The Present's Historical Task: Kracauer as Reader of Collingwood. Issue 3 (14th October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kent, James
• Is Part Of: Critical horizons. Volume 17:Issue 3/4(2016)
• Page Start: 338
• Page End: 357
• Publication Date: 2016-10-14
• Subjects: history -- philosophy -- present -- Kracauer -- Collingwood -- Orpheus; Critical theory -- Periodicals; 142.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2016.1190176
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1440-9917

Abstract

Abstract : Siegfried Kracauer's reading of the work of R.G. Collingwood illuminates the crisis point in the relation between philosophy, history and how the present is thought. In this paper I argue that Kracauer's dismissal of Collingwood illuminates a misunderstanding of the latter's philosophical project, and takes no account of a certain affinity between the two thinkers. Collingwood not only shared Kracauer's view that a philosophically oriented historical investigation of the past might offer some hope for the present, but also had a fuller grasp of the philosophical implications of the ambivalent relation between historical time and the present than Kracauer gave him credit for.