Collingwood, Strauss, and Two Kinds of Historicism

I've recently become aware of Leo Strauss's criticisms of Collingwood. Strauss claimed that the two greatest threats to modern political philosophy (epitomized by Socrates) were positivism and historicism. Collingwood, he apparently claimed, was the most sophisticated proponent of historicism. Some of Strauss's claims, however, don't square with my understanding of Collingwood.

Both of these men deserve my consideration, and I intend to give both of them plenty more of my time. Here, however, I want to offer a few preliminary thoughts on what I see as shortcomings in Strauss's views on Collingwood.

All I've read of Strauss's criticism so far came from his review of The Idea of History, a book that cannot be considered as representative of Collingwood's thought. Tricky tricky, that book.

I can't write patiently now.

Strauss mainly focuses on the idea that Collingwood is a historicist.

He mainly seems to detest the deterministic nature of Collingwood's determinism.

Collingwood speaks of necessity. Not of determinism.

Collingwood, I think, is not a historicist in a determinist sense. The first sense.

Collingwood is a historicist in the sense of being a contextualist. He always pays attention to the historical setting in which a thought was taking place, emphasizing that we should try to think just like the author thought.

Strauss harps on Collingwood for not properly reenacting Greek thought.

He never says that the idea of reenactment is flawed in itself, only that Collingwood failed to do it properly.

Strauss's student, Allan Bloom, moreover, often uses metaphors that invoke Collingwood's notion of reenactment.

I think that distinguishing these kinds of historicism can do some help in reconciling my allegiance to Collingwood with my fondness for Allan Bloom and my budding interest in Strauss.

This is not clear. I want to write more on this soon.

I also want to write on Collingwood's anti-positivistic tendencies, his insistence on the unpredictability of the world, and his idea of reenactment as a way of learning about the human world. Sounds a lot like Clausewitz, Taleb, and nonlinearity stuff.