Originally published: Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1993. With new introduction.

Editor's introduction -- The philosophy of history -- History's nature, object, method, and value -- The problem of parts I-IV -- pt. I. Greco-Roman historiography. Theocratic history and myth -- The creation of scientific history by Herodotus -- Anti-historical tendency of Greek thought -- Greek conception of history's nature and value -- Greek historical method and its limitations -- Herodotus and Thucydides -- The Hellenistic period -- Polybius -- Livy and Tacitus -- Character of Greco-Roman historiography : humanism -- Character of Greco-Roman historiography : substantialism -- pt. II. The influence of Christianity. The leaven of Christian ideas -- Characteristics of Christian historiography -- Medieval historiography -- The Renaissance historians -- Descartes -- Cartesian historiography -- Anti-Cartesianism : Vico -- Anti-Cartesianism : Locke, Berkeley, and Hume -- The Enlightenment -- The science of human nature -- pt. III. The threshold of scientific history. Romanticism -- Herder -- Kant -- Schiller -- Fichte -- Schelling -- Hegel -- Hegel and Marx -- Positivism -- pt. IV. Scientific history. England. Bradley ; Bradley's successors ; Late nineteenth-century historiography ; Bury ; Oakeshott ; Toynbee -- Germany. Windleband ; Rickert ; Simmel ; Dilthey ; Meyer ; Spengler -- France. Ravaisson's spiritualism ; Lachelier's idealism ; Bergson's evolutionism ; Modern French historiography -- Italy. Croce's essay of 1893 ; Croce's second position : the logic ; History and philosophy ; History and nature ; Croce's final position : the autonomy of history -- pt. V. Epilegomena. Human nature and human history [1936] -- The historical imagination [1935] -- Historical evidence [1939] -- History as re-enactment of past experience [1936] -- The subject-matter of history [1936] -- History and freedom [1939] -- Progress as created by historical thinking [1936].

Preliminary discussion : the idea of a philosophy of something, and, in particular, a philosophy of history (1927) -- Lectures on the philosophy of history (1926) -- Outlines of a philosophy of history (1928).

"The Idea of History is the best-known work of the great Oxford philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood. This important work examines how the idea of history has evolved from the time of Herodotus to the twentieth century, and offers Collingwood's own view of what history is. This revised edition has a substantial new introduction which discusses how scholars have responded to Collingwood's classic over the last fifty years."--Publisher's site.