achieve. [1] Even though reflection and speculation continued the published results were mostly less than satisfactory. A work on philosophy and politics, Truth and Contradiction , had been completed, but then set aside, [2] and his experience of working on British preparations for the Peace Conference had provided him with more than just a glimpse of the frustrations involved for the academic who attempts to influence public policy, especially in wartime.
Even so, for Collingwood the Socratic belief that the unexamined life was not worth living remained an enduring presence, less a presence, perhaps, than a test because without a principle of enquiry the precept will not work. Of hope for human improvement Collingwood, like many after the sufferings of the First World War, did not require convincing. What Joseph Conrad in his novel, Nostromo , describes as the “weary desire for peace” conveys very well the general longing which comes after extended and prolonged conflict. Collingwood, however, asks for something more. Any examination of life which is less than fully revealing of its own assumptions and guiding procedures will be futile. At the end of the War Collingwood was a philosopher searching for a voice. To reformulate the world in thought is the aspiration. The method of achievement is philosophy.
If the course it followed became irregular and often traumatic, Collingwood’s desire for rapprochement between philosophy and history and between theory and practice came to him early. In its mature form we might think of it as the bedrock of his personality and beliefs, but it also has some of the hallmarks of a quest - the certainty that the project is rational, the faith in being able to see it through and the conviction that philosophy is best conceived not as the philosophical doctrine of realism portrays it, but as it is defended by Collingwood himself. Not that a conception of philosophy came ready-made. What the exploration leads to changes with the exploration itself. Moreover, as with all pursuits, Collingwood’s is vulnerable as much from without as from within. External events throw up obstacles which have to be overcome. Ideals once thought to be practicable turn into failures, as the League of Nations was mournfully to illustrate. Liberal principles are made to seem platitudes. As the decades following 1919 take their melancholy course new dangers to civility and civilization in the shape of aggressive dictatorships imperil both the quest and the philosopher who aims to see it through. Equally threatening are the storm clouds which come from the project itself. Reshaping the world in thought depends on the thought being true, and this in turn depends on philosophy’s methods being sound. For philosophy to collapse into something which it is not shows that the project as originally conceived will not work and so Collingwood has to get the relations be