1. Domains and Organizations of Philosophy
Collingwood once wrote a text to the effect that philosophers are those who re-write the classical works of philosophy, or, to put it more precisely, those who engage in the same questions which haunt classical philosophy. It is a true and comforting thought (yes, sometimes a true thought can at the same time be comforting...) that the novelty of a question is not in itself the mark of a good philosopher. Rather, naive questions like "what is the good?" etc. have a higher priority for a philosopher.
After finishing Speculum Mentis and making connections between this text and Collingwood's other works, it is clear that Collingwood's career as a writer was very similar to that of Schelling. Like Schelling, Collingwood starts off with reflections on religion and nature, then a treatise which lays out his system in outline (i.e. Speculum Mentis), and then a subsequent development of each phases of this system (i.e. The Idea of History, The Idea of Nature, The Principles of Art).
Hegel, on the other hand, took a very different approach. His Encyclopedia came at the very end, and his early and middle works are concerned with fundamental questions concerning thought as such, both in the Phenomenology and in the Logic. Hegel was also very much concerned with questions of freedom (apropos of Christianity) and of politics (apropos of the French Revolution and of the German constitution.) The latter aspect is especially interesting, since a treatise on politics finds no place in either Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism or Collingwood's Speculum Mentis. Of course, Collingwood also wrote the New Leviathan which is explicitly a work on political principles, but again it is unclear as to how this is to fit into his overall picture of the dialectical development of consciousness.
2. A Plan (in the Barest Outline)
What is perhaps common to Kant and Collingwood is their emphasis on the aesthetic as the beginning of consciousness. Art also enjoys a moment of being an Idea in Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Collingwood, but this is art as it reaches the stage of what Collingwood calls "aesthetic philosophy," where the aesthetic consciousness self-consciously represents the world and its own thought through its own principles of artistic beauty and playfulness.
A Critique of Aesthetic Philosophy is well in order at present, given Japan's general cultural climate which tends towards immediacy, imaginary objects, imagination, and play.
Religion comes next in Collingwood's system, while in Kant it is science, in Hegel it is nature, and in Schelling there is nothing higher than art. But I would here like to follow Kierkegaard in asserting that the Ethical Consciousness succeeds the aesthetic. It is a mediated consciousness which is in a peculiar state of uneasiness, where action performed in accordance with a socially accepted rule is seen as the most important achievement. Perhaps after all Collingwood also is on the same boat when he asserts that the practical mode of religion is convention, i.e. ethical in the lower sense of the word.
Again, this mode of consciousness needs detailed critique given the historical conditions of Japan's public and private social institutions, norms, and habits.
Then comes science, history, and philosophy. This is Collingwood's triad. For Hegel it would be nature, art, religion, and philosophy. For Kant it is science, morality, and beauty. And so on. But again, as to what brings true satisfaction, or, in other words, what deserves the name of Idea and of the Absolute, is still up for grabs if one were to elaborate a philosophy in the context of contemporary Japan. Also, the place of politics is ambiguous in all of these modern thinkers' works. Aristotle had a clearer idea of the relation between politics and philosophy, but one cannot simply return to him as if his concepts are adequate for modernity. Same with Plato.
This is the barest outline of a system, but the devil is in the detail, as the proverb goes, and, for that matter, not only the devil but also the fun.
