This book discusses Collingwood's conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis. It explores questions, such as, is there anything distinctive about the activity of philosophizing? If so, what distinguishes philosophy from other forms of inquiry? What is the relation between philosophy and science and between philosophy and history?

For much of the twentieth century, philosophers philosophized with little self-awareness; Collingwood was exceptional in the attention he paid to the activity of philosophizing. This book will be of interest both to those who are interested in Collingwood¿s philosophy and, more generally, to all who are interested in the question ¿what is philosophy?¿

Karim Dharamsi is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of General Education at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. He has published articles in the philosophy of history, on the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, Wittgenstein, Frege, the philosophy of education and liberal education.

Giuseppina D'Oro is Reader in Philosophy at Keele University, UK. She is the author of Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience (2002). She co-edited, with James Connelly, Collingwood's An Essay on Philosophical Method (2005), with Constantine Sandis, Reasons and Causes: the Causalism/Anti-Causalism Debate in the Philosophy of Action (2013) and with Søren Overgaard, The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology (2017).

Stephen Leach is Honorary Senior Fellow at Keele University, UK. He is the author of The Foundations of History: Collingwood's Analysis of Historical Explanation (2009) and with James Connelly and Peter Johnson, R.G. Collingwood: A Research Companion (2015). With James Tartaglia, he has edited Consciousness and the Great Philosophers (2017) and The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers (2018). 

1. Introduction: The Armchair and the Pickaxe.- 2. An Essay on Collingwood; Bernard Williams.- 3. The Development of Collingwood's Metaphilosophical Views; James Connelly.- 4. Collingwood on the Relationship between Metaphysics and History; Jan van der Dussen.- 5. Presuppositions and the Logic of Question and Answer; Vasso Kindi.- Collingwood, Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Science; Elena Popa.- 6. Why Epistemic Pluralism Does Not Entail Relativism: Collingwood's Hinge Epistemology; Giuseppina D'Oro.- 7. Oscillation and Emancipation: Collingwood on History and Human Nature; Karim Dharamsi.- 8.Collingwood and the Philosophy of History: the Metaphilosophical Dimension; Jonas Ahlskog.- 9. The Later Collingwood on Method: Re-enactment and abduction; Chinatsu Kobayashi and Mathieu Marion.- 10. Collingwood and Archaeological Theory; Stephen Leach.- Index