The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (118 page)

92
Elsewhere he is himself at pains to emphasize it: see e.g.
Metaphysical Foundations
, p. 188.

93
I shall pursue these issues in Chs 20 and 21, in connection with Derrida and Deleuze (see esp. §6 and §4, respectively). I shall also come back to them in the Conclusion.

A very helpful discussion of Heidegger’s views on reality and truth is Mulhall (
1996
), pp. 94–104. A very helpful discussion of Heidegger’s idealism is Béatrice Han-Pile (
2005
), where, among other things, Han-Pile advances an interpretation of Heidegger that opposes that of Hubert L. Dreyfus, as found in Dreyfus (
1991
), pp. 253–265. (Han-Pile sees Heidegger as more Kantian than Dreyfus does.)

Chapter 19 Collingwood Metaphysics as History

1. Introduction

At the beginning of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony there is a brief quotation from each of the three preceding movements. Each is summarily rejected by an impassioned instrumental recitative. The whole episode helps to prepare the way for the burst of joy that is about to follow.

I hope it will not sound condescending towards either Collingwood or Derrida – it is certainly not intended to – if I liken the next two chapters to that episode. First, in this chapter, we shall hear fragmented repeats of certain ideas from previous chapters, repeats that I shall try to accentuate in §3. Then, in
Chapter 20
, Derrida will reject much of what generates these ideas. The two chapters between them will prepare us for something very different and quite extraordinary in the final chapter, much of which will constitute what may fairly be described as a hymn to joy.

I should straightway emphasize two important limitations of this analogy. First, it downplays the extent to which Collingwood’s own thinking breaks with what has gone before. Second, and conversely, it downplays the extent to which Derrida’s thinking is continuous with what has gone before. (Derrida is deeply Heideggerian.)

These two facts merit comment anyway. They make the present chapter something of an interlude. As a result, they might even be thought to raise questions about its positioning. But actually the chapter would have been something of an interlude wherever it had been positioned. Collingwood does not really belong to any of the traditions identified in this book.

2. Absolute Presuppositions and Metaphysics as the Study of Them

R.G. Collingwood (1889–1943)
¹
has a view of metaphysics that is grounded in his view of propositions (
Essay
,
Ch. IV
2
). Let us therefore begin with the latter.

Collingwood holds that every proposition is a potential answer to some question. And he holds that every question involves some presupposition. In fact it involves many. But only one of them directly makes the question ‘arise’. Thus, to take the classic example, the question, ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’, put to Albert, presupposes that Albert is married, that he is (therefore) of an age to be married, that he has been in the habit of beating his wife, and much else besides.
³
The presupposition that makes the question arise is the fullest of these, which is perhaps – ‘perhaps’, because there is a certain latitude in how the question is to be interpreted – that Albert has been in the habit of beating his wife and has resolved not to do so in the future. This presupposition does not need to be made consciously for the question to arise. But it does need to be made. If the question is put in a context in which the presupposition is
not
made, the question is, relative to that context, a ‘nonsense question’. The presupposition needs to be made for the question to arise: it does not need to be
true
for the question to arise. Sometimes it is helpful to put a question knowing full well that it involves a presupposition that is false. Thus suppose you know that there is no football on television this evening, whereas I am convinced that there is, and you are trying to put me right. You can quite reasonably ask, as you reach for the television guide, ‘Very well, which channel is it on?’ You are presupposing, for the sake of argument, that there
is
football on television this evening, in which case it must be on one of the channels. If I reply that it is on BBC1, say, then you can show me straight away from the guide that I am wrong. If I am less committal in my reply, it will take you a while longer.

The examples given so far illustrate how one question’s presupposition can be another question’s answer. Both the proposition that Albert is married and the proposition that there is football on television this evening are, like any other propositions, potential answers to questions. This suggests that any given proposition will launch an infinite regress. Thus proposition
p
₁
is a potential answer to question
q
₁
, which involves presupposition π
₁
, which is in turn proposition
p
₂
, which is a potential answer to question
q
₂
, which involves presupposition π
₂
, which is in turn proposition
p
₃
, and so on
ad infinitum
. In fact, however, Collingwood does not believe that all presuppositions are propositions. Any that
is
must of course be the potential answer to some further question. But any that is not can block such a regress.
⁴
Collingwood calls presuppositions that are themselves propositions
relative
presuppositions. And he calls presuppositions that are not themselves propositions
absolute
presuppositions. Absolute presuppositions are fundamentally different in kind from propositions, most fundamentally in not admitting of truth or falsity – though we can still use ordinary declarative sentences to express them.

Collingwood gives as an example of an absolute presupposition what I called in
Chapter 5
the Causal Principle, the principle that whatever happens in nature has a cause. He holds that, when scientists make this presupposition (which, he observes, not all of them always do), that ensures that certain questions arise. For instance, it ensures that, given some explosion, the question arises as to what caused the explosion. Making the presupposition therefore has significant repercussions for scientific practice. It spurs scientists on in their quest for causes. But the presupposition is not itself true or false. Making it has more of the regulative about it than the constitutive, to borrow Kant’s terminology (
Ch. 5
, §7). The presupposition cannot be tested, demonstrated, argued for, or argued against.
⁵
If we ask whether it is true, or if we ask what reason there is to believe it, we betray a basic misunderstanding.

It is Collingwood’s further conviction that what
metaphysics
consists in is the study of the absolute presuppositions that are in fact made. Different absolute presuppositions are made in different settings, however. In particular, they vary from one period to another. Collingwood is accordingly quite explicit that metaphysics, so understood, is a fundamentally historical exercise (e.g. pp. 61–62). It is one of the human sciences. It sits alongside psychology and ethnography. To practise metaphysics (metaphysics itself, not just the history of metaphysics) is to investigate how human beings have actually conducted their enquiries in the past.

Now it is of course open to Collingwood to use the word ‘metaphysics’ in whatever way he chooses. But can he possibly think that what he thereby calls ‘metaphysics’ is anything like what the rest of us call ‘metaphysics’?

Well, yes: this is not such an outrageous thing to think. A number of points need to be emphasized here. First, Collingwood has a distinctive conception of history. All history, he famously believes, is the history of thought (
The Idea of History
, p. 317). It is an attempt to understand past human activity by understanding past human thinking. And this in turn can be achieved only through a process of assimilation: that is, not by grasping such thinking ‘as mere object’ (ibid., p. 288), but by actually reenacting it in one’s own mind and having the very same thoughts oneself (see
Autobiography
, p. 76). And to do this effectively one must achieve that articulated awareness of what it would be for the thoughts to be true, and of how they relate conceptually to other thoughts, at which philosophers characteristically aim
(cf. pp. 38–39). Furthermore, this is bound to impact on how well one understands one’s own thinking, especially where the presuppositions involved are not the same as one’s own (cf.
Autobiography
, p. 78). In any case – this is the second point that needs to be emphasized – one’s own thinking is fair game for investigation in this metaphysical exercise. For one’s own thinking belongs to the past: it just happens to belong to the ‘relatively recent past’ (p. 70).
⁶
And when it comes to teasing out one’s own absolute presuppositions, Collingwoodian metaphysics is not readily distinguishable from what, in §6(b) of the Introduction, we saw P.F. Strawson call ‘descriptive metaphysics’.
⁷
To be sure, simply drawing attention to this likeness does not eliminate the concerns about the former. It merely transfers them to the latter. Strawson’s account of descriptive metaphysics is itself subject to the worry that it makes metaphysics too much like a human science, something that we noted when we first considered it. But as I tried to argue then – this is the third point that needs to be emphasized – a description of a given way of thinking can be a self-conscious exercise in that very way of thinking. I have called this the third point, but it is really the first point again, since that is exactly what Collingwood thinks a description of a given way of thinking must be if it is to be properly historical. Finally, replace the references to thinking in this paragraph by references to sense-making and the paragraph will call to mind the point that I have laboured throughout this enquiry: that making sense of things, at the highest level of generality, involves making sense of making sense of things. This in turn signals a direct connection between metaphysics as Collingwood conceives it and metaphysics as I conceive it. Metaphysics as Collingwood conceives it, when it is focused on one’s own sense-making, is at the very least a staple of metaphysics as I conceive it – even if the former does not exhaust the latter.

But still: is there not a great deal within what has traditionally passed for metaphysics that Collingwood cannot possibly hope to convince us counts as metaphysics on his conception?

There is less than you might think. Consider for example the so-called ontological argument, in the version due to Anselm. This argument would standardly be presented in something like the following way.

The Ontological Argument
: God is by definition the greatest conceivable being. And God exists at least in our minds. But for such
a being to exist in our minds without also existing in reality would not be as great as for it to do both. Therefore God also exists in reality. (See Anselm (
1996
),
Ch. 2
.)
⁸

On almost any conception of a metaphysical argument, this is a paradigm case. On Collingwood’s conception it appears not to be a metaphysical argument at all. But Collingwood insists that it is. He urges that the standard ways of presenting the argument are misleading. This argument is not really, as the standard ways of presenting it suggest it is, an argument for the existence of God. That God exists is an absolute presupposition, and there is no arguing for or against it. No, Anselm has not argued that our idea of God ensures the truth of that presupposition; he has argued that our idea of God ensures our commitment to that presupposition (pp. 189–190). This is history.
⁹

Collingwood would in any case be happy to admit that a great deal within what has traditionally passed for metaphysics does not count as metaphysics on his conception. Just as other protagonists in this enquiry have offered their own accounts of proper metaphysics and have dismissed much of what has hitherto passed for metaphysics as bad metaphysics (see e.g.
Ch. 5
, §2, and, most recently,
Ch. 18
, §5), so too Collingwood offers his own account of proper metaphysics and dismisses much of what has traditionally passed for metaphysics as what he calls ‘pseudo-metaphysics’. And by ‘pseudo-metaphysics’ he means, precisely, the attempt to argue for or against absolute presuppositions (pp. 47–48, 52–54, and 162–163).
¹⁰

Let us reflect further on the nature of absolute presuppositions. Clearly, since they do not admit of truth or falsity, they cannot stand in relations of compatibility, incompatibility, and suchlike to one another (cf. pp. 67–68). There are however analogues of such relations in which they can stand to one another. Even if it makes no sense to say that one absolute presupposition is incompatible with another, it may be that nobody can simultaneously make both of them. Thus for example there is no presupposing both that whatever happens in nature has a cause and that some of what happens in nature, some human agency say, has no cause. Collingwood accordingly introduces
the relation of
consupponibility
, which holds between two absolute presuppositions when it
is
possible to make both of them together (p. 66). Granted this relation, granted that absolute presuppositions are expressed by declarative sentences, granted that we may
affect
to assert an absolute presupposition as a shorthand for actually asserting that ‘in our ordinary thinking’ we make it (‘Function of Metaphysics’, pp. 404–405), and granted that we may even go as far as to call an absolute presupposition ‘true’ as a shorthand for doing this (ibid., p. 409): one wonders how much, or rather how little, it would take to impel Collingwood into a quasi-realism of the sort championed by Simon Blackburn
¹¹
whereby absolute presuppositions, despite their differences from ordinary descriptive propositions, are eventually accounted true or false in their own right.
¹²