Actualist language in Speculum Mentis

Wakefield, James R. M. 2025. Actualist language in Speculum Mentis. Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 30 (1) , pp. 79-109. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

R. G. Collingwood was reluctant to name his influences. Even so, readers of Speculum Mentis (1924) have noted resemblances and connections between the ideas he expressed in that book and those of the Italian idealists whose work he had written so much about in the preceding decade. The extent to which Collingwood drew on actualism, a form of idealism most closely associated with Giovanni Gentile, has been much contested since the book was first published. Linking Speculum Mentis with Collingwood’s accounts of actualism elsewhere, this article shows that his treatment of thought and language can be understood as a novel reformulation of certain actualist principles, including some that Gentile did not fully elaborate in his systematic works. Though the Collingwood of Speculum Mentis was in dialogue with Gentile the intellectual and cultural historian, as well as the systematic philosopher, his answers to the questions actualism raised were quite his own.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Cardiff Law & Politics
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Publisher:	Imprint Academic
ISSN:	1744-9413
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 April 2025
Last Modified:	04 Apr 2025 15:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176983

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