“For I do not think of aesthetic theory as an attempt to investigate and expound eternal verities concerning the nature of an eternal object called Art, but as an attempt to reach, by thinking, the solution of certain problems arising out of the situation in which artists find themselves here and now. Everything written in this book has been written in the belief that is has a practical bearing, direct or indirect, upon the condition of art in England in 1937, and in the hope that artists primarily, and secondarily persons whose interest in art is lively and sympathetic, will find something of use to them.”

—  R. G. Collingwood

Source: The Principles of Art (1938), p. vi

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R. G. Collingwood photo
R. G. Collingwood 16
British historian and philosopher 1889–1943

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