Abstract

It has been more than sixty years since R.G. Collingwood propounded on his philosophical aspect of history by re-enactment. His dissatisfaction of the prevalent philosophical strands during his time left him pondering on how humans understand history or ‘see’ things of the past. Ironically, he left his provoking ideas unpublished when he died in 1943. His Idea of History was posthumously published in 1946 to wide acclaim and contributed immensely to the study of philosophy of history. This paper illustrates some of Collingwood’s ideas on re-enactment and re-examines the critiques levelled against it. Collingwood’s vicarious practice of re-enactment has been widely used in differing fields, without the practitioner knowing its origins.