Conclusion

The Conclusion gives further remarks concerning Coleridge’s philosophy and the ‘sense’, ‘higher understanding’, and ‘reason’. Section 1 constellates Coleridge’s main philosophical influences and metaphysical positions. After a summary statement in Section 2 of Coleridge’s position regarding sense, feeling, and the empirical, Section 3 compares the higher understanding of elenctic discourse (Socrates, Plato, Coleridge) with what Paul Ricoeur calls the ‘School of Suspicion’ (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud), which has become the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. Both uncover negativities or aporia, but, the author argues, the former can inform the latter in virtue of its being guided by a greater positivity, a dimly intuited idea or value, in contrast to the ‘already known’ baser desires further uncovered by the more negative elenchus or hermeneutic. Section 4 discusses Coleridgean reason and contemplation as it actually occurs, as diffuse or reflected, through deep feelings stretching in a metaphysical direction.

The Energic–Energetic Distinction and Coleridge’s Two-Level Theory of Mind

Chapter 6 reconstructs what the author identifies as Coleridge’s two-level theory of the higher and lower levels of mind. Section 6.1 draws on a Coleridgean distinction to characterize the higher mind of idea-directed freedom as energic and the lower mind of desire and association as energetic. Applying this to Coleridge himself, the chapter describes his restless, flowing, and challenging writings as balanced by—and subordinated to—the higher mind that strives towards ultimate ends and meaningful values. Section 6.2 explores the ‘refluent’ dynamic between the higher level of imagination and reason and the lower, of sensation, desire, and the ‘mechanical understanding’. Here, the author elaborates his theory of intellectual, noetic contemplation versus sensuous, inchoate contemplation, developing from Coleridge’s higher–lower, energic–energetic dynamic. Section 6.3 explores what the author calls the ordination of thought and being by ideas, involving the orientation of the mind to ends and values, relating this to Coleridge’s view of the three main modes of balance or imbalance in the human mind.

Adapting Böhme’s Bipolar Model

Chapter 5 argues for the crucial importance for Coleridge’s philosophy of Böhme, whose works he annotated more than any other writer. Section 5.1 discusses Coleridge’s views of various mystics and of the poles of mysticism: one side valued for its sensuous connection, yet found prone to mistake inner idiosyncrasies for noetic insight; the other side, the transcendence-directed contemplation of mystics such as the Christian neo-Platonic Victorines. Section 5.2 argues that the chiasmic crux of Böhme’s thinking inspired three Coleridgean mainstays: the interpenetration of opposites, the intercirculation of energies, and the chiasmus between higher and lower levels. Section 5.3 further argues that an important form of Coleridge’s pentadic logical schemata, which includes his pentad of the ‘Powers of Nature’ and his ‘Order of the Mental Powers’, derives from his fusing Böhme’s transmutational, chiasmic schema of ‘The Seven Forms of Spirits’ with the Christian neo-Platonic, linear, hierarchical ascent from sensus to contemplatio.

The Way Down and the Way Up

Chapter 10 presents what the author holds to be the most important dimension to Coleridge’s logic and metaphysics, namely the pursuit of the contemplation of ideas—the ‘Noetic’. This chapter provides the humane meaning promised in the more technical Chapter 9. Section 10.1 interprets Coleridge’s pentads, when read as ‘the way down’, as ladder-like schemata of the actualization of ideas and laws into phenomena. Section 10.2 reads them as aids to contemplation when read in the opposite direction, ‘the way up’, both readings exemplifying Heraclitus’ dictum that ‘the way up and the way down are one and the same’. Section 10.3 explicates Coleridge’s claim that ‘the likeliest way of begetting’ ideas is through ‘Anticip[ation] + Theoresis’, uniting the positive, intuitive drive towards ideas (the genius of anticipation), with the negative techniques of logical and conceptual abstraction (the cleverness of theory), each balancing the other towards the idea.

The Divided Line: Lower and Higher

Chapter 7 begins, in Section 7.1 (i), by demonstrating how Coleridge’s modified Platonism draws on Plotinus to theorize how imagination provides aesthetic access to ideas. The chapter then outlines, in Section 7.1 (ii), Plato’s epistemology and ontology in the context of Coleridgean concerns. Like Plato, Coleridge divided lower and higher powers, while also arguing that the divide can be crossed without being negated. Coleridge recasts key Platonic notions, retaining phantasía as fancy in the lower mind, and elevating imagination to a role above the divide, as the intermediary, or Plotinian ‘border’ (methórion), between the sensible and the intelligible. Section 7.2 examines the movement from eikasía to pístis, Plato’s lower powers. This movement is equivalent to the Coleridgean transition from sense and fancy to the lower understanding. Section 7.3 then focuses on the Platonic transition in the higher mind to nóēsis, examining the influence of Plato, often read through a Plotinian lens, on Coleridge’s theory of noetic contemplation.

Contemplative Practice and the Ideas

Chapter 2 turns to Coleridge’s increasing focus on ideas as diffused in and through different kinds of contemplative practice and everyday experience. Throughout his thinking about contemplative reason, or Platonic nóēsis, he retained a Plotinian sense of theoria in and through sense and imagination. Section 2.1 outlines what the author calls the con-templum, a mental space opened up by imagination for ideas, allowing them to receive aesthetic expression, bridging the gap to allow ideas to have a deeply felt meaning in human life. Section 2.2 introduces the argument that, like Plotinus, Coleridge elevated the role and status of imagination as an insightful and not just a merely imaging and often deceptive faculty, as Plato viewed it. Section 2.3 reconstructs Coleridge’s argument for that reason to be ‘higher than’ imagination and his related position that will is deeper than reason. Finally, Section 2.4 examines Coleridge’s claim that ideas of reason are confreres of the human soul.

Aesthetic Contemplation

The ‘aesthetic’ referred to throughout Chapter 3 is not especially the aesthetics of art, but that of everyday experience, the shared world, and of nature. Section 3.1, following up some Coleridgean notes that relate ‘Ideas’ to ‘thoughts & enjoyments’, performs a Socratic elenchus on unreflective cognitive attitudes in aesthetic states to distinguish value in the experience from prejudice. Section 3.2 then explores Coleridge’s concern with the activity of ideas in everyday aesthetics and the aim of enlightening ‘our feelings’ so they ‘actualize our reason’ ‘with their vital warmth’, relating this to Schiller’s concept of aesthetic education. Section 3.3 introduces the author’s theory of inchoate contemplation that commences in aesthetically informed feelings, in local or national culture, as an initial and perhaps universal, non-intellectualist form of the intuition of ideas. This theory then helps to illuminate a Coleridgean ‘philosophy of life’ where everyday symbols and aesthetic practices reach ‘far higher and far inward’.

Introduction

After a preamble on Coleridge’s view of ‘Philosophy’ as ‘the doctrine and discipline of ideas’, the Introduction outlines the three main periods of Coleridge’s philosophical development. The author then pauses to explain his method in the book. After that, he provides initial definitions and descriptions of ‘reason’ and ‘the ideas’, the main terms of this book, in a discussion of these as Coleridge viewed them. That is followed by a section distinguishing ‘translucent’ from ‘transparent’ contemplation, with further reference to ‘opacity’ in perception. The Introduction then concludes with an outline of the remaining chapters of the book.

The Coleridgean Idea

Chapter 8 situates Coleridge’s thought on transcendent ideas and their historical actualization. After contrasting the Coleridgean idea with what Locke and Hume meant by that word, it is further situated with reference to Heraclitus, Plato, Plotinus, Bacon, Schelling, Hegel, and Mill. It draws on an argument that Coleridge’s theory develops from Bacon’s inductive method for discovering both laws of nature through experiment and natural law through custom and judicial precedent (common law). The chapter argues that Coleridge thus upholds the reality of ‘Forms’ in science, and of rights in ethics and politics. It further argues that his later political thought is inherently more progressive than is generally admitted. The chapter then clarifies how Coleridge’s account of ideas in history differs from Schelling’s and Hegel’s respective theories by maintaining the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their evolving historical actualizations.

The ‘Sense’ of Knowledge

Part I of this book acquaints the reader with Coleridge’s sense of reason through his theories of sense and imagination. Chapter 1 pursues the intuitive aspect, for Coleridge, in thinking and knowing, as the sensuous nature of knowledge. Section 1.1 examines the intellectual drive—the metaphysical nisus—in terms of the physical senses and the chase which drove him to an ideal sense of contemplation as Sabbaths to epistemic and philosophical labour. Section 1.2 traces Coleridge’s legacy in culture, philosophy, and religion through the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, before following his reception in twentieth-century philosophy. The chapter then argues that a standard interpretation of Coleridge has remained elusive for four reasons: his aim to transform readers; his wide reading being difficult for scholars to assimilate; the sheer breadth—over fifty separate books—of his writings; and his complex relation with German idealism. Section 1.3 outlines Coleridge’s organicism and holistic anti-reductionism, and his concomitant opposition to extremes in materialism and empiricism, as he strove to overcome alienation.