Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy

‘PHILOSOPHY, or the doctrine and discipline of ideas’ as S. T. Coleridge understood it, is the theme of this book. It considers the most vital and mature vein of Coleridge’s prose writings to be ‘the contemplation of ideas objectively, as existing powers’. A theory of ideas emerges in critical engagement with thinkers including Plato, Plotinus, Böhme, Kant, and Schelling. A commitment to the transcendence of reason, central to what Coleridge calls ‘the spiritual platonic old England’, distinguishes him from his German contemporaries. This book pursues a theory of contemplation that draws from Coleridge’s theories of imagination and the ‘Ideas of Reason’ in his published texts and extensively from his thoughts as they developed throughout published works, fragments, letters, and notebooks. He posited a hierarchy of cognition from basic sense intuition to the apprehension of scientific, ethical, and theological ideas. The structure of the book follows this thesis, beginning with sense data, moving upwards into aesthetic experience, imagination, and reason, with final chapters on formal logic and poetry that constellate the contemplation of ideas. Coleridge’s Contemplative Philosophy is not just a work of history of philosophy; it addresses a figure whose thinking is of continuing interest, arguing that contemplation of ideas and values has consequences for everyday morality and aesthetics, as well as metaphysics. The book also illuminates Coleridge’s prose by analysis of his poetry, notably the ‘Limbo’ sequence. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, intellectual historians, scholars of religion, and of literature. A comprehensive exploration of what Coleridge meant by 'ideas' Covers an extensive range of Coleridge's philosophical, theological, and aesthetic interests Provides a modern and sympathetic reassessment of Coleridge as a philosopher