Religious philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in Coleridge, the man and his work. The man himself has occasioned such psychological studies as Fausset's Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charpentier's The Sublime Somnambulist, and Potter*s Coleridge and S.T.C. A glimpse into his work from the standpoint of literature has been afforded by the brilliant study of Lowes in The Road to Xanadu, and nore recently by Richards in Coleridge on Imagination. Coleridge's creative work in philosophy has been reviewed by Miss Snyder in her Coleridge on Logic and Learning, by Muirhead in his Coleridge as Philosopher, and by Wellek in his Immanuel Kant in England - to mention only works in English. Finally, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Coleridge's death, there appeared a memorial volume containing studies by several hands.

There is to be noted, however, one significant lack among all these recent studies. With the exception of a short section in Dr. Muirhead's book, no study of Coleridge's religious philosophy has appeared. Nor is this all. In the main, where the recent critics have touched on Coleridge's religious beliefs, they have done so with little sympathy for his profession of Christian faith. There has been a tendency to treat it either as secondary in importance, or to explain it as an expression of the "superficial" rather than of the "true" Coleridge; but, as a recent reviewer has pointed out, Coleridge's Christian faith cannot be set aside so easily. Coleridge was a philosopher with a love of speculative truth. He was also a sincere Christian. His attempt to combine the two may have ended in failure; but no analysis which ignores or eliminates the one or the other can be said to be true to his thought.

The following study, undertaken at the suggestion of Professor H. R. Mackintosh, is an attempt to remedy this two-fold defect in Coleridgean criticism. It aims at an adequate exposition of Coleridge's religious philosophy. The chief sources of that philosophy, and the influences that determined the development of Coleridge's mind, are discussed first. The main body of the thesis is then devoted to the exposition of his views. While the emphasis is expository, certain points of criticism are indicated.

It is to be noted that this thesis does not claim to be exhaustive on all phases of Coleridge's religious thought. Coleridge was the most learned man of his age, and the roots of his reading and thought go deep into every field of human knowledge. A detailed, exhaustive study of the whole range of his mind in this field is impossible within the limits of this thesis. For example, Coleridge's ethical theory, although closely allied to his religious philosophy, is not dealt with separately. it is felt, in the first place, that Muirhead treats of this adequately; and secondly, that sufficient is said of the "self" in connection with Coleridge's epistemology and doctrine of immortality, and of society in connection v/ith his theory of Church and State, to show the trend of his thought on ethical problems, namely that the man makes the motives and not the motives the man, and that ethics must be based ultimately on religion. Again, the writer does not propose to discuss Coleridge's relation to such movements as Quakerism and Swedenborgianism, nor to analyze his indebtedness to each of the thinkers with whom and with whose writings he was acquainted.