The Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value invites you to the last lecture entitled "Understanding from the Inside: Social and Historical Knowledge and their Relation to Philosophy according to R. G. Collingwood and Peter Winch" by Olli Lagerspetz (Åbo Akademi University – University of Pardubice, Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow)
Date: 14th December 2022,10:00 am
Venue: University Campus, Building EB, Room 01019
R. G. Collingwood (1889-1942) and Peter Winch (1926-1997) gave important impulses to 20th Century debates on the character of knowledge in the human sciences. Collingwood, a practicing archaeologist, developed a model of epistemology where knowledge consists of answers to questions. History is not a list of facts in the past, memory or testimony, but the investigation of how action constitutes the agents' answers to challenges. Winch applied the same ideas to social science and ethics, insisting on the primacy of the agents' own questions. For both, this idea had a wider significance, for it highlights the contextually embedded character of philosophical questions as well. Their idea of philosophy as cultural self-examination is increasingly obvious, with a wealth of new material now available to scholarship. This talk presents their vision of philosophy and the human sciences in the light of their published work and manuscript sources
Philosophy as Cultural Self-Knowledge: R. G. Collingwood, Peter Winch and the Human Sciences (WC-Cult)
Principal investigator: Doc. Olli Lagerspetz
Period: 1. 1. 2022 – 31. 12. 2022
Grant No. 101026669 (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship)
Abstract
The input of the humanities and social sciences is vital in fostering a viable civil society. Informed public debate concerning the good life needs the kind of reflexive cultural self-understanding that they can offer. In cultural reflection, conceptual analysis, which is the domain of philosophy, has a key role. This vision of philosophy and the human sciences as cultural self-knowledge currently remains a minority view. However, during the twentieth century, it found powerful proponents in two leading philosophers of history and the social sciences: R.G. Collingwood (1889–1943) and Peter Winch (1926–1997). The aim of the planned project is to confront these two thinkers and tease out their underlying visions of philosophy. By engaging with these thinkers, the present project reopens questions about (1) the place of philosophy among the sciences, as well as (2) issues concerning the very nature of philosophical inquiry and (3) its impact on civil society and its challenges. The relation between Collingwood and Winch remains almost completely unexplored at present. The relationship between philosophy and human historicity, which was a key issue for both, presently remains underdeveloped in the analytic tradition. The planned research will take advantage of extensive manuscript material at the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value (CE) at the University of Pardubice (UPa). The CE has the unique combination of full access to the relevant Peter Winch manuscripts and a team of scholars knowledgeable in the post-Wittgensteinian tradition to which Winch belonged. The project furthermore includes a short visit to the Collingwood Archives at Oxford. The scholarship will enhance the CE’s reputation as the ‘go-to’ place for anyone doing research in the post-Wittgensteinian tradition. It will help the ER establish his reputation as a global expert and to expand his research network in a new direction, i.e. towards scholars on idealism.
