Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796-1817

Coleridge's Responses to German Philosophy

Monika Class

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781472532398
• eBook ISBN: 9781441104960
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Author of Biographia Literaria (1817) and The Friend (1809-10, 1812 and 1818), Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the central figure in the British transmission of German idealism in the 19th century. The advent of Immanuel Kant in Coleridge's thought is traditionally seen as the start of the poet's turn towards an internalized Romanticism. Demonstrating that Coleridge's discovery of Kant came at an earlier point than has been previously recognized, this book examines the historical roots of Coleridge's life-long preoccupation with Kant over a period of 20 years from the first extant Kant entry until the publication of his autobiography. Drawing on previously unpublished contemporary reviews of Kant and seeking socio-political meaning outside the literary canon in the English radical circles of the 1790s, Monika Class here establishes conceptual affinities between Coleridge's writings and that of Kant's earliest English mediators and in doing so revises Coleridge's allegedly non-political and solitary response to Kant.

1

The Early Mediators of Kant in Bristol and London

That the system [of metaphysics] is capable of being converted into an irreligious PANTHEISM, I well know. The ETHICS of SPINOZA, may, or may not, be an instance. But at no time could I believe, that in itself and essentially it is incompatible with religion, natural, or revealed: and now I am most thoroughly persuaded of the contrary. The writings of the illustrious sage of Königsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia I, pp. 152–3

I first studied this system under Frederic Augustus Nitsch, who originally imported the seeds of TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY from its native country, to plant them in our soil; and though, as is usually the case, many of these seeds were scattered by the wind, I trust that a sufficient number have taken root to maintain the growth of this vigorous and flourishing plant, till the time shall come when by its general cultivation England may be enabled to enrich other nations with the most perfect specimens of its produce.

Thomas Wirgman 1817, p. 783

So popular was critical philosophy when Coleridge arrived in Germany in 1798 that the young Englishman had the (incorrect) impression that ‘The Critique der r. V. appeared -& the Universities of Germany exploded’ (Marginalia III, p. 318).¹ Among the philosophers who contributed to this explosion of Kantianism, Karl Leonhard Reinhold was the most prominent.² After the publication of his ‘Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie’ (‘Letters about Kantian Philosophy’) from 1786 until 1787, Kant’s philosophy became all the rage (Kühn 2006, p. 631). Coleridge was aware of Reinhold and other early German disseminators, probably Erhard Schmid, Johann Ernst Schulz (also spelt ‘Schultz’ or ‘Schulze’),³ Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Jakob Sigismund Beck, and Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk, as we know from his marginal annotation ‘50 Vol. of Comments, from Reinhold, Schmidt, Schulz, Beck, Tieftrunk, &c &c &c’ (Marginalia III, p. 319). The ‘50 Vols of Comments’ in the autograph commentary suggests that Coleridge knew there had been plenty of Kant mediators. Reinhold had before all others placed Kant’s first critique strategically within the context of the most heated philosophical debate in mid-1780s Germany: the ‘Pantheismus Streit’ (‘pantheism controversy’; see Chapter 5). ‘Reinhold’s specific contribution to this popularization process was’, according to George di Giovanni, ‘the arguably very constructive move of injecting the Critique of Reason into the Spinoza-dispute that Jacobi had instigated in 1785, thereby altering both the tenor of the dispute and the course that the reception of Kant’s critical work was to take’ (2010, p. 1). Reinhold had made a ‘momentous decision’ by composing a series of eight letters expounding the neglected religiously affirmative dimension of the Critique of Pure Reason and by publishing them in Christoph Martin Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur (Ameriks 2005, p. x). Reinhold recognized that by turning attention away from epistemological issues (e.g. the synthetic judgements a priori, the transcendental deduction) towards the practical use of Reason at the end of the first critique, he could win massive public interest, especially by those seeking an endorsement of rational religion.

The initial dissemination of Kant’s philosophy in England began at the time of Reinhold’s Briefe in 1787. The interest of the English public revolved around the religious and moral implications of the first critique that were implicitly political for them in much the same way as in Germany. This is the reason why the present historical reconstruction of the English transmission process cannot do without a prior explanation of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ in the Critique of Pure Reason. The ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ lies at the heart of the late eighteenth-century reception of Kant in England; readers disagreed about and still dispute today its ultimate meaning with regard to the possibility of metaphysics. As the debate about this represents an essential part of the rest of this study, a sketch of Kant’s arguments is indispensible. Based on this outline, the chapter will then establish the pathways through which critical philosophy entered English culture in the mid-1790s. It will show that Kantianism spread thanks to less well-known, but historically important, figures like Friedrich August Nitsch, especially in the radical and dissenting milieu of England and that Kant’s principles found a larger English audience and had a greater impact on English writers of the period such as William Godwin than has previously been thought.

Preliminary discussion of Kant’s ‘Transcendental Dialectic’

In Prolegomena, Kant speaks of ‘having been awoken by Hume from his “dogmatic slumber” (dogmatischer Schlummer)’ (Kühn 2005, p. 116). The ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ conveys strong affinities with the Scottish philosopher David Hume.⁴ Kant knew ‘Hume’s philosophy very well from 1755 onwards and that similarity is indeed the result of influence’ (Kühn 1983, p. 180; see also Tonelli 1966; Groos 1901). Traces of Hume’s scepticism are palpable in the following extract from the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’:

Die unbedingte Notwendigkeit, die wir, als den letzten Träger aller Dinge, so unentbehrlich bedürfen, ist der wahre Abgrund für die menschliche Vernunft. . . . Man kann sich des Gedankens nicht erwehren, man kann ihn aber auch nicht ertragen, daß ein Wesen, welches wir uns auch als ein höchstes unter allen möglichen vorstellen, gleichsam zu sich selbst sage: Ich bin von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit, außer mir ist nichts ohne das, was bloß durch meinen Willen etwas ist; aber woher bin ich denn? Hier sinkt alles unter uns, und die größte Vollkommenheit, wie die kleinste, schwebt ohne Haltung bloß vor der spekulativen Vernunft, der es nichts kostet, die eine so wie die andere ohne die mindeste Hinderniß verschwinden zu lassen. (KrV B 641)

(The unconditioned necessity, which we need so indispensibly as the ultimate sustainer of all things, is for human reason the true abyss. . . . One cannot resist the thought of it, but one also cannot bear it that a being that we represent to ourselves as the highest among all possible beings might, as it were, say to itself: ‘I am from eternity to eternity, outside me is nothing except what is something merely through my will; but whence then am I?’ Here everything gives way beneath us, and the greatest perfection as well as the smallest, hovers without support before speculative reason, for which it would cost nothing to let the one as much as the other disappear without the least obstacle. [CpR B 641])

The thought of the absolutely necessary discussed here concerned not only the origin of self-consciousness but also the foundation of the entire metaphysical theory of the world and the cause of existence. The absolutely necessary was the axiom of Cartesian metaphysics – the metaphysics of a first principle, of an independent point of departure and a single identical thing not derived from anything else (Henrich 1960, pp. 3, 5, 127). The passage pointed to a profound ambivalence in the human attitude: unconditioned necessity was at once ‘ultimate sustainer of all things’ and ‘true abyss . . . of human reason’. It indicates that Kant in his ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ supported, though somewhat reluctantly, Hume’s analysis of causation. Like Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Kant exposed in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) the fundamental deficiency of traditional metaphysics. Nowhere else in his work would Kant’s philosophy reach such a high degree of scepticism as in the first critique (Henrich 1960, p. 177).

In the Prolegomena, Kant explained retrospectively how Hume had influenced his thinking: ‘Hume started in the main from a single concept in metaphysics, namely that of the connections between cause and effect’ (cited in Kühn 2001, p. 256). The main inspiration Kant drew from Hume lay in the insight that ‘Reason . . . pretends to have conceived this concept [of causality] in her womb’ (cited in Kühn 2001, p. 256). Kant’s metaphor of the womb of Reason for the method of logical deduction, which Hume and subsequently Kant criticized heavily, is revealing. On the one hand, ‘womb’ indicates the strong attachment to Reason as a mother figure and sustainer; on the other hand, it exposes the assumption in an almost misogynistic way that certain concepts were inherent in other concepts. Inference by way of deduction was vital for rational theology. Exposing the weaknesses of the latter, Hume’s Enquiry stated that ‘religious philosophers . . . indulge a rash curiosity, in trying how far they can establish religion upon the principles of reason; and they thereby excite, instead of satisfying, the doubts, which naturally arise from a diligent and scrutinous enquiry . . . the question is entirely speculative’ (Hume 2000, p. 102; [section 11, paragraph 10]). Hume observed that the inference of a cause was meaningless if it were only known by the effect: ‘[i]f the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities, beyond what are precisely requisite to produce the effect’ (Hume 2000, p. 103 [section 11; paragraph 13]). Kant’s first critique agreed with Hume’s refutation of the method of joining or dissecting inherent concepts. Kant built on Hume’s critique of metaphysics but ultimately reached very different conclusions (Henrich 1960, pp. 148–9). Yet before outlining Kant’s attempt to obviate the deficits of Reason, it is necessary to indicate the profundity of Kant’s relentless dissection of traditional metaphysics.

Sections Three to Seven of Chapter 3 of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ in the Critique of Pure Reason criticize the chief arguments of rational theology: the ontological argument of St Anselm and Descartes, the ‘cosmological’ argument found in Aquinas and favoured by Christian Wolff and the ‘physico-theological’ argument from design, especially popular among British divines including David Hartley and Joseph Priestley and influenced by John Locke. A major insight in the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ was that existence is not a predicate, that is, existence is not inherent in, but superadded to, other concepts (Henrich 1960, pp. 140–2; Kühn 2001, pp. 248–9):

Denn der Gegenstand ist bei der Wirklichkeit nicht bloß in meinem Begriffe analytisch enthalten, sondern kommt zu meinem Begriffe (der eine Bestimmung meines Zustandes ist) synthetisch hinzu. (KrV B 627)

(For with actuality the object is not merely included in my concept analytically, but adds synthetically to my concept [which is a determination of my state]. [CpR B 627])

Kant employed this known argument to refute the ontological argument by St Anselm, who professed that the concept of existence could be unpacked from another concept as if it lay dormant within the concept of Deity or vice versa.⁵ In order to expose the deficiency of the ontological argument, Kant drew on a now-famous example:

Hundert wirkliche Taler enthalten nicht das Mindeste mehr, als hundert mögliche. Denn da diese den Begriff, jene aber den Gegenstand und dessen Position an sich selbst dedeuten, so würde, im Falle dieser mehr enthielte als jener, mein Begriff nicht den ganzen Gegenstand ausdrücken, und also auch nicht der angemessene Begriff von ihm sein. Aber in meinem Vormögenszustande ist mehr bei hundert wirklichen Talern, als bei dem bloßen Begriffe derselben (d. i. ihrer Möglichkeit) [enthalten]. (KrV B 627, my addition)

(A hundred actual [pounds] do not contain the least bit more than a hundred possible ones. For since the latter signifies the concept and the former its object and its positing in itself, then, in case the former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the entire object and thus would not be the suitable concept of it. But in my financial condition there is more with a hundred actual [pounds] than with the mere concept of them [i.e. their possibility]. [CpR B 627])

Kant compared the mere concept of a hundred pounds to the material amount of money. Both are equally perfect from a conceptual point of view, but this does not mean that the mere notion of a hundred pounds will purchase any goods. This example demonstrates, according to Kant, that existence is neither contained in perfection, nor can it be derived from perfection, but that it is something that needs to be added to a concept.

This insight exposed a paradox: as existence is not a predicate its determination requires external proof. Claims of existence can only be proven through determination by experience. This view had a devastating impact on anything unconditioned or autonomous, like God, but also on such concepts as freedom or the soul. The enquiry into the existence of the absolutely necessary thus posed a self-contradiction: if existence is not inferable but conditioned, the existence of the unconditioned amounts to a paradox. This paradox equally threatened the validity of the other two rational proofs of the existence of God which Kant discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason: the ‘cosmological’ and the ‘physico-theological’ argument. Kant ‘makes clear in his subsequent separate criticism of the cosmological argument’, as Paul Guyer observes, ‘[that] we never have any justification for assuming that the series of contingently existing things terminates in something absolutely necessary’ (2006, p. 146).⁶ The physico-theological argument of design is doomed, too, because ‘we have no legitimate way to infer from anything we do experience to an unconditioned being, outside of the series of natural causes and effects, like the God of theology’ (Guyer 2006, p. 150). If we attempt to infer the existence of God by including him within the chain of natural causes, like Hartley or Spinoza, then God too must be conditioned rather than unconditioned, limited rather than unlimited. Nothing unconditioned, nothing autonomous can therefore be proven to exist. All three attempts to find a rational proof for the existence of God have, as Kant pointed out, this paradox in common.

The theological implications of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ are contested to date.⁷ Summing up the ambivalence, Guyer notes that ‘it is possible to maintain that they [Kant’s criticisms of the metaphysical arguments for the existence of God] are not knockdown criticisms. By the same token, however, Kant’s criticisms have the weight of his whole theory of knowledge behind them: you cannot accept his basic distinction between concepts and intuitions, with our a priori intuition of the str...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviated Titles
• Introduction
• 1 The Early Mediators of Kant in Bristol and London
• 2 Coleridge’s Moral-Political Engagement in the mid-1790s
• 3 Coleridge and the Categorical Imperative in 1796
• 4 Coleridge’s Poetic Response to Perpetual Peace, 1796–1802
• 5 The Closet Kantian
• 6 Kant’s Giant Hand: Repression and Genial Self-Construction in Biographia Literaria
• 7 Coleridge, Nitsch and the Distinction between Reason and Understanding
• Conclusion: Beyond Coleridge
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index