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Theo-tyranny
Thursday, 8 August 2024 at 21:50
Theo-tyranny
…in April 1799, when Coleridge, then attending lectures in Göttingen, received word that his infant son Berkeley had died back in England. In a consolatory letter to his wife he wrote, ‘But the living God is everywhere, & works everywhere - and where is there room for Death? .. . I confess that the more I think, the more I am discontented with the doctrines of Priestley’. This reflection augurs a crucial turning-point in Coleridge’s intellectual life, after which he was no longer prepared to accept Priestley’s ‘bargain- basement Spinozism’. Coleridge was touching on a fundamental issue in this letter. If ‘every Thing is God’, then He, not the individual moral agent, must accept responsibility for human shortcomings. Such is the passivity of the individual under such a theo-tyranny that all his humanity is diminished. He is left with only an ‘animal faith’. The individual is reduced to a passive receptor of sense-experience, a Lockean tabula rasa.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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What the Atheists assert
Wednesday, 7 August 2024 at 21:58
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Phillips
What the Atheists assert
When composing the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge was already having doubts about what Thomas McFarland has described as Joseph Priestley’s ‘bargain-basement Spinozism’. Already in March 1796, when he was still calling himself a necessitarian, Coleridge confided in a letter his difficulty reconciling Priestley’s theism with his materialist monism: ‘How is it that Dr Priestley is not an atheist?—He asserts in three different Places, that God not only does, but is, every thing. But if God be every thing, every Thing is God: —which is all, the Atheists assert—’.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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Albatross shot
Tuesday, 6 August 2024 at 21:48
Albatross Shot, Mervyn Peake
Albatross shot
Bythe time Coleridge encountered the work of Fichte, he had already shot down the shibboleth of determinism that was blindly followed by a ship of fools. That shibboleth was Spinozism. I refer, of course to Coleridge’s most famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is ostensibly about the random shooting down of an albatross of good omen and the trials and tribulations which followed, but as with any poem worth reading, there is much more to it than first meets the eye.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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New National Church
Monday, 5 August 2024 at 21:06
New National Church
Coleridge presented the idea of a new National Church, which would have a secular role in providing an educative and cultural lead. Let us be clear at this point that Coleridge offered a new ‘idea’ here, and not some re-hashing of the Church of England. ‘My object’, wrote Coleridge, ‘has been to present the idea of a National Church, not the history of the Church established in this nation’. The new National Church would
...diffuse through the whole community and to every native entitled to its laws and rights, that quantity and quality of knowledge which was indispensable both for the understanding of those rights, and for the performance of the duties correspondent.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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‘Things’ into human beings
Sunday, 4 August 2024 at 21:45
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
‘Things’ into human beings
Taking his lead from Fichte, Coleridge subverted Rousseau’s social contract, turning it instead into something which tends towards an ideal future, in which we contract freely with each other as autonomous individuals, each treating each always as an end in himself rather than as a means to an end. For such an ‘idea’ to be realised, individuals had to be transformed from ‘things’ into human beings. And taking his cue from Fichte, Coleridge would place national education at the heart of the humanising process.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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Difference between subject and serf
Saturday, 3 August 2024 at 21:45
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Difference between subject and serf
Coleridge’s turn against Jacobinism and the French Revolution was expressed as a re-evaluation of Rousseau’s Social Contract. Coleridge described the Social Contract as ‘at once false and foolish’. No two humans should ever be bound by a contract as though it had some pre-existent force and, thereby, eternal validity. Only as an idea can such a contract serve the interests of individuals, rather than oppress them.
But if instead of the conception or theory of an original social contract, you say the idea of an ever-originating social contract, this is so certain and so indispensable, that it constitutes the whole ground of the difference between subject and serf, between a commonwealth and a slave-plantation. And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher idea of person, in contra-distinction from thing; all social law and justice being grounded on the principle, that a person can never, but by his own fault, become a thing, or, without grievous wrong, be treated as such: and the distinction consisting in this, that a thing may be used altogether and merely as the means to an end; but the person must always be included in the end.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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Dante and humanism
Thursday, 1 August 2024 at 22:02
Dante and humanism
Dante was pre-eminent in establishing humanism as the new philosophy of the Renaissance (or post-feudalism). That philosophy reached its zenith with Fichte, even though it did so as the Counter-Renaissance reassertion of feudalism (or neo-feudalism) was complete. Fichte’s philosophy was developed behind enemy lines so to speak. This made Fichte’s philosophy not so much the ideological successor to feudalism, but rather a key influence upon the Romantic reaction to the dominant neo-feudalism.
From Child of Encounte
© John Dunn.
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