Through the Looking-Glass: Coleridge and Post-Kantian Philosophy

Abstract

This is revealing statement, and not the least so because of its diverging implications. The general picture-of Coleridge having harmonized all systems of knowledge in grand synthesis by bringing out what was half true in each-is strikingly Hegelian in appearance. This is offset, however, by the image of the philosopher framing perfect mirror, suggesting an underlying notion of truth as matter of correspondence between the mind and something other than itself, rather than the coherentist theory defended by Hegel. A similar tension is evident between Coleridge's conviction that he has succeeded in assembling unified system and his awareness of the fragmentary, incomplete nature of the knowledges that have gone into its construction. Elsewhere, indeed, he cites the very limitations of consciousness as evidence of the constitutive role of conscience in knowledge. Without the involvement of free act of will (or faith), the self was merely, as he noted in 1825, a Proteus, modifiable into thousand forms, each of which was a representation, of somewhat that is not myself, or kind of endlessly deferred, self-conscious self-sentient lookingglass (Notebooks 4: note 5280). Remarks such as these bear witness to the delicate balance that Coleridge's later thought attempted to maintain between two major themes in postKantian German philosophy: the methodology of dialectic and the ontology of will. That an English poet of the period would undertake such an enterprise is remarkable, and in Coleridge's case all the more so, since his acquain-