www.quondam.com/77/7607.htm

The Idea of History, etc.

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All history, then, is the history of thought, where thought is used in the widest sense and includes all the conscious activities of the human spirit. These activities, as events in time, pass away and cease to be. The architect re-creates them in his own mind: he does not merely repeat them, as a later scientist may re-invent the inventions of an earlier: he re-enacts them consciously, knowing that this is what he is doing and thus conferring upon this re-enactment the quality of a specific activity of the mind. This activity is a free activity. It differs toto caelo from the imitativeness which may induce a man or a beast to do what others do because these others are observed to be doing it. For the architect does not observe others to be doing the things which he does over again. Until he has done them over again he does not know what they are. It is only after I have grasped the idea of specific gravity that I can see what it was that Archimedes had done when he shouted Eureka: I am therefore in no sense imitating Archimedes.
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 445.

subliminal (philosophical) reenactments
2000.03.24 15:26

It just occurred to me that the notion of reenactment is an integral part of Western philosophy's very beginnings. Without being explicit about it, Plato nonetheless exercised reenactment in many of his texts. Of course, I'm referring to the Socratic dialogues first, the cave second.

SL

footnotes:
Every ten years, the whole town of Oberammergau, Bavaria reenacts Christ's last week in Jerusalem, commonly known at the Passion Plays. This tradition has been an integral part of Oberammergau since the end of the Black Plague. Neuschwanstein and Linderhof are each just several miles from Oberammergau.

And how about all the reenacting the Pope's been passionately doing this week? What with reenacting Moses, Christ, and most interestingly, St. Helena.

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