Olli Lagerspetz: Understanding from the Inside: Social and Historical Knowledge and their Relation to Philosophy according to R. G. Collingwood and Peter Winch"
The Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value and the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Pardubice cordially invite you to the last lecture entitled "Understanding from the Inside: Social and Historical Knowledge and their Relation to Philosophy according to R. G. Collingwood and Peter Winch" by Olli Lagerspetz (Åbo Akademi University – University of Pardubice, Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow)
Date: 14th December 2022, 10:00 am
Venue: University Campus, Building EB, Room 01019
Abstract of the lecture:
R. G. Collingwood (1889-1942) and Peter Winch (1926-1997) gave important impulses to 20th Century debates on the character of knowledge in the human sciences. Collingwood, a practicing archaeologist, developed a model of epistemology where knowledge consists of answers to questions. History is not a list of facts in the past, memory or testimony, but the investigation of how action constitutes the agents' answers to challenges. Winch applied the same ideas to social science and ethics, insisting on the primacy of the agents' own questions. For both, this idea had a wider significance, for it highlights the contextually embedded character of philosophical questions as well. Their idea of philosophy as cultural self-examination is increasingly obvious, with a wealth of new material now available to scholarship. This talk presents their vision of philosophy and the human sciences in the light of their published work and manuscript sources.
