Coleridge and Contemplation

2020

In his celebrated book After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre asks the reader to imagine a world where the language of science has been handed down in a fragmentary fashion so that one becomes an intellectual archaeologist, not only providing links between key terms and concepts but also fitting these terms to the modern world of scientific discourse. In many respects this is akin to what Peter Cheyne has accomplished in his book Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy; Coleridge has been reinvented for a new range of students and scholars. This is no minor claim. The philosophical Coleridge has hitherto been received as a fragmented romantic (with kinder readings suggesting connections with the Frühromantiker), a plagiarist of Schelling, or a British footnote to the German idealist tradition, with a consensus regarding his importance in introducing the Idealist system of philosophy to Britain. However, more recently, thinkers such as Gregory, Hamilton, Kooy, Struwig, Flores and Wheeler have glossed major issues regarding Coleridge's self-proclaimed ideal realism. Moreover, the idea of philosophical romanticism has gained currency in terms of the continuing importance of both the idealist and the romantic traditions in addressing current issues in areas as diverse as aesthetics, social policy, theology and cultural theory. In light of recent scholarly developments and subsequent to his edited volume Coleridge and Contemplation (2017), Cheyne's newest monograph is possibly the most impressive attempt so far at articulating a comprehensive architectonic of Coleridge's often fragmented oeuvre, while also in bringing Coleridge back squarely into the fold as a key thinker with contemporary relevance. The monograph clearly lays out this architectonic structure, dealing in turn with formative concepts such as the translucent/transparent contemplation of ideas, the lux/lumen distinction of reason and Coleridge's further development of Platonic noetic ideas. It also deftly introduces concepts such as energic/energetic as subsidiaries to his overall schema of higher and lower reason. The signal claim is that the ascent to noetic ideas is acquired indirectly through the imagination and involving a higher level, through inchoate contemplation. The fruitfulness of this approach to Coleridge's thought is that rather than seeing it in a poststructuralist-and generally aporetic sense-one can read Coleridge as describing an ascent to the higher ideas of reason (freedom, ethics, the will), through a process of contemplation that charters an a

Literature & Theology, 2021

examination of Jefferson shows is the shift from 'Christian faith and theological truth to Christian cultural identity and its relationship to the nation state' (p. 353).

The Coleridge Bulletin, 2022

A celebratory essay, on S. T. Coleridge's 250th anniversary, of his theory of ideas interpreted in a cosmic sense. This essay explores Coleridge metaphysics of universal ideas and what he meant by 'the Ideas of Being, Form, Life, the Reason, the Law of Conscience, Freedom, Immortality, God!' ‗[T]he ideas of … eternity, … will, absolute truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite'. For Coleridge, ‗an Idea … is not merely formal but dynamic', clarifying, in Greek, that ‗every Idea is a Power'. Ideas as powers evolve through energies, forces, and accidents to circle back up to the idea of ideas: lógos, which for Coleridge included Heraclitus's Logos, the constant intelligence behind the universal flux, and the Christian Word, which was in the beginning, and is with God, and is God. This ‗Logos, Idea Idearum', essentially the archetype or apex of all ideas, has been exalted, opposed, submerged, but never irrelevant.

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2013

This paper presents an exploratory account of contemplation and meditative experience as found in Coleridge’s ‘Meditative Poems’ and in the nature writing recorded in his notebooks. In these writings, we see the importance of meditative thinking as an exercise concerned with spiritual transformation towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. Sometimes meditation is used as a practical device to stimulate the imagination. At other times it is used as a method to map and follow a train of thought outside the head, as it were, in the immediate landscape, which process is related to the communing with nature as that Coleridge and Wordsworth pursued. I examine Coleridge’s ‘Meditative Poems’ and notebooks in order to situate his approach to imagination and Idea as applied in his poetic thought.

The Heythrop Journal, 2020

This article argues that in his theory of reason as universal Logos, Coleridge held reason, and its constituent (Platonic, divine) ideas, to be transcendent to nature and the human mind. In this view, although nature is suffused by universal reason, and the human mind is transformed by it into an enlightened, spiritualized existence, reason remains a timeless and transcendent power to which the human mind is open, rather than a characteristic that it possesses. Drawing from Coleridge’s ‘Lecture on the Prometheus’ (1825) and related texts, the article argues, in sections II–IV, for the prominence of ‘the transcendency of the Nous’ as a tenet that informs his wide-ranging polar, hierarchical philosophy of reason and ideas. Section V then discusses the chiasmatic structure of Coleridge’s theories of how nature and spirit interact across the divide that for him is central to existence. The article concludes by reconstructing, in section VI, Coleridge’s theory of mind as fractally organized, with opposed poles of reason and sense, each with its distinctive form of heightened, noetic or intuitive experience. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/heyj.13345

Harvard Theological Review, 1983

This essay concerns two closely related subjects: the religious philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the need for a new vision in Christian theology today. Though it is the second, more ambitious and adventurous topic that deserves the more sensitive treatment, it is rather to Coleridge himself that I have given the greater part of my attention. The reasoning behind this procedure is based upon a fairly simple fact: Coleridge's religious thought is still largely unknown to most people in the philosophical and theological communities. During the past twenty years or so, as many of Coleridge's hitherto unpublished notebooks and other manuscripts have been brought to light, a number of scholars of English literature have begun to study his thought, including his theology, with greater care. 1 But it is still rare to find a researcher outside literature per se who knows much of Coleridgean philosophy, beyond (perhaps) a few phrases from his theory of the imagination in the Biographia Literaria. 1 I have thought it !j Robert Barth, S J , and Thomas McFarland may be mentioned especially in this connection See, respectively, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine (Cambridge Harvard University, 1969) and Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford Clarendon, 1969) 2 The best known of Coleridge's observations on the imagination can be found in the thirteenth chapter of the Biographia The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation m the infinite I AM The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate, or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify It is essentially \itaU even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead (Biographia Literaria, J Shawcross, ed [Oxford Oxford University, 1907] 1 202) One finds this passage quoted frequently in recent works dealing with the theological ima-gination. As but one among numerous examples, see Ray L. Hart, Unfinished Man and the Imagination: Toward an Ontology and a Rhetoric of Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) 200 As I hope to show, the imagination is only the tip of a Coleridgean iceberg.

Journal of the History of Philosophy,, 2021

A review of Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy by Peter Cheyne.

Modern Believing, 2012

Abstract: CONTEMPLATION THROUGH HEBREW SCRIPTURES: SPINOZA AND COLERIDGE In one of the early and only texts published during his life, the Metaphysical Thoughts (1633), Spinoza examines the understanding of God through the contemplation of the divine essence [essentiae divinae contemplatione intelligi]. Spinoza analyses the essence of God as the power by which God preserves his being through his own translation of extracts from the Bible in Hebrew, a sacred language he was educated by. Observation of languages and search for equivalents with translation offer thus an innovative immanent view of contemplation. Coleridge’s knowledge of Hebrew allows him not only to translate texts and to qualify its rhetorical figures but also to contemplate. Thus, while translating Deborah’s poem in the Bible (Judges chap. 5), Coleridge emphasises that as long he can “contemplate” this “heroic woman”, he can feel “the protoplasmic waves of the microcosmic chaos”. This experience of contemplation through translation, where the repetitiveness of forms become “sublime tautology” is however, left unfinished by the poet. Program Friday 27th Jim Mays (University College, Dublin): Contemplation in Coleridge’s Poetry Jerry Chia-Je Weng (National Taiwan University): Coleridge’s Osorio as Contemplative Drama Saeko Yoshikawa (Kobe City University of Foreign Studies): Edward Thomas, a contemplative poet Emily Holman (Oxford University): Literature and Life: contemplation as a mode of knowing Kaz Oishi (Tokyo University): Coleridge’s Contemplative Social Vision Andy Hamilton (Durham University): Coleridge, Mill, and Conservatism Philip Aherne (King’s College London): Coleridge and the Development of Utilitarian Ethics Yoshiko Fujii (Nara Women’s College): Coleridge’s View of Education and the Origin of the Working Men’s College Jin Lu (Chinese University of Hong Kong): Contemplating Coleridge and Keats: a comparison Peter Cheyne (Kyoto Notre Dame University): Towards Contemplation: Coleridge and the energeia of thought Saturday 28th Douglas Hedley (Cambridge University): Coleridge and Contemplation Christopher Kluz (Catholic University of Daegu, Korea): Contemplation as Virtuous Activity: Spinoza’s improvement on Aristotle’s ethics Dillon Struwig (Univ. of York): Geometrical Construction, Plotinus to Kant: contemplative acts & intuitive imagination in STC’s theory of mathematical synthesis Lucas Scripter (Hong Kong Baptist University): The Place of Contemplation in the Revival of Virtue Ethics Joseph S. O’Leary (Sophia University, Tokyo): Coleridge and Plotinus: a tangential encounter David Vallins (Hiroshima University): Contemplation and Criticism: Coleridge, Derrida, and the sublime Leesa Davis (Deakin University): Contemplation as Philosophical Practice Susan Warley (Texas A & M University): Sensorium and the Psychology of Metaphor in the Philosophical Writings of S. T. Coleridge Fiona Tomkinson (Yeditepe University, Turkey): Between Violence and Contemplation: Iris Murdoch’s Coleridge Matthew Sharpe (Deakin University): Hadot and Camus on Contemplation: two untimely timeless french voices Keren Mock (Paris Diderot University): Contemplation Through Hebrew Scriptures : Spinoza and Coleridge Noriko Naohara (Waseda University, Tokyo): Coleridge and Contemplation: the will to faith Sunday 29th David E. Cooper (Durham University): Meditation on the Move: walking, nature, mystery Ve-Yin Tee (Nanzan University): Thinking Landscapes Jonathan Parker (Miyazaki International College): Contemplating Nature: modes of contemplation in environmental aesthetics Eamonn Wall (University of Missouri-St Louis): Coleridge: walking, contemplation, writing Mark Lussier (Arizona State University): topic tba Setsuko Wake-Naota (Kobe College): Contemplating Genius: Coleridge on Shakespeare James Kirwan (Kansai University): Aesthetics and Contemplation at the Start of the Nineteenth Century Osmond Chien-ming Chang (National Cheng Chi University, Taiwan): Suspension of Disbelief: Coleridge’s philosophy of magnetism and polarity in ‘Christabel’ Jonathan Britten (Nakamura University, Fukuoka): Shooting the Albatross at Fukushima Masako Fujie (Kyoto University): A Philosophical Song Between Wordsworth and Coleridge Ivan Stacy (Royal Thimpu College, Bhutan): Xanadu: contemplation, place and memory Mikako Nonaka (Nara Women’s University): The influence of Coleridge on Tokoku Kitamura

The Coleridge Bulletin, 27 NS 27, pp. 45-55., 2006

2003

Aeon, 2021

Though far more often remembered as a poet, Coleridge's theory of ideas was spectacular in its originality and bold reach. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) stands tall in the cultural pantheon for a few world-famous poems. It is less well known that in his own lifetime, and in the decades following his death, this canonical poet had an equal reputation as a philosopher. This article introduces key elements of Coleridge's philosophy in outline, including his theory of ideas, the polar philosophy, and his dynamic idealism, which sees matter as arising from a clash of opposed forces, themselves derived from more originary powers or ideas.

Asian Social Science, 2010

The present paper is an attempt to explore Coleridge's critical potentialities and significant contributions to literary theory and criticism. The first question that will be stressed here is the reasons, conscious and unconscious alike, that have driven a leading romantic poet of his caliber to shift from verse writing to devote his time almost exclusively to criticism, public culture, religion or politics. Of equal interest is the nature of his critical enterprise whether theoretical or practical and its intellectual, epistemological and artistic foundations. The final section is a general view of the impact his critical writings have left on the literary scene and the different reactions writers hold toward his practices.

Comparative Literature, 1999