R.G. Collingwood philosophy of history position paper

Inside Out

The theory of R.G. Collingwood is very simple yet a powerful tool/way to interpret history. The interpretation being based on inside which is our imagination; putting ourselves on the shoes of our ancestor with the basis of facts, and looking at the outside of the phenomenon or the case by the given records and facts that are naturalistic.

Naturalistic means the physical manifestations that can be seen by others. Speaking in simpler sense, naturalistic can be walking, gestures, and things that are shown through our physical motions. But the inside has do deal with things that are not shown by bare eyes.

The inside deals with rational thought that’s behind an event. When a certain event occurs such as robbery, detectives and polices sees the outside or the physical appearance of what happened in the spot of crime but at the same time thinks about the possibilities of what could have happened in the place and who was the one who have committed the crime.

This rational thought in Collingwood’s term is a priori imagination. When we try to reenact some past experience, we need a priori imagination. This imagination helps us understand and fills the gap of what has happened. For example when some incidents occur and when there’s a huge missing gap that should be filled with accuracy, a priori imagination can help fill the gap and say the things that might have happened. Priori imagination serves not only as a gap filler but also provides us a continuous narrative of the incident.

The importance of inside according to Collingwood is way more than what we think. According to Collingwood, inside is basically everything when he talks about history. The reason that he says this is because natural events have no inside. And without inside, nothing can be clearly understood or be classified as a history proper.

I think there’s both positive and negative side of this inside and outside theory by Collingwood. I strongly agree with the idea that a priori imagination can help immensely when interpreting the history. It is some kind of a hypothesis or an educated guess that should made in order for the historians to understand what happened.

But the danger of a priori imagination is that when an individual looks at history as his very own perspective, then many things can be misinterpreted and mislead other people especially if the individual is a famous historian or an author.

For this case, I would like to talk about the case of “Da vinci code.” The author claims that the book is based on facts. But I think this is the case of a priori imagination being too broad, misled many Christians into some situations that we can’t just laugh at.

Imagination is a gift of God. We have the choice to use it in a nicest manner or the worst manner. We might imagine things that haven’t happened yet be mad about it for ages until the truth is revealed. I just hope that as a scholar of history, historians would be careful of what they have thought upon before they announce it out loud to the whole world.

I think the theory of Evolution is a good example for this. When Charles Darwin discovered the theory of Evolution, he announced it to the whole world about what he has discovered. But for ages and ages, humanity has not seen any sign of evolving animals or other living things until now. This disproves Darwin’s scientific/rational guess.

Once again to sum up all of my positions about Collingwood’s theory, I would like to say that imagination is the gift of God and in order to interpret history, it is a tool that is needed the most. But when we misuse this a priori imagination, we might mislead ourselves, and mislead others as well. And as historians, I believe that it should be a must to always rely on the accurate facts and be careful of what they have in mind.



Collingwood, R. G. (1946). The idea of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Pp. 205-334 .