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Article: Coleridge and the radical roots of critical philosophy.(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Wordsworth Circle
- Article date:
- January 1, 2009
- Author:
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In Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge wrote that his initial encounter with Kant's philosophy "took possession of me as with a giant's hand" (Biographia 1: 153), as if it were a sudden moment of mystical conversion. The metaphor of being possessed implies that Kant's philosophy became a matter of faith for him. Not only did Coleridge portray Kant as having illuminated and changed his thinking forever but he also spoke of himself as the only person at the turn of the 19th century who was capable of comprehending the importance and depth of critical philosophy. When Coleridge did include other admirers, he belittled them: "the distinctions; the adamantine chain of ...