Coleridge's Phantom and Fact: Two Natures, Trinitarian Resolution, and the Formation of the Pentad to 1825

Tsuchiya, Kiyoshi (1994) Coleridge's Phantom and Fact: Two Natures, Trinitarian Resolution, and the Formation of the Pentad to 1825. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis discusses how Coleridge develops his trinitarianism, 'God' 'man', and 'nature', in response to modern philosophies since Descartes, especially to Kant's phenomenology, and how he finally forms the 'Pentad' in 1825. It will have seven chapters. The first chapter discusses his two unexecuted plans, 'the hymns to the elements' (1796) and 'Soother of Absence' (1802-10). It investigates how he comes to think that the hymn, or, the praise of the divine presence in nature, is the original and ideal form of poetry, and how he falls behind his ideal and replaces the first plan with the second. The purpose of the chapter is to show how his experience as a poet prepares the ground of his later philosophy and theology. The second chapter interprets 'The Ancient Mariner' (1798) as a poem about the departure from created nature to uncreated ocean, as an autobiographical poem about Coleridge's own yearning for 'something one & indivisible' which leads him to recognize that nature has turned 'ideot', that he has fallen from divine nature. The third chapter shows how in 'Dejection Ode' (1802) he contrasts his 'dejection' with 'Joy' and acknowledges his failure as a poet of nature. It also discusses his attempted recovery from 'Reality's dark dream' by the 'Phantom' creativity of the active human mind illustrated in 'Apologia pro Vita sua' (1800). The fourth chapter concentrates on his days in Malta 1804-5. The first half shows how he experiences difficulty in distinguishing the product of 'the Phantom creativity' from 'Reality's dark dream', and how he shifts the problem to an ethical ground, and finds Kant's ethics insufficient for his problem. The second half shows how he begins to form his 'trinitarianism' under such circumstances and to use the term 'symbol' in relating God and man. The first half of the fifth chapter deals with his ontological speculation on 'space' and shows that it leads him to adopt Leibnizian 'Hypopoeesis', contrasted with Newtonian 'Hypothesis', as an advanced form of 'the Phantom creativity' of the human mind. The second half interprets his 'Confessio Fidei' (1810) as his attempt to accept and to rewrite Kant's ethics in theological terms in order to deal with 'an original corruption in our nature'. The sixth chapter argues that his theory of imagination in Biographia Literaria (1817) is his response to Kant's phenomenology which draws on his own long-standing speculation on the passivity and activity of the human mind, and that he leads his argument towards 'art' and hints at the 'artistic' recovery of human nature. The final chapter deals with the metaphysical and theological recapitulations of his theory of imagination in the Logic (1823-9), and in Aids to Reflection (1825), and shows, as a conclusion, that by forming the Pentad he anchors the whole of his philosophical and theological argument on the mediatory function of 'the spirit, or, 'Mesothesis' of the Pentad.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Adviser: David Jasper
• Keywords: British & Irish literature, Philosophy of Religion
• Date of Award: 1994
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1994-75691
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 19 Nov 2019 18:56
• Last Modified: 19 Nov 2019 18:56
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/75691