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A Phenomenological Study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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A Phenomenological Study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Finite Mind: A Phenomenological Study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Tom Stuart Marshall Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy !1 Statement of Originality I, Tom Stuart Marshall, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Tom Marshall Date: 12/10/18 Details of collaboration and publication: The fifth chapter of this thesis reproduces material from ‘Coleridge on Double Touch: Phenomenological Analysis’ in European Romantic Review, 29, 2018, pp.213-27, available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10509585.2018.1439387 !2 Abstract This thesis examines the philosophical writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge through the lens of several major thinkers in the European phenomenological tradition, illustrating a considerable overlap in their arguments, methods and aims, and arguing for a retrospective consideration of Coleridge’s philosophical significance as a distant forerunner to this tradition. A major part of this analysis involves an extended analysis of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, examining numerous parallels between his conception of the imagination and Edmund Husserl’s notion of intentionality: the ability for the mind to direct itself towards objects in order to meaningfully comprehend them. This connection between imagination and intentionality will then form the basis for an interpretation of Coleridge’s vision of a philosophical form of poetic criticism as based on the same principles of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology: apprehending the essential features of consciousness that contribute to the constitution of subjective experience. Additionally, further parallels will also be drawn between Coleridge’s thought and that of later phenomenologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas. In connection to the former, it will be shown how Coleridge’s notion of ‘double touch’ offers a significant analogue to Merleau-Ponty’s embodied consciousness, offering a productive way of understanding the intersection between ethics and epistemology in his thought. With regards to the latter, the focus will be placed on Coleridge’s incomplete theological and metaphysical work the Opus Maximum, utilising a Levinasian conceptual schema of the interplay between totality and infinity to explore themes of conscience and otherness. Overall, these various analyses frame Coleridge’s philosophy as a series of interrelated attempts to articulate a systematic account of human consciousness in its relation to itself, the world, and to God, which taken together offer a valuable opportunity for reevaluating his status as a philosophical figure. Acknowledgements The innumerable contributions to the writing of this thesis, be they academic, practical or emotional, invariably end up outstripping any attempt to exhaustively summarise them. First and foremost I am grateful to Paul Hamilton and James Vigus for providing exemplary supervisory support over the past three years. Through a combination of intelligent suggestion, perceptive criticism and consistent encouragement, their guidance has helped to transform a vague series of hunches into far more of a Coleridgean organic unity than I could have dared to hope for. Going further back, I would like to thank Richard Adelman, not only for providing my undergraduate introduction to Coleridge, but also for supervising the Junior Research Associate project that would go on to to form the foundation of the following work. I owe a great debt to Tom Martin for encouraging me to pursue a journal publication, as well as for providing a wealth of professional advice and junior academic solidarity. Additionally, the unwavering intellectual and emotional fraternity of Peter Brietbart and Steven Gamble has been a constant and essential source of support and motivation. Finally, my deepest and dearest gratitude goes to my parents, for more love and encouragement than I could ever adequately express. !3 Contents Statement of Originality 1 Abstract 2 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 I - Anti-psychologism and Ideal Laws in Biographia I i - Psychologism, Aesthetic Criticism and Phenomenology 26 ii - Thoughts and things 33 iii - The despotism of the eye 39 iv - Active and Passive Synthesis: the water insect 42 II - Coleridge’s phenomenological engagements with idealism i - Idealism as a philosophical foil 49 ii - Kant 52 iii - Fichte 60 iv - Schelling 67 III - Imagination and Intentionality i - Noesis and Noema: The Structure of Husserlian Intentionality 81 ii - The road to the imagination: consciousness and its world of objects 85 iii - Primary and Secondary Finitisation 93 iv - Philosophic and poetic intentionality 100 IV - Coleridge’s Epoché i - Suspension as a philosophical function 110 ii - The Husserlian Epoché 112 iii - Illusion vs. Delusion in the Lectures on Literature 117 iv - Interest and Ideality in The Principles of Genial Criticism 120 v - The willing suspension of disbelief as a phenomenology of criticism 126 vi - The Logic and suspension as ‘negative idealism’ 130 V - Incorporating Corporeality: Coleridge on Double Touch i - Situating double touch 137 ii - Uniting the Senses 140 iii -The phantom limb and touching hands 147 iv - The roots of judgement and action 151 VI - Alterity and the genesis of externality in Opus Maximum i - The Challenge of the Opus 158 !4 ii - Levinas and the primacy of the ethical 160 iii - Defining conscience 163 iv - Enjoyment and Animal Being 169 v - The Face of the Mother 173 vi - Reverence for the invisible: alterity, reason and symbol 178 Conclusion 186 Bibliography 191 !5 Abbreviations Aids Aids to Reflection. Edited by John Beer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. BL Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions. Edited by James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate, 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1983. CL The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1956-71. CN The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 vols. a) I-II edited by Kathleen Coburn. New York: Pantheon Books, 1957. b) III edited by Kathleen Coburn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. c) IV edited by Kathleen Coburn and M. Christensen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. d) V edited by Kathleen Coburn and Anthony J. Harding. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990-2002. Friend The Friend, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1969. LL Lectures 1808-1819 on Literature. Edited. by R.A. Foakes, 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1981. LS Lay Sermons. Edited by R. J. White. London: Routledge, 1972. Logic Logic. Edited by J. R. de J. Jackson. London: Routledge, 1981. Marginalia Collected Marginalia, 6 vols. a) I-II edited George Whalley, 1980-4; b) III-V edited by H. J. Jackson & George. Whalley, 1992-2001. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980-2001. OM Opus Maximum. Edited by Thomas McFarland & Nicholas Halmi, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. SW&F Shorter Works and Fragments. Edited by H. J. Jackson and J.R. de J. Jackson, 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1995. TT Table Talk Recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge (and John Taylor Coleridge). Edited by Carl Woodring, 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. !6 Introduction In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s marginalia on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the final note begins with the following remark: ‘The perpetual and unmoving Cloud of Darkness, that hangs over this Work to my “mind’s eye”, is the absence of any clear account of — was ist Erfahrung [what is experience]?’1 To anyone familiar with Kant’s philosophy, this question is bemusing, since it appears to ignore one of the central themes of his work: the rational deduction of the necessary conceptual capacities that make experience possible. To anyone familiar with Coleridge’s philosophy, on the other hand, it is clear that he understood Kant far too well to not be aware of this. Presuming, then, that this question doesn't arise from basic ignorance, it is worth considering what Coleridge means by it. The Kantian response, briefly stated, would be that experience is a mental representation produced by an act of judgement that synthesises the mind’s inherent concepts with passively received sensory data. The continuation of Coleridge’s note demonstrates familiarity with this explanation, posing the further question ‘[w]hat do you mean by a fact, an empiric Reality, which alone can give solidity (inhalt) to our Conceptions?’ In order to understand the significance of this second question, one must consider the broader context of Kant’s project in the Critique of Pure Reason. This project constitutes a strict trial of reason, by reason, testing its ability to discover truth by its own lights without appeal to any other faculty or to the external world.2 These restrictions mean that Kant’s account superimposes the purely formal qualities of the mind, those that can be deduced a priori by reflecting on the necessary conditions for cognition. Returning to Coleridge’s question, a more standard translation of Kant’s term ‘Inhalt’ would be ‘content’3, denoting the structural opposite to these formal elements: that which is given shape and form through the application of concepts.
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