Introduction

This chapter presents the general aim and outline of the book. The main task of the book is to spell out the relation between philosophy and cultural self-understanding. This task is approached via the work of one of the most important English-speaking philosophers of the late 20th century, Peter Winch. This chapter argues that the idea of philosophy as cultural self-understanding is a central motif in all of Winch’s work, either explicitly or implicitly. Furthermore, this chapter contends that, in order to understand Winch’s view of the relation between philosophy and cultural self-understanding, it is profitable to read him together with R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history. This chapter shows that Collingwood was both an important source for Winch and a thinker engaged in a closely parallel philosophical pursuit. Collingwood and Winch shared the view that philosophy is an effort to understand the various ways in which human beings make reality intelligible. For both, this called for rapprochement between philosophy and the humanities.