Coleridge on Double Touch: A Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe term “double touch” occurs only once in the published work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fact which belies the notable philosophical attention it is shown in his notebooks and letters. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of double touch, examining the concept alongside the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This analysis frames double touch as a concept which engages with the lived experience of embodied consciousness and cognition, operating at the threshold between affective sensation and active practical volition. In this capacity, it will be shown how Coleridge makes use of the concept to challenge the deterministic model of human volition put forward by necessitarianism. The overall aim is to show how the concept of double touch functions as a bridge between Coleridge’s epistemic interests in sense experience and his moral philosophical concerns about the notion of human free will.