John Dunn

Antipathy to Spinoza

Tuesday, 29 April 2025 at 02:00

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Antipathy to Spinoza

The influence of German idealism upon Coleridge’s mature philosophical positions has been well documented. Be that as it may, it should not be understood as a totally independent source of influence. In fact, according to Coleridge himself, precepts defended by the German idealists originated in the Cambridge Platonists. When reading Henry More’s Philosophical Poems, Coleridge noted down on the front flyleaf the following:

Ah!What strength might I gather, what comfort we derive, from the Proclo-plotinian Platonist’s doctrine of the soul, if only they or their Spinosistic imitators, the nature- philosophers of present Germany, had told or could tell us what they meant by I and we (Marginalia, III, 909)

Fromthis comment, in which Coleridge registers his disappointment about the lack of progress towards answering his own ‘who am I?’ question, we learn that he interpreted the German Idealism of his own time as ‘Spinosistic’. This is surprising, especially given Fichte’s antipathy to Spinoza. So what was it to be ‘Spinosistic’? Coleridge explained in a letter of 1815 to the publisher John Gutch.

Spinoza's is a World with one Pole only, & consequently no Equator. Had he commenced either with the natura naturata, as the Objective Pole, or at the “I per se I” as the Subjective Pole—he must necessarily in either case have arrived at the Equator, or Identity of Subject and Object—and thence instead of a God, = the one only Substance, at which all finite Things are the modes and accidents, he would have revealed to himself the doctrine of The Living God, having the Ground of his own Existence within himself, and the originating Principle of all dependent Existence in his Will and Word.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

‘Mortal blow’ against Spinoza

Sunday, 27 April 2025 at 23:04

‘Mortal blow’ against Spinoza

If Coleridge believed, as he wrote in Biographia Literaria,that Fichte had struck a ‘mortal blow’ against Spinoza, then Coleridge himself had struck another in the guise of the ancient mariner. By the time Coleridge had shot down the shibboleth of an external materialist realism, he was mentally prepared to leave the larval Spinozism, for the flight into German idealism. That his art had anticipated life was explained in Biographia Literaria. Coleridge must have been referring to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner when he explained how works of imagination open up spaces into which we have yet to grow, just as ‘the chrysalis of the horned fly’ leaves ‘room in its involucrum for antennae yet to come’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

About the Ancient Mariner

Friday, 25 April 2025 at 23:19

About the Ancient Mariner

The wedding guest harangued by the mariner was in danger of being one of the ‘crew’, blindly busied with convention, following the sacraments, Mr Average, unthinking, anonymous, a level one player by the ‘Triple Ichheit’ assessment of Coleridge’s later definition of threefold ‘I’-ness. The wedding guest was in a Dantesque dark wood, which is why he in particular was stopped by the mariner. The wedding guest was a conflation of the ancient mariner’s own pre-voyage condition and Coleridge’s own younger self, the Spinozist. The ancient mariner was haranguing his former self, his youthful Spinozist self, the self with ‘animal faith’. The wedding guest was told of the wilful, i.e. humanising act, the shooting down of the shibboleth of Spinozist enlightenment - which rent the veil of pantheism. The wedding guest then turned away from attending the sacrament of marriage (also a commentary upon the reckless and regretted marriage of Coleridge’s own younger self to Sara Fricker). In a wishful rewriting of real life events, the wedding guest departed, a sadder but a wiser man. He was no longer blindly happy in his animal faith. He had been humanised - reborn.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Shooting the shibboleth

Friday, 25 April 2025 at 02:32

Shooting the shibboleth

The shooting down of the shibboleth bird was unpremeditated and impulsive, a childlike act of spontaneity, creativity and imagination or, in Coleridge’s own terms, a divine act that asserted individuality and set the mariner apart. The mariner lived on, delivered from anonymity. The rest of the crew, the ‘they’, all died, anonymously, en masse. Whilst the ship of fools went down, redolent of a descent into Hell, he was reborn, destined to proclaim the shocking terror of the truth, a destiny that, ultimately, Coleridge felt he had failed to fulfil in real life.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Taking up his crossbow

Sunday, 20 April 2025 at 20:41

Taking up his crossbow

Coleridge in the poem shot at the reified sensitivities of the ‘they’ and their ‘animal faith’. Stop - what are we doing? was the implied question. In taking up his crossbow he was taking up the cross against a societal boat full of Pharisees. Shooting the albatross was a crime - the neo-feudalist crime of self- assertion. It marked the awakening of the individual. It was a transgression against the necessary, against determinism, but this was also a spontaneous intervention of human agency and the mariner was vilified for it. After the death of albatross, the shipmates in their sore distress shift all the responsibility for their woes onto the ancient mariner. ‘Instead of the cross, the Albatross / about his neck was hung’. The phrase ‘instead of the cross’ signifies that the albatross hung around mariner’s neck has intimate connection to the crucifix of Jesus.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Albatross Shot

Friday, 18 April 2025 at 19:58

Albatross Shot

Commentators upon The Ancient Mariner are often puzzled by the abruptness of the Mariner’s sudden and inexplicable act of shooting down such a benign and harmless overgrown seagull. But this is exactly what makes this event the central point of the poem, indeed the whole crux of the poem. The central point is that there was no reason. The shooting of the albatross was an allegorical blow against the age of reason. This was a wilful act and, therefore, a distinctly human act, certainly by Coleridge’s later definition in Biographia Literaria.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

First shot of the revolution

Thursday, 17 April 2025 at 22:07

First shot of the revolution

Pushed to its logical conclusion, the necessitarian philosophy of Priestley would finally terminate in the pantheism of Spinoza, which, indeed, was its root source, as it was for Locke, Hartley, Newton, Condillac and other necessitarians for whom the youthful Coleridge had once had an intense and committed enthusiasm. This was exactly the undifferentiated pantheism that Henry More had recognised in Spinoza’s kabbalism more than a hundred years before. Coleridge’s famous turn against the necessitarianism of Priestley, Hartley and others was a ‘bargain-basement’ revolt that augured the real thing in Coleridge’s later open revolt against Spinozism. And it was in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner that the first shot of the revolution was fired.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.