Opposition And Unity: "the Philosopy Of Life" In Coleridge's Critical Writings

The British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834)emancipates the reflection on the poetic form from the traditional literary and artistic field and investigates the practical significance of poetic aesthetics from the tension established between artistic creation and practical philosophy.It not only conveys a new aesthetic paradigm,but also constitutes the opportunity as well as theoretical starting point of his poetic thinking.He regards the aesthetic experience as a valid way to question the meaning of human existence,meets with himself with the close indulgence in nature,and delivers the poetic inspiration,because the embrace of nature is the same to return to human nature.This notion is an entirely new aesthetic purport with the historical consciousness.Based on this,the dissertation constructs Coleridge's “Philosophy of Life” from the four dimensions of art,religion,morality and politics in his critical writings and reveals the meaning for human existence.The poet associates the outside world with the self-consciousness through aesthetic experience and endows beauty with the rational content.Getting rid of the mechanical way of observing things,he resorts to an organic view to dominate the related or even opposite relationship within experience in order to find out the universals in the different attributes in the individual and achieve coexistence.Chapter one discusses Coleridge's poetic aesthetics from the perspective of aesthetic experience.In Biographia Literaria,the poet reconciles by means of aesthetic experience the opposition between reason and sensibility from the dimension of the intellectual being.It is the exploration of origin of the world on the basis of aesthetic intuition.Reason and sensibility are both cognitive abilities of human beings,but intuition can only be perceptual,and the thought initiates the intervention of reason.He comes up with the concept of imaginative reason and considers in the immediacy of aesthetic experience,an individual unifies the past and present sensations instantly through imagination and reason,transforms the natural perception to the aesthetic one by adding some artistic elements and finally brings the perceptual and the rational connotations into being.Taking the “idea of beauty” as the core of his poetic aesthetics,Coleridge points out that imaginative reason can expand the finite human experience,helps the poet to present the emotional and poetic expressions in the free realm of poetry in order to realize the pursuit of poetic existence within the tension of reason and sensibility.Chapter Two demonstrates from the perspective of religious experience Coleridge's philosophy of religion.The lack of faith leads to the resurgence of religious complex that indicates the beginning of the Romantic literary spirit.Coleridge's poetry deals with the theme of the divinity of God,and highlights the spirit of Christ's holy love.He is thus faced with the task of opening up God to the mind of common people.In The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,the poet examines and dissolves the opposition between the finite being of mankind and the infinite of God from the personal religious experience.Resorting to the ancient Greek and Roman mythology,he figures out that the anthropomorphic resemblance contains the integrated recognition of the relationship between human and God.Under the influence of the mythological consciousness,he communicates the divine inspiration through the totality of religious experience and manifests the individual's transcendental experience of deity.Coleridge puts forward the “idea of faith” as the essence of philosophy of religion and establishes “the religion of one's own” based on human spirit.It transforms God as “the ultimate external reality” to a pure and pious nature or the structure of the mind,which leads the living world to the transcendental dimension.Chapter Three investigates the philosophy of morality from the perspective of moral experience.Coleridge gives the feeling of beauty the ethical connotation,which reflects the romantic color in the debate of beauty and goodness in poetry.In Aids to Reflection,the poet coordinates the opposition between the animal instinct and moral being.Everything in nature shapes and represents the eternal form of beauty,and at the same time implies the order and the norms prescribed by the Creator.Although there exists some similarity between human's higher level of being and the animal's existence,the former are rational.Coleridge notices this spiritual attribute of mankind different from the animals' and tries to sublimate the animal existence by evoking the ethical choice in the religious experience.He proposes the model of virtue of humanity with “self-love,righteousness,mercy and repentance” as its contents,and directs people to construct the moral character under the guidance of reason.Coleridge suggests through the “idea of goodness” that pleasure from goodness is the highest level of beauty,but not the final end of action.He emphasizes that goodness is the free choice of each one that meets with the moral demands,an ideal of survival,and also the pursuit of self-realization.Chapter Four expounds from the perspective of political experience Coleridge's philosophy of politics.In “On the Constitution of the Church and State”,he explores the opposition and unity of the civic right and state obligation.On prescribing the purpose and meaning of church and state,he realizes anthropogenic composition of political form.The political system is embedded into daily sensory experience,and forms a common structure of experience.Meanwhile,he views state obligation and civil right as the mainstay of the relationship between the state and the citizens,emphasizing the maintenance of the balance in the political system in order to turn the passive obligors into right owners,rather than repressing them under the disguise of law.The protection of human rights is the cause of a state.Besides,he appeals to critically examine the regime through individual's political experience and develop a reflective political relationship by bi-directional interaction.Through the “idea of power”,he affirms the innate political membership of the individual and guides them to recognize their identity and role in order to establish the political personality.Based on the discussion above,this dissertation draws the conclusion that Coleridge's philosophy of life revolves around the “idea of beauty”,“idea of faith”,“idea of goodness”,and “idea of power” from the fours aspects of “art,religion,morality and politics”.He defines the basic relationship between man and the world through the personal experience,and insists that the meaning of existence is given and revealed by the subject's consciousness.The world is a harmonious,organic whole and the eternal soul of human beings runs through it.In unfolding the conflict in life,Coleridge integrates the opposite forces,creates the aesthetic subject,the poetized one,the moral person and the individual with freedom in order to achieve the completeness and perfection of existence.Coleridge completes the judgement and definition of human value,builds up a system for their own by shifting from the exploration of beauty to the consideration of mode of being,from the representation of peace in nature to the harmonious state of human existence,which is the practical continuation of the teleological aesthetics.