『역사의 제원리』에 담긴 콜링우드의 역사사상

초록

Due to his early death(January, 1943), Collingwood never finished The Principles of History, which he hoped to “go down to posterity as my masterpiece”. Nevertheless, his hope seemed to be fulfilled when Dray and van der Dussen edited and published the survived manuscripts of this book under the same title. The problem is, however, these editors, by their 75 pages long “Editors’ Introduction”, rather distorted Collingwood’s historical thoughts in The Principles of History. The re-enactment theory is the best example of it. They asserted that “in ‘The Principles of History’ there is only silence on” the re-enactment theory. But this conviction only misleads the readers to believe that, in the survived manuscripts as well as in the completed book that Collingwood himself would have finished, there is no reference to the re-enactment theory at all. Moreover, they argued that, because of its weakness of arguments and its ambiguity of concepts, The Principles of History is far from Collingwood’s masterpiece. Rather, it simply proves that “last is not necessarily best”. But is it so? The purpose of this article is simple. By comparing the survived manuscripts of The Principles of History with other published/unpublished works of Collingwood, the importance and the value of this book will be emphasized. As a result, it will be proved that, in this ‘swan’s song’, by inventing new concepts and new argumentations, Collingwood tried to explicate the principles of his “new history” which he had been “working on up to 30 years”. Moreover, it will be inferred that what kinds of historical ideas would be included in The Principles of History, if Collingwood would have finished it. And lastly, the reason why Collingwood did not complete this book will be suggested.

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