Autobiography as a Philosophical Genre: Robin G. Collingwood and Herbert Read

Abstract

Autobiography is explored in this article not as a literary genre, but as a philo­sophical genre. This study is based on the autobiographies of two famous Eng­lish thinkers of the 20th century – Robin George Collingwood (1889–1943) and Herbert Read (1893–1968). The purpose of this study is to discover the connec­tion between autobiography and philosophy and show how the philosophical views of a particular thinker are reflected in autobiographical prose. This article shows the reflection of R.G. Collingwood and H. Read regarding the develop­ment of their thinking and regarding what they themselves consider the most im­portant in their philosophy. We focus on two texts: R.G. Collingwood’s “Auto­biography”, written in 1939, and Herbert Read’s “The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies” (first published in 1963). However, in addition to these main texts, the author of the article also turns to other works of Collingwood and Read, showing the connection of their autobiographies with all their work. Collingwood’s autobiography is pure thought, freed from everything material, corporeal and natural, and in this it fits perfectly with Collingwood’s philosophy as a whole. In Read’s autobiography we see the opposite trend: for him, emo­tions, experience of perceiving the outside world, experience of interaction with nature, aesthetic experience are the most important part of human life. However, both Read and Collingwood share the same phrase: “the awakening mind”, as they both tell the story of the awakening of one’s consciousness, the emergence of self-consciousness.