Coleridgean Ethico-epistemology Part Ii

The logical method of determining the ideal - the 'ideal' being a term which is used in an improper sense in such a theoretical context, according to Coleridge's own testimony just cited - is utilised throughout Coleridge's more systematic writings, but contrasts strongly with his approach to the ideal in relation to aesthetics, as I argue in my thesis. There I suggest that, unlike what Kierkegaard would have castigated as the illusory movement of Coleridge's theoretical dialectic, the records of Coleridge's truly dynamic aesthetic approach bear witness to a real and progressive, yet literally incalculable development, or qualitative transformation of ethico-religious insight, through the felt duration of living experience.

But given Coleridge's polarised logical scheme as the ultimate principle and unifying vehicle of all his systematically orchestrated conceptual developments, creation will not have any genuine alterity from the Creator, as lacking a requisite space of freedom from - and for - God. Any genuine ethical relationship, and by extension, any truly revelatory, and thus ethically transformational communication between creator and creature will become impossible, as that which is existentially salvific, that which we truly need to be revealed to us, must necessarily be beyond our fallible conceptual resources, as Kierkegaard perceives in his Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscri pt.

Thus, in order to arrive at a 'totalising' systematic completion philosophically, Coleridge has to surrender that metaphysical dualism which is a condition for the conception of free personal wills, human and divine. Thereby Coleridge is forced to surrender the very ethical position that he set out in the first place to defend, through transcendental argument, in his Opus Maximum. Hence I conclude that Coleridge's metaphysical urge to complete systematic explanation stands in the way of his equally deep-seated commitment to a theology of free will, human and divine, and so bars any genuine concept of Christian salvation, through creaturely openness to divine grace.