Collingwood’s “Lost” Manuscript of The Principles of Hisotory

In his edition of The Idea of History Knox made use of parts of Collingwood’s unfinished manuscript of The Principles of History , written during a voyage through the Dutch East Indies in 1938–1939. This manuscript, however, is not among Collingwood’s manuscripts, available at the Bodleian Library at Oxford since 1978. It was therefore considered lost, but it has recently been discovered in the archives of Oxford University Press. Originally, it consisted of ninety pages containing finished chapters on “Evidence,”“Action,” and “Nature and Action.” The first chapter, the manuscript text of which has not been recovered, was included by Knox in The Idea of History under the title “Historical Evidence.” He also made use of parts of chapter III. Before dealing with the content of The Principles of History , I discuss two questions: why Knox did not publish the complete manuscript, in spite of the fact that Collingwood explicitly gave his authorization for its publication, and why the manuscript was not finished, in spite of the fact that Collingwood himself placed a high value upon it. The Principles of History contains much that is informative and clarifying for some much debated and controversial aspects of Collingwood’s philosophy of history. Examples are his discussion of the status of a philosophy of history, the interpretation of evidence, the nature of human action, the role of emotions, what is meant by the thought‐side of history, the difference between history and biography, the relation between history and nature, and the autonomy of historical thought. The manuscript is of interest, too, because of the insight it offers into the way The Idea of History was edited by Knox. It makes it clear how Knox manipulated the text when editing the sections on “History and Freedom” and on “Hegel and Marx”: in the latter he deleted an important paragraph, while in both he sometimes made changes in Collingwood’s very words.