Strictly speaking I think Coleridge is less a Kantian and more a Fichtean. Fichte, uses almost exactly the same phrases regarding a “finite I am” as opposed to “the infinite I AM”. But either way I disagree with this animus against the Romantics because it’s clear to me that the Romantics, by way of their Fichtean lineage were drawing very much on the Augustinian tradition.
I’ll grant that they were an eclectic and heterodox bunch, but even the least religious of them, I think simply had a Spinozistic view of God and a dislike of the religious institutions of their day. I think it’s pretty obvious that Blake and the older Coleridge weren’t Neo-Classicists, that Mary Shelley infused a bit of a Christian parable into Frankenstein, that Byron, while no paragon of virtue, thought of himself at least as a Deist if not a Christian, and that C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, who were definitely Christian, viewed themselves as building on Romantic models rather than Modernist or Neo-Classical ones. Lewis in particular was a fan of Shelley, perhaps because he had been an atheist too. In short I think this central thesis (and Masson’s incessant return to it in nearly all of his videos) is way too black-and-white of a viewpoint. T.S. Eliot was a Christian, that doesn’t mean that Modernism is inherently Christian, nor anti-Christian for that matter.
Spinoza was a pantheist, so by no means can one place him (or any who adhere to his position) to the Augustinian tradition. I have never said Coleridge was a Kantian and have explicitly argued against that position.
@@LitProf I agree. I am not suggesting that Augustine was a pantheist, nor am I saying that Coleridge was a Kantian, per se. Likewise, I don't take you (Dr. Masson?) to be saying either of those things. Maybe what I was trying to say got garbled in my previous comment. I am saying that the Romantics "seem very much in the Augustinian tradition" in so much as their central concept seems to be that reason (in the neoclassical/Enlightenment sense) is incomplete or insufficient without love. . .and maybe a few other things like imagination. This seems like a direct analogue to Augustine's position on (classical/Greco-Roman) reason. This comparison is directly made by Michael Sugrue at the end of his video on Don Quixote. He goes so far as to say that Augustine was, in a sense, the first Romantic. While I agree that Augustine wasn't a pantheist, German Idealism, specifically the philosophy of Fichte and the early Schelling was a unique fusion of Plato, Augustine, Plotinus, Descartes, Berkeley, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Fichte's reading of Kant. Fichte's idealism (based on Kant's epistemology, and Berkeley's metaphysics) allows for a conflation of Spinoza's God (everything) with Descartes' God (infinite mind), Leibniz's God (the necessary, best-conceivable, monad that harmonizes all others--finite "I am"-s harmonized within and yet distinct from the infinite "I AM"), and thus with Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine (chain of being, etc.), give or take the Paganism of Plato and Plotinus, and Fichte's idea that love must be predicated on "knowledge" (he broadens his conception of knowledge by including imagination in it, which he thinks then allows for empathy and thus love beyond mere self-love). Fichte repudiates Spinoza on epistemological grounds, referring to him as a "dogmatist" (basically something like a materialist or empirical realist), but says that Spinoza's system (which rises and falls with the conflation of God with the universe) can at least mostly be saved by correcting it with his own (Fichte's) idealist reinterpretation. I don't mean to defend Fichte's philosophy here, I just mean to say that he thought his reading of Kant, and his own system, allowed for this kind of synthesis. Fichte was, btw the first to introduce the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model of "dialectic" into German Idealism and philosophy in general, not Hegel. So this sort of nigh-megalomaniacal fusion of older, seemingly incompatible, philosophies and ideas is very much his style. Now I went into all that detail about Fichte because Coleridge referenced Fichte and Schelling in his Biographia Literaria explicitly, and while he says that he prefers Schelling (who was much less committed an idealist than Fichte and thus probably seemed a little less radical in the English-speaking world), Coleridge's whole model of the imagination is, I think rather strongly, an elaboration on Fichte's model of the imagination, which Fichte says weighs contradictory propositions in order to synthesize them in the (Kantian) subject (finite I am) and which itself must presumably engage in such acts of synthesis within, and yet distinct from, a(n) (epistemologically hypthetical) "infinite I am". Coleridge seems to me to have taken this description of imaginative/cognitive functions and relationships of minds (finite and infinite) from Fichte's epistemology and to have built a sort of anatomy around them. Fichte's psychology and ethics are a more explicitly Augustinian re-formulation of Kant's already Augustine-influenced ethics. . . So on the question of whether Coleridge was a Kantian or not (you say he was not) I would say, rather that he was only a Kantian in so much as he was a Fichtean. . . a Kantian twice removed I guess you could say. He had his own reading of Kant's immediate successors who had their own reading of Kant himself--a Kantian in a sense and not a Kantian in another. As for Spinozism and its compatibility or incompatibility with Augustine, or Christianity in general, I think that the Enlightenment-era reading of Spinoza (which is arguably closer to Spinoza's actual position) doesn't jive with Christianity. However, I think that the German Idealist reading of Spinoza, which was very popular among the German and English Romantics, at least seemed compatible with Christianity to them, even if they didn't think it necessarily entailed Christianity. So far as I can tell the English Romantics were generally engaged with the German philosophy and literature of their time, and adopted a variety of positions, orthodox and heterodox--mostly heterodox, based on an already syncretic school of philosophy that still drew significantly from Christian thinkers as well as from Spinoza and indeed sought to reconcile the two by way of a significant overhaul of the latter to fit the former. Wordsworth may have been a pantheist, Keats may have been a pagan or an atheist, Shelley may have been an atheist, but I don't think these take away from Coleridge--an increasingly orthodox Anglican--being a Romantic. He seems to have been generally regarded as a Romantic (he certainly wasn't a Neoclassicist or a Modernist) and as the premier theorist of the English Romantic movement by later Romantics. Certainly he disagreed with Wordsworth. Certainly Blake disagreed with Wordsworth too. Certainly Wordsworth didn't speak for Shakespeare and Milton (both universally acknowledged as inspirations for Romanticism by the Romantics). Certainly Wordsworth didn't speak for the German Romantics who preceded the English Romantics and had a stronger Lutheran and Pietist influence. This is why, though I respect Dr. Masson (you?) personally (I've enjoyed and learned a great deal from the generous number of available lectures here on RUclips) I disagree with (what seems to be) the pervasive attitude that all Romanticism is really just Wordsworthism (so to speak), that Romanticism is therefore just "the Enlightenment 2.0" and fundamentally incompatible with Christianity or antithetical to it, and that Coleridge (and later Tolkien) apparently represent some separate Christian (specifically Augustinian) tradition. Respectfully, I hope I have not mischaracterized Dr. Masson's (your?) position here. But so far as I can make it out this seems to be what it is. And again, respectfully, I simply don't buy it for the reasons detailed above. I find the whole of it to rest on a reductive and binary understanding of Romanticism and its relationship to Christianity. I don't think this reductive and binary understanding is entirely justified personally, but I am even more convinced that, regardless of what I think, the Romantics would have found it even more unjustified than I--especially those who had time to outlive their 20s and 30s.
Very illuminating thank you.
Strictly speaking I think Coleridge is less a Kantian and more a Fichtean. Fichte, uses almost exactly the same phrases regarding a “finite I am” as opposed to “the infinite I AM”. But either way I disagree with this animus against the Romantics because it’s clear to me that the Romantics, by way of their Fichtean lineage were drawing very much on the Augustinian tradition.
I’ll grant that they were an eclectic and heterodox bunch, but even the least religious of them, I think simply had a Spinozistic view of God and a dislike of the religious institutions of their day. I think it’s pretty obvious that Blake and the older Coleridge weren’t Neo-Classicists, that Mary Shelley infused a bit of a Christian parable into Frankenstein, that Byron, while no paragon of virtue, thought of himself at least as a Deist if not a Christian, and that C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, who were definitely Christian, viewed themselves as building on Romantic models rather than Modernist or Neo-Classical ones. Lewis in particular was a fan of Shelley, perhaps because he had been an atheist too. In short I think this central thesis (and Masson’s incessant return to it in nearly all of his videos) is way too black-and-white of a viewpoint. T.S. Eliot was a Christian, that doesn’t mean that Modernism is inherently Christian, nor anti-Christian for that matter.
Spinoza was a pantheist, so by no means can one place him (or any who adhere to his position) to the Augustinian tradition.
I have never said Coleridge was a Kantian and have explicitly argued against that position.
@@LitProf I agree. I am not suggesting that Augustine was a pantheist, nor am I saying that Coleridge was a Kantian, per se. Likewise, I don't take you (Dr. Masson?) to be saying either of those things. Maybe what I was trying to say got garbled in my previous comment. I am saying that the Romantics "seem very much in the Augustinian tradition" in so much as their central concept seems to be that reason (in the neoclassical/Enlightenment sense) is incomplete or insufficient without love. . .and maybe a few other things like imagination. This seems like a direct analogue to Augustine's position on (classical/Greco-Roman) reason. This comparison is directly made by Michael Sugrue at the end of his video on Don Quixote. He goes so far as to say that Augustine was, in a sense, the first Romantic.
While I agree that Augustine wasn't a pantheist, German Idealism, specifically the philosophy of Fichte and the early Schelling was a unique fusion of Plato, Augustine, Plotinus, Descartes, Berkeley, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Fichte's reading of Kant. Fichte's idealism (based on Kant's epistemology, and Berkeley's metaphysics) allows for a conflation of Spinoza's God (everything) with Descartes' God (infinite mind), Leibniz's God (the necessary, best-conceivable, monad that harmonizes all others--finite "I am"-s harmonized within and yet distinct from the infinite "I AM"), and thus with Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine (chain of being, etc.), give or take the Paganism of Plato and Plotinus, and Fichte's idea that love must be predicated on "knowledge" (he broadens his conception of knowledge by including imagination in it, which he thinks then allows for empathy and thus love beyond mere self-love). Fichte repudiates Spinoza on epistemological grounds, referring to him as a "dogmatist" (basically something like a materialist or empirical realist), but says that Spinoza's system (which rises and falls with the conflation of God with the universe) can at least mostly be saved by correcting it with his own (Fichte's) idealist reinterpretation. I don't mean to defend Fichte's philosophy here, I just mean to say that he thought his reading of Kant, and his own system, allowed for this kind of synthesis. Fichte was, btw the first to introduce the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model of "dialectic" into German Idealism and philosophy in general, not Hegel. So this sort of nigh-megalomaniacal fusion of older, seemingly incompatible, philosophies and ideas is very much his style.
Now I went into all that detail about Fichte because Coleridge referenced Fichte and Schelling in his Biographia Literaria explicitly, and while he says that he prefers Schelling (who was much less committed an idealist than Fichte and thus probably seemed a little less radical in the English-speaking world), Coleridge's whole model of the imagination is, I think rather strongly, an elaboration on Fichte's model of the imagination, which Fichte says weighs contradictory propositions in order to synthesize them in the (Kantian) subject (finite I am) and which itself must presumably engage in such acts of synthesis within, and yet distinct from, a(n) (epistemologically hypthetical) "infinite I am". Coleridge seems to me to have taken this description of imaginative/cognitive functions and relationships of minds (finite and infinite) from Fichte's epistemology and to have built a sort of anatomy around them. Fichte's psychology and ethics are a more explicitly Augustinian re-formulation of Kant's already Augustine-influenced ethics. . .
So on the question of whether Coleridge was a Kantian or not (you say he was not) I would say, rather that he was only a Kantian in so much as he was a Fichtean. . . a Kantian twice removed I guess you could say. He had his own reading of Kant's immediate successors who had their own reading of Kant himself--a Kantian in a sense and not a Kantian in another.
As for Spinozism and its compatibility or incompatibility with Augustine, or Christianity in general, I think that the Enlightenment-era reading of Spinoza (which is arguably closer to Spinoza's actual position) doesn't jive with Christianity. However, I think that the German Idealist reading of Spinoza, which was very popular among the German and English Romantics, at least seemed compatible with Christianity to them, even if they didn't think it necessarily entailed Christianity.
So far as I can tell the English Romantics were generally engaged with the German philosophy and literature of their time, and adopted a variety of positions, orthodox and heterodox--mostly heterodox, based on an already syncretic school of philosophy that still drew significantly from Christian thinkers as well as from Spinoza and indeed sought to reconcile the two by way of a significant overhaul of the latter to fit the former. Wordsworth may have been a pantheist, Keats may have been a pagan or an atheist, Shelley may have been an atheist, but I don't think these take away from Coleridge--an increasingly orthodox Anglican--being a Romantic. He seems to have been generally regarded as a Romantic (he certainly wasn't a Neoclassicist or a Modernist) and as the premier theorist of the English Romantic movement by later Romantics. Certainly he disagreed with Wordsworth. Certainly Blake disagreed with Wordsworth too. Certainly Wordsworth didn't speak for Shakespeare and Milton (both universally acknowledged as inspirations for Romanticism by the Romantics). Certainly Wordsworth didn't speak for the German Romantics who preceded the English Romantics and had a stronger Lutheran and Pietist influence. This is why, though I respect Dr. Masson (you?) personally (I've enjoyed and learned a great deal from the generous number of available lectures here on RUclips) I disagree with (what seems to be) the pervasive attitude that all Romanticism is really just Wordsworthism (so to speak), that Romanticism is therefore just "the Enlightenment 2.0" and fundamentally incompatible with Christianity or antithetical to it, and that Coleridge (and later Tolkien) apparently represent some separate Christian (specifically Augustinian) tradition.
Respectfully, I hope I have not mischaracterized Dr. Masson's (your?) position here. But so far as I can make it out this seems to be what it is. And again, respectfully, I simply don't buy it for the reasons detailed above. I find the whole of it to rest on a reductive and binary understanding of Romanticism and its relationship to Christianity. I don't think this reductive and binary understanding is entirely justified personally, but I am even more convinced that, regardless of what I think, the Romantics would have found it even more unjustified than I--especially those who had time to outlive their 20s and 30s.