The Afterlife of Idealism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction

   • Admir Skodo

   Pages 1-20

3. Revisionist Potential: Historical Thought from Absolute to New Idealism

   • Admir Skodo

   Pages 21-75

4. The Philosophical Moment in Postwar Historiography

   • Admir Skodo

   Pages 77-120

5. Revisionist Whiggism: Revisions of the English Past from the Tudors to the Victorians

   • Admir Skodo

   Pages 121-180

6. The Political Thought of Revisionism

   • Admir Skodo

   Pages 181-239

7. Conclusion

   • Admir Skodo

   Pages 241-245

8. Back Matter

   Pages 247-301

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This book examines the legacy of philosophical idealism in twentieth century British historical and political thought. It demonstrates that the absolute idealism of the nineteenth century was radically transformed by R.G. Collingwood, Michael Oakeshott, and Benedetto Croce. These new idealists developed a new philosophy of history with an emphasis on the study of human agency, and historicist humanism. This study unearths the impact of the new idealism on the thought of a group of prominent revisionist historians in the welfare state period, focusing on E.H. Carr, Isaiah Berlin, G.R. Elton, Peter Laslett, and George Kitson Clark. It shows that these historians used the new idealism to restate the nature of history and to revise modern English history against the backdrop of the intellectual, social and political problems of the welfare state period, thus making new idealist revisionism a key tradition in early postwar historiography.

• idealism
• modern intellectual history
• history of philosophy
• modern British history
• history of political thought
• E. H. Carr
• R. G. Collingwood

“The Afterlife of Idealism is a rich history that covers a complex landscape of political theory, historical writing, and social criticism from early post-war Britain. … the book is for a wide range of readers, from intellectual historians to those interested in the history of philosophy and historiography.” (Julia Moses, European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 26, 2018)

“The Afterlife of Idealism offers another perspective on British historiography in one of its most fecund phases. In Skodo’s book Carr’s What is History? is not the starting point of post-war historical reflection; post-war historians were already caught up in historical philosophising and philosophical history. After The Afterlife of Idealism, Elton, Clark, Laslett, et al. are far harder to pigeon hole, far more plural in their predilections than may be popularly imagined.” (Jamie Melrose, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, October, 2017)

“Idealism, goes the conventional wisdom, ran aground in the 20^th century on the shoals of analytic philosophy, historical materialism and phenomenology. And yet, as Admir Skodo shows in this fine-grained study, it had a robust afterlife—in what he calls its “new” rather than “absolute” form—in postwar British historiography. The lessons of Croce, Collingwood and Oakeshott inspired historians who resisted their discipline’s transformation into another social science and sought a way beyond Whig triumphalism.” (Martin E. Jay, Ehrman Professor, University of California Berkley, USA)

“The book is a very welcome and profoundly original scholarly interpretation of the complex fate of philosophical idealism in the 20^th century. Late 19^th century Absolute Idealism is seen to morph subtly into a ‘new idealism’ by the 1930s and thence into a powerful tradition of historical and political writing, dominating both the inter and the post-war years. Intricate echoes of this tradition still, in fact, permeate debates to the present day and to neglect it is to seriously misconstrue the whole character of historical and political thought.” (Andrew Vincent, Emeritus Professor, Cardiff University, United Kingdom)

• University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

  Admir Skodo

Admir Skodo is a researcher at Lund University, Sweden.

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