S. T. Coleridge and the Transcendence of Reason

This article argues that in his theory of reason as universal Logos, Coleridge held reason, and its constituent (Platonic, divine) ideas, to be transcendent to nature and the human mind. In this view, although nature is suffused by universal reason, and the human mind is transformed by it into an enlightened, spiritualized existence, reason remains a timeless and transcendent power to which the human mind is open, rather than a characteristic that it possesses. Drawing from Coleridge's 'Lecture on the Prometheus' (1825) and related texts, the article argues, in sections II-IV, for the prominence of 'the transcendency of the Nous' as a tenet that informs his wide-ranging polar, hierarchical philosophy of reason and ideas. Section V then discusses the chiastic structure of Coleridge's theories of how nature and spirit interact across the divide that for him is central to existence. The article concludes by reconstructing, in section VI, Coleridge's theory of mind as fractally organized, with opposed poles of reason and sense, each with its distinctive form of heightened, noetic or sensory intuitive experience.