Coleridge and Contemplation

Abstract Chapter 14 concludes the section on metaphysics with a comprehensive and illuminating treatment of Coleridge’s philosophy as a series of processes, beings, and relations that are contemplative and yet, most fundamentally, active. Giving central place to the ‘originating Act of self-affirmation’, which has profound implications for Coleridge’s religious views and also for his philosophic thought, this essay considers Coleridge’s metaphysics and his philosophy of religion as one. Coleridge holds that the ‘Act’ links philosophy and religion so that they are inseparable. Moreover, his insistence on a series of related acts, on agency, as central to religious and philosophical thought has implications for his emphasis on the Will and the Trinity, as well as for his principle of the Lógos and what he calls the ‘Dynamic Philosophy’ and its ‘polar logic’. Coleridge may be seen as a modified Platonist, yet also something of a pragmatist, and a Trinitarian Christian.