Giuseppina D’Oro, Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-23971-0 [Book review]

Over thirty years ago it would have been correct to say that “so many people have called Collingwood an ‘unduly neglected’ thinker that he is coming to be surely the best known neglected thinker of our time.” Although Collingwood’s work had been widely read, it had not received the recognition it deserves. Since then the proliferation of monographs on Collingwood prohibits one from calling him a ‘neglected thinker.’ However, most of the critical attention on Collingwood since 1970 has concentrated exclusively on individual aspects of his philosophy. A revival of his philosophies of history and politics was followed more recently by a revival of his aesthetics. What these readings have in common is an acknowledgement of the ‘philosophical baggage’ that each of Collingwood’s specific theories carries. But the ‘baggage’ itself has remained unexamined.