Why Re-enactment is not Empathy, Once and for All
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4504787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tyson Retz (0000-0003-1524-7965, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 306-323 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Philosophy of History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1872-261X • E-ISSN: 1872-2636 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/18722636-12341376 |
| OpenAlex | W2767408601 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
The misconception still circulates that Collingwood's doctrine of re-enactment is a concept of empathy. This claim typically arises from the belief that his philosophy of history shares affinities with the nineteenth-century tradition of Romantic hermeneutics. It supposes that re-enactment consists in a unidirectional recapturing of past mental contents, in which are said to reside the pristine meanings of past texts as intended by their authors. By emphasising the dialectical character of re-enactment, this article makes plain that re-enactment entails no such one-sided transferal. It is right to conceive of Collingwood hermeneutically, but not in the nineteenth-century, empathy-dependent tradition. Rather, as Gadamer illuminated in acknowledging the service that Collingwood's theories provided in the development of his hermeneutics, Collingwood is better understood as proposing a Hegelian-style integration of past and present thought. He reacted against the individualising psychologism of the anti-Hegelian German historicists and emphasised instead the shared nature of language and thought. A proper account of the context that historical investigation ought to recover involves shifting attention from a methodologically inadequate epistemological conception of re-enactment and empathy to a metaphysical one concerned with exposing the foundations of discourse upon which past agents believed, thought and acted. The myth that re-enactment belongs to a discredited hermeneutics of recovery is set against Collingwood's attempt to depsychologise historical thinking and within his project to reconcile history and philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics
Context (archaeology · Dialectic · Empathy · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Hermeneutics · Metaphysics · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Political Theory and Influence · Psychology
Trauma, memory, and dialogic historical education
The Memory-Method-Perspective Model
Tensions, articulations, and novelty in the ontogenetic development of historical thinking
Rethinking contextualization in history education
Addressing controversial ideas in philosophy class
Lessons of war. The significance of battlefield tours for the Dutch military
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,5 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |