From contemplation to transformation : myth, history, and the philosophy of R. G. Collingwood.

Abstract

The relationship between history and myth suffers from an ambiguity from which a philosophical topos, and thus philosophical project, emerges. This thesis deals with the philosophical potential of this ambiguity. If, as I argue, the ambivalence of this ambiguous relation is both necessary and in some sense inescapable to be philosophically illuminating, the goal is, then, not to reconcile these two concepts (and indeed to highlight the impossibility of doing so), but to articulate the possibilities that emerge from the exploration of that very ambivalence. This will be done through an exploration of the philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943), whose philosophy (at times difficult to locate within a school or tradition) will be triangulated via thinkers who have wrestled with the problem of history and myth, namely Herodotus, Giambattista Vico and Siegfried Kracauer. Behind these explicit comparisons, I will also rely on the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg (his theory of myth will buttress a large part of the conceptual grounding of the project) and Walter Benjamin, whose ideas regarding history and myth constitute important, if momentary, illuminations. These confrontations not only allow Collingwood to emerge as a genuine and original philosopher of history and myth in his own right, but also embody a new insight into the philosophical interest of history and its relation to myth.