The Specter of Hegel in Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria"

Coleridge rarely mentions Hegel in his philosophical writings and seems to have read very little of Hegel's work. Yet I argue that Coleridge's criticisms of Schelling's philosophy—as recorded in letters and marginalia—betray remarkable intellectual affinities with his nearly exact con...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the history of ideas 2007-04, Vol.68 (2), p.279-304
Main Author: Roy, Ayon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biography
British & Irish literature
Coleridge, Hartley
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
Consciousness
Criticism and interpretation
English literature
Foundationalism
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegelianism
History of ideas
Immediacy
Intuition
Intuitionism
Literature
Materialism
Phenomenology
Philosophers
Philosophy
Transcendental philosophy
Writers
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:Coleridge rarely mentions Hegel in his philosophical writings and seems to have read very little of Hegel's work. Yet I argue that Coleridge's criticisms of Schelling's philosophy—as recorded in letters and marginalia—betray remarkable intellectual affinities with his nearly exact contemporary Hegel, particularly in their shared doubts about Schelling's foundationalist intuitionism. With this background in place, I seek to demonstrate that volume one of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is a radically self-undermining text: its philosophical argument, far from slavishly recapitulating Schelling's philosophy, remains haunted by a quasi-Hegelian skepticism toward intuition even as it advances intuition as the foundation of its theoretical edifice.
ISSN:0022-5037
1086-3222
1086-3222
DOI:10.1353/jhi.2007.0015