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     This morning, during the few minutes when I was waiting
at Chico's Freshpond Sunoco Station while the engine oil in
the new car was being changed, I read again a few pages of
R.G. Collingwood's Idea of History, the introductory
reflections concerning what history was and what it was not.
Then in this context there asserted itself once more my own
prejudice that the resolution of this question lay in the
recognition that history is intellectual activity, is
thought, and that the answer, to the extent that there is an
answer, lies in reflections on thought, - or thinking as
such, - as a natural activity of the human mind, vastly
potentiated, if not indeed made possible, by language; and
occurring not in a private, individual but in a public,
social context.  There is no affirmative, dogmatic answer:
there is only the process of understanding which like hearing
and seeing, like thought itself is coterminous with conscious
existence.  Thus "philosophy" is not an object, is not a
product, nor a method, nor a technique. Rather it is a
quality of cogitation, which always obtains to a larger or
lesser extent; but commonly in such miniscule degree so as to
be unrecognizable.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
