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Introduction 1 Silence and the Pantheistic Sublime in Coleridge's Notes Introduction 1. McFarland Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition xxiii–xl, 1–52. 2. Ibid. 107–8, 191–7. 3. Ibid. 54–60. 4. Coleridge draws on a tradition of similar distinctions (e.g. Goethe’s and Schelling’s; see The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 51–5). 5. Dombrowski ‘McFarland, Pantheism and Panentheism’. 6. McFarland Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition 54, 63. 7. Ibid. 54–70. 8. Ibid. 79–82. 9. Ibid. 130. 10. McFarland ‘Aspects of Coleridge’s Distinction Between Reason and Under- standing’ 177. 11. BL I 248n1. Taken from Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschafttslehre (SW I 444–6). 12. Gadamer ‘On the Circle of Understanding’ 68–70. 13. Gadamer discusses the history of hermeneutics in depth. Gadamer Truth and Method 173–264. 14. Gadamer Truth and Method 271–7. 15. Heidegger 153. 16. Gadamer Truth and Method 245, 302–7. 17. Gadamer Philosophical Hermeneutics 56–8, 65–6. 18. The ‘classical’ is Gadamer’s key example because it is both an interpretive result and a judgement or prejudice that establishes interpretive categories. Thus Gadamer discusses the hermeneutical significance of temporal distance itself. Gadamer Truth and Method 285–300. 19. Bloom’s theory originally focused on Coleridge. Bloom ‘Coleridge: The Anxiety of Influence’. 1 Silence and the pantheistic sublime in Coleridge’s early poetry 1. Usher 114. 2. See Burke 125–6, 144–7; Usher 107–10, 114–18; Priestley A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism 159; Blair I 48–50; Knight 361–4. 3. For discussion of the emergence of the sublime, see Cassirer 297–331; Monk The Sublime. Abrams Natural Supernaturalism 97–117; Modiano Coleridge and the Concept of Nature 101–37. 4. Knight 363–4. 5. See Everest 216–21, 258–70; Rubenstein 54–60; Harman 888–911; Christie 12–31. 211 212 Notes 6. Everest 218. 7. Rugby MS, 27v. For a facsimile, see Cheshire 22–6. 8. Rugby MS, 28r. 9. PW gives ‘Concert’, but Cheshire gives ‘concént’, pointing to its usage as ‘a musical term, derived from concinere—sing together’. Cheshire 8–9. 10. See Piper The Active Universe 43–6. Martin 173–6; Piper ‘ “The Eolian Harp” Again’ 23–5; Abrams ‘Coleridge’s “A Light in Sound”: Science, Metascience, and Poetic Imagination’ 458–76; Raiger 76–84. For discussions of Hartley, Priestley and Berkeley in relation to Coleridge’s early poetry, see Prickett 46–70; Engell ‘Imagining into Nature: this Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ 83–4. 11. Priestley The Theological and Miscellaneous Works &c of Joseph Priestley III 241. 12. Perry emphasizes the ambivalence of the poem, seeing it as reflecting a genuine and abiding undecidedability (‘a muddle’). I think this ambiguity— or ability to accommodate intellectual tension—underlies the poem’s func- tion as a kind of spirograph for metaphysics. The poem becomes part of the way that Coleridge understands differing philosophical stances, and subsequently recasts various philosophical possibilities into its own categories. Perry 68–70, 113–16. 13. Raiger 76–84. 14. CN II 2330, 2937; CN III 3314; CN IV 5192; CN V 6876; CL I 294–5. 15. The original ordering of the effusions emphasizes the importance of faith: Effusion XXXIV (To an Infant) concludes with an address to ‘Thrice holy FAITH!’—‘Still let me stretch my arms and cling to Thee, / Meek Nurse of Souls thro’ their long Infancy!’. The final Effusion XXXVI (earlier Absence: A Poem, and later Lines on an Autumnal Evening) in turn takes up the poet’s determination to check his ‘unregenerate mind’—‘O Thou wild FANCY, check thy Wing!’ (PW II 1 100–11, 269–72). See Magnuson 3–20. 16. The Rugby MS emphasizes the connection between thinking and the guilt with the variant: ‘Nor may I unblam’d or speak or think of Him’. Rugby MS, 28r. 17. ULS 33–7 [64–8]; Leibniz 150–1; SL 390–1 [Letter LVIII]. Coleridge annotated these passages in Spinoza and Jacobi, and although critical of Spinoza he also condemns Jacobi’s criticism of Spinoza saying ‘And is Jacobi’s Theory of Freedom, at all different?’ The two passages show a more sophisticated (and conflicted) grasp of the issues than usually attributed to Coleridge. See CM III 81; CM V 204. 18. Schrickx demonstrates that Coleridge read Jacobi by April 1799. Schrickx 818. For a similar account, see McFarland Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradi- tion 296–7. 19. See Schrickx 829–38. Schrickx speculates that Coleridge wrote some of these reviews. 20. See SL 347 [Letter XXIII]. This passage attracts one of Coleridge’s most critical notes, attacking the concept of privation (CM V 202–3). However, Coleridge himself adopts a similar account in his later manuscripts (especially ODI). Although he ostensibly avoids the concept of privation (ODI 13–15) he too denies full existence to evil—defining it, confusedly, as potential or a potentialization of good (ODI 139–43). See CN IV 4998. 21. Abrams explores the philosophical connections underlying the passage. Abrams ‘Coleridge’s “A Light in Sound”: Science, Metascience, and Poetic Notes 213 Imagination’ 458–76. A number of accounts treat the passage as a prob- lematic insertion that unbalances the poem. Gérard 411–12; House 75–8; Wendling 26–42; Modiano Coleridge and the Concept of Nature 57–9. 2 Spinoza and the problem of the infinite 1. Hume A Treatise of Human Nature 240. Novalis III 651. Novalis also says ‘Der Spinotzism ist eine Übersättigung mit Gottheit’—Spinozism is an over- saturation with divinity. Novalis III 649. Hegel comments that despite charges of atheism, ‘with him there is too much God’. Hegel Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie III 162–3. 2. Hegel Sämmtliche Werke XIX 372. McFarland Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradi- tion 54, 63. 3. Deleuze 28–9. 4. Bayle 288–338. 5. For discussion, see Beiser The Fate of Reason 48–61; McFarland Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition 72–7, 261–6; Moreau 408–11. 6. See McFarland Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition 79–106; Engell The Creative Imagination 166–7. 7. Mason problematically denies that Spinoza seeks to reach any ontological conclusions, because Spinoza does not treat God as an ‘object’, but as being without limits. Mason does not notice that this too is an ontological claim. Mason 34–8. 8. ‘the human mind, or the idea of the human body neither involves nor expresses any attributes of God save these two [thought and extension]’. SL 399 [LXIV]. 9. Wienpahl argues this, and Bennet claims that if Spinoza meant that there are more than two attributes, then ‘the extra implication is negligible because in the Ethics it is idle’. Bennet 78–9; Wienpahl 82–8. 10. Spinoza says his concept of the attributes is ‘based on the idea which we have of a Being absolutely infinite, not on the fact, that there are or may be beings possessing three, four or more attributes’. SL 399 [LXIV]. 11. The matter comes up again when Crabb Robinson writes ‘I cannot believe, that by “infinitis” He meant innumerabilis’, to which is replied in Coleridge’s hand ‘This is a mistake of mine’ (CM V 205). Whalley identifies the hand- writing; see ‘Form File’ to MS. notes on Spinoza Benedicti de Spinoza opera quae supersunt omnia. 12. There is controversy over the word ‘tanquam’ which can be translated either as ‘as’ or ‘as if’, so that the attributes could be what the intellect genuinely perceives (as), or an illusion (as if ). However, the point is trivial, since on either reading the attributes are ‘perceptions’ of God, rather than properties of God. 13. The claim that Spinoza’s attributes are different parts of substance flies in the face of the textual evidence since Spinoza defines the attributes as that which the intellect perceives as the essence of substance. Thus adherents to the objective interpretation are forced to virtually dismiss Spinoza’s definition as a mistake. Thus Bennett comments that Spinoza’s definition ‘creates a lopsidedness in Spinoza’s system which he should not have tolerated’, 214 Notes and argues that an attribute is a ‘basic way of being’, which has the odd result that the attributes turn out to be modes (Bennett 60–2). Schaller made a similar suggestion in a letter to Spinoza, suggesting that thought and extension are infinite modes that are produced directly by God. Spinoza replied that an example of an infinite mode is not the attributes but ‘the sum of the whole extended universe ( facies totius universi ) which, though it varies in infinite modes, yet remains always the same’. SL 396–8 [LXIII], 398–400 [LXIV]. 14. Haserot 28–42. These arguments appear convincing enough that Mason simply refers to Haserot as authoritative. Wolfson and Hallett on the other hand argue that the distinction between the attributes is subjective. Mason 46–7; Wolfson 146; Hallett 16–19, 40–3. 15. Ethics I XIV, I def V, I XV Proof. 16. Thus Schopenhauer’s famous quip: ‘The main objection I have to pantheism is that it means nothing. Calling the world “God” does not explain the world; it just enriches the language with a superfluous synonym for the word “world” ’. Schopenhauer 112. 17. Goethe XVIII 851. 18. For a discussion of Kant’s use of the idea of mysticism, see Henrich 29–81. 19. Thus Schelling is scornful of the label ‘pantheism’, without denying that his thought could be so described: ‘It is an undeniably excellent invention to have such general labels by which entire perspectives can be instantly desig- nated. Once you have found the right label for a system, the rest takes care of itself, and you can save yourself the considerable effort of investigating its characteristics properly.
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