An Essay on Philosophical Method

"My best book in matter, in style. I may call it my only book." An Essay on Philosophical Method contains the most sustained discussion in the twentieth century of the subject matter and method of philosophy and an unparalleled explanation of why philosophy has a distinctive domain of enquiry that differs from that of the sciences of nature. Collingwood's mature work of metaphysics seeks to overhaul the notion of philosophical method, assigning philosophy the task of "thinking out the idea of an object that shall completely satisfy the demands of reason." The Essay is particularly interesting as an embodiment of the idealistic metaphysics Collingwood abandoned in later life. This edition (a reprint of the 1933 edition) of the Essay focuses on Collingwood's contribution to metaphilosophy and locates his argument for the autonomy of philosophy against the twentieth-century trend to naturalize its subject matter.