A.N. WHITEHEAD, R.G. COLLINGWOOD EN HET STATUUT VAN DE METAFYSICA

Summary At first sight, Collingwood's and Whitehead's concept of metaphysics have not much in common. Collingwood seems to reduce metaphysics to a historical study of ideas, while Whitehead defines metaphysics as an ontological study. In this article I want to show that the similarity between Collingwood's and Whitehead's concept of metaphysics is much stronger than commonly accepted. Therefore I make use not only of Collingwood's published writings but also of his unpublished manuscripts in 1978 released. First I outline the evolution of Collingwood's thought on metaphysics since 1933. Against that background I try to clarify Collingwood's interpretation of the concept of metaphysics in the work of Alexander and Whitehead. Collingwood's preference for Whitehead's concept has especially to do with the transcendental justification of Whitehead's concept of metaphysics. At the transcendental level however, there are important differences between both thinkers, in spite of the strong similarities between them. These differences eventually explain why Collingwood's metaphysics is a historical one, while Whitehead's metaphysics is a cosmological one.