Abstract
This essay presents an argument for a Collingwoodean social philosophy of art that centres on the opposition between art and magic as developed by R. G.
Collingwood in Principles of Art and his folklore manuscript. The author agrees with Collingwood'scritics that one of the most problematic aspects of his aesthetics is its identification of art with the expression of emotion.
Nevertheless, he aims to show that a Collingwoodean philosophy of art can dispense entirely with the notion of emotion. Other writers have demonstrated that Collingwood's understanding of emotion is so broad as to loose firm contours.
The author argues that a similar point holds for Collingwood's treatment of magic. In the light of Collingwood's interpretative liberty, the distinction between an expression of emotion and its mere release proves hard to sustain.
It is argued here that by removing the controversial concept of emotion from the equation, Collingwood's philosophy of art can be transformed into a more plausible Collingwoodean social philosophy of art where artistic expression reveals not the inner emotional states of the artist, but the contours of the shared habituated codes of communication and comportment, making the audience aware of their second nature as creatures of habit.