Coleridge and Contemplation

Coleridge and Contemplation is a multi-disciplinary volume on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, founding poet of British Romanticism, critic, and author of philosophical, political, and theological works. In his philosophical writings, Coleridge increasingly developed his thinking about imagination, a symbolizing precursor to contemplation, to a theory of contemplation itself, which for him occurs in its purest form as a manifestation of 'Reason'. Coleridge is a particularly challenging figure because he was a thinker in process, and something of an omnimath, a Renaissance man of the Romantic era. The dynamic quality of his thinking, the 'dark fluxion' pursued but ultimately 'unfixable by thought', and his extensive range of interests make essential an approach that is philosophical yet also multi-disciplinary.

This is the first collection to be written mainly by philosophers and intellectual historians on Coleridge's mature philosophy. With a foreword by Baroness Mary Warnock, and original essays by prominent philosophers such as Roger Scruton, David E. Cooper, Michael McGhee, and Andy Hamilton, this volume provides a stimulating collection of insights and explorations into what Britain's foremost philosopher-poet had to say about the contemplation that he considered to be the highest of the human mental powers.

The chapters by philosophers are supported by new developments in philosophically minded criticism from Coleridge scholars in English departments, including Jim Mays, Kathleen Wheeler, and James Engell. They approach Coleridge as an energetic yet contemplative thinker concerned with the intuition of ideas and the processes of cultivation in self and society. Other chapters, from intellectual historians and theologians, clarify the historical background, and 'religious musings', of Coleridge's thought regarding contemplation.

Peter Cheyne, Associate Professor of British Literature and Culture, Shimane University Visiting Fellow, Durham University

Peter Cheyne is Associate Professor at Shimane University, where he teaches Philosophy and Literature. He divides his time between Shimane and his native Durham, where he is Visiting Fellow at Durham University Philosophy Department. He has published 'A Coleridgean Account of Meditative Experience' (Journal of Philosophy of Life, Jan. 2013); 'The Art Of Poetic Life-Writing' (Coleridge Bulletin, Winter 2014); 'Encoded and Embodied Rhythm', (eds Hamilton & Paddington, Philosophy of Rhythm, OUP, 2017).