The Development of Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom: The Translation and Re-Formation

of German Idealism in England

Author(s): Jeffrey W. Barbeau
Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 576-594
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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The Development of Coleridge's Notion
of Human Freedom: The Translation
and Re-formation of German Idealism
in England*
JeffreyW Barbeau / Milwaukee,Wisconsin

The development of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's (1772-1834) notion of

human freedom or Will exemplifies his unique ability to utilize the con-
cepts and language of others and, simultaneously, to transform those
thoughts into original ideas. Though Coleridge has often been accused
of unabashedly plagiarizing the ideas of his German contemporaries, in-
cluding Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Schelling (1775-1854), this paper reveals that his gradual progress to or-
thodox Anglican Christianity as well as his lifelong battle to conquer his
addiction to opium forced him continually to reformulate and transform
many of their ideas for a project wholly his own, namely, the predication
of a personal, theistic, Absolute Will.

I. INTRODUCTION

Thomas McFarland argues that one litmus test exists to determine a "true
Coleridgian from a dabbler." McFarland suggests that this test relies on
the distinction between Reason and Understanding: "The dilettante will
invariably think that the distinction between imagination and fancy is the
most important of all the binary distinctions that Coleridge proposed.
The true Coleridgian, however, will know that the polarity of imagination
and fancy. .. is incomparably less decisive for an understanding of Cole-
ridge's mind than is the distinction between reason and understanding."'
* I wish to thank Patrick
W. Carey, Paul Misner, Claude Welch, and James Engell for their
insights on earlier drafts of this article.
I Thomas
McFarland, "Aspects of Coleridge's Distinction between Reason and Under-
standing," in Coleridge'sVisionaryLanguages: Essays in Honour ofJ. B. Beer, ed. Tim Fulford
and Morton D. Paley (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 165-80, quotation on
p. 165.
C 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0022-4189/2000/8004-0002$02.00

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
Yet fewer scholars recognize that, for Coleridge, one topic exists that
equals this distinction in importance: the Will. In one copy of his lay
sermon A Statesman'sManual, Coleridge reflects on the Reason and Un-
derstanding and inscribes the following remark: "Let not the Reader
imagine, that this distinction of the Understanding from the Reason is
optional, or a mere refinement in words. It is either false & mischievous:
or it is a most radical and necessary truth. I know indeed but one other
truth of equal worth and pregnancy-and that is the Primacy of Will, as
deeper than, and (in order of thought)antecedent to, Reason."2
Though scholars have long recognized the vital function of the Will in
Coleridge's works, the development of this concept in his later prose writ-
ings has not been sufficiently traced. Many writers have demonstrated
the function of the human Will in relation to faith, conscience, the Trinity,
and anthropology in Coleridge's most mature prose-usually Aids to Re-
flection or the still unpublished manuscripts known as his OpusMaximum;
but too few have considered the fact that, like many of Coleridge's beliefs,
his conception of the Will as a particular faculty developed over time.
Too often, Coleridge's ideas as well as their sources have been judged by
scholars on only one work, such as the BiographiaLiterariaor Aids to Reflec-
tion. The resultant error, as history has indicated, has sadly reduced Cole-
ridge's import to that of a dilettante transmitter, at best, and, more often,
an unabashed plagiarist of German Idealism.3 Though the resurgence of

2 TheCollectedWorksof Samuel
TaylorColeridge,vol. 6, Lay Sermons,ed. R. J. White, Bollingen
Series, 75, Kathleen Coburn, gen. ed. (London: Routledge, 1972), p. 67; hereafter cited
as LS.
For years, scholars have recognized the ideological dependence of Samuel Taylor Cole-
ridge on German Idealists such as E W J. Schelling and Immanuel Kant. McFarland's
Coleridgeand the Pantheist Tradition(Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), pp. 1-3, traces what many
consider the earliest, now infamous, charge of Coleridge's "borrowings" to Thomas De
Quincey's (1785-1859) article in Tait'sEdinburghMagazine in September 1834 after the poet's
death. Yet few realize that this issue arose in America, at least one year earlier in 1833,
when the transcendentalist Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-90) wrote in the ChristianExaminer
on Coleridge's dependence on German Idealism, especially "Kant and his followers" ("Cole-
ridge's Literary Character," ChristianExaminer 14 [March 1833]: 108-29; cf. Peter Carafiol,
TranscendentReason:James Marsh and the Formsof RomanticThought [Tallahassee: University
Presses of Florida, 1982], pp. 99-101). Of course, no single composition elicited a more
salient response than J. F Ferrier's (1808-64) unsigned article, "The Plagiarisms of S. T
Coleridge," in Blackwood'sEdinburghMagazine (47 [1840]: 287-99). It was this article that
prompted Coleridge's daughter Sara (1802-52) to write an extended introduction to the
1847 edition of the BiographiaLiteraria that delineated and defended her father's use of
Schelling's work. Later, Rene Wellek's weighty ImmanuelKant in England (ImmanuelKant in
England, 1793-1838 [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1931]) displayed the pre-
vailing attitude of the first half of the twentieth century-in what should most accurately
be described as a return to Hedge's original argument in 1833-when the charges of plagia-
rism, warded off by Sara, were replaced by an attitude that regarded Coleridge's prose as an
undiscerning patchwork of largely incompatible systems. As Claude Welch attests, Elisabeth
Winkelmann's Coleridgeund die KantischePhilosophie:Erste Einwirkungendes deutschhenIdeal-
ismusin England (Palaestra, 184 [Leipzig: Mayer & Muller, 1933]) offered "a more balanced

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The Journal of Religion

Coleridge studies in the latter half of this century has marked a reevalua-
tion of Coleridge's "slavish" dependence on the Idealists, there still exists
a great need to draw out the unique ways Coleridge translated and re-
formed the work of these thinkers for his own program; but rather than
singling out one text, each work must be placed within the larger narra-
tive that inevitably reveals the unique characteristics of his contribution
to modern thought.4
In order to develop this narrative, five key works must be explicated
and compared to the ideas of the (un)acknowledged sources. The Bio-
graphia Literaria,written in 1815 though not published until 1817, com-
municates Coleridge's dependence on Kantian ideas and terminology in
describing the human Will; here the Will is simply a faculty of the free
moral person.5 This work also reveals Coleridge's familiarity with and de-
pendence on Schelling, as several chapters contain word-for-word trans-
lations of his works. The next text, A Statesman'sManual (1816), signals a
shift away from Kant and employs a psychological conception of the hu-
man faculties. The third work needed to understand this development is
a short manuscript that has often been neglected, "On the Will."6 This
passage can be dated to around 1819 and exposes Coleridge's early at-
tempts to distinguish between the Absolute and finite Wills in language
similar to Schelling's; this work points to his attempts to correct what he
saw as a pantheistic tendency in Schelling's system. In the penultimate
work, the "Essay on Faith" (1820), Coleridge returns to a Kantian world-
view and advances his own notions of the Will by explicating the relation-

account of Coleridge's debt also to Schelling, Fichte, Jacobi and Schleiermacher" during
this period (see Welch, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge," in NineteenthCenturyReligious Thoughtin
the West,vol. 2, ed. Ninian Smart et al. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985],
p. 27). Today, the predominant view recognizes both Coleridge's use of German sources,
often word-for-word translations, but also, through a careful reading of prose, notebooks,
and letters, his attempt to both acknowledge and transform the "raw material" with which
he worked (cf. G. N. G. Orsini's Coleridgeand GermanIdealism:A Studyin the History Philoso-
of
phy with UnpublishedMaterialsfrom Coleridge'sManuscripts[Carbondale: Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, 1969], pp. 212-21; James Engell, "Coleridge and German Idealism: First Pos-
tulates, Final Causes," in The ColeridgeConnection:Essaysfor ThomasMcFarland,ed. Richard
Gravil and Molly Lefebure [New York: St. Martin's, 1990], pp. 153-77; and
James Engell
and W. Jackson Bate's introduction to the BiographiaLiteraria,pp. cxiv-cxxvii (The Collected
Worksof SamuelTaylorColeridge,vol. 7, pt. 1, BiographiaLiteraria,ed. James Engell and W.
Jack-
son Bate, Bollingen Series, 75, Kathleen Coburn, gen. ed. [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1983]; hereafter cited as BL).
4 A similar misjudgment, all too common in Coleridge studies, occurs when scholars shift
between works such as Aids to Reflection and BiographiaLiteraria as if these texts reflect a
static author-an idea especially incompatible with Coleridge.
5 See n. 3 above.
6 Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, "On the Will," in The CollectedWorksof Samuel TaylorColeridge,
vol. 11, pt. 1, ShorterWorksand Fragments,ed. H. J. Jackson and J. R. de J. Jackson,
Bollingen
Series, 75, Kathleen Coburn, gen. ed. (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 776-83; hereafter
cited as I.
SW&F,
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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
ship between Divine Reason and the finite Will.7 Finally, Coleridge's Aids
to Reflection(1825) establishes what can be called his mature formulation
of the distinction between the Absolute and finite Wills.8Throughout this
narrative, I suggest that Coleridge's shift from an Idealist understanding
of the sufficiency of human Will to a realization of the human need for
dependence on and subordination to a theistic Absolute Will coincides
with his own struggle to master his addiction to opium during these
years.

II. SOURCES FOR COLERIDGE'S NOTION OF WILL

One cannot read Coleridge's prose without recognizing the breadth of

his knowledge. He not only had read and considered the philosophical
implications of the work of contemporary literati and scientists such as
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) but was also well versed in the works of the
Reformers and early church fathers; yet it is clear that few could surpass
the work of the German philosophers in Coleridge's mind. In 1825, Cole-
ridge wrote a letter to his nephew John Taylor Coleridge explaining his
use of the German metaphysicians. He believed that three different sys-
tems existed in the works of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, though they had
all been classified Kantian.9 Although Coleridge held Kant in "highest
honor" in the final years of his life, both Fichte and Schelling had been,
at times, favorites. As such, the role of human freedom in each of these
sources is fundamental to this project.
Above all others, it is clear that Coleridge's early conception of the Will
is derived from Immanuel Kant. As he testifies in the BiographiaLiteraria,
Kant's writings "took possession of me as with a giant's hand. After fifteen
years familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other productions
with undiminished delight and increasing admiration."'" Kant affirmed

7 The date of "about July 1820" is that deduced by the editors of the "Essay on Faith," in
SW&F, pt. 2, pp. 833-44; hereafter cited as II. Much of this work is also found,
SW&F,
according to J. Robert Barth's Coleridgeand ChristianDoctrine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1969; reprint, New York: Fordham University Press, 1987), in the still
unpublished OpusMaximum.
8 The CollectedWorks Samuel
of TaylorColeridge,vol. 9, Aids to Reflection,ed. John Beer, Bol-
lingen Series, 75, Kathleen Coburn, gen. ed. (London: Routledge, 1993); hereafter cited as
AR. The long-awaited publication of the Opus Maximum manuscript in the CollectedWorks
will provide a rich opportunity for Coleridge's notion of the human will to be revisited in
the future. My own initial observations of the microfilm of the Opus (at Victoria College,
University of Toronto) confirm not only the importance of this topic in Coleridge's thought
but also his continued efforts to distinguish between a finite, individual Will and the Abso-
lute Will.
9 The CollectedLetters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon,
1956-71), 5:1438; hereafter cited as CL and identified by volume and letter number (CL,
5, 1438).
'oBL, pt. 1, p. 153.

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The Journal of Religion
the existence of a unitary faculty that functioned in three different as-
pects: die Willkiir,der Wille, and die Gesinnung." Human Willkiirrefers to
the power of an agent to make free choices. Kant's Wille, in contrast, is
practical reason; it is not action, but the law of self-autonomy or the tran-
scendental freedom presupposed by the Willkiir.Finally, Gesinnung,or dis-
position, reflects the fundamental ground of all human decisions; thus,
the moral individual is one who adopts moral maxims.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte's (1762-1814) work stemmed from that of Kant,
whose ideas he attempted to develop.12 Fichte's brand of Idealism pos-
ited the presence of an Absolute Ego. For Fichte, humans are not deter-
mined by external causes; rather they are truly free when they are self-
determined. Further, Fichte maintains a difference between the will as an
act of free choice and a "transcendental freedom" through the law of
reason; that is, by following the law of reason, the act of the moral will in
the world, one is truly self-determined.'3 In part, one can say that Fichte's
tendency toward what many considered pantheism made Coleridge
uncomfortable; but his creative work on free will made him a useful
source.
The charge of pantheism, levied against Fichte, has also been applied
to E. W.J. Schelling, one of Coleridge's favorite German Idealists.'4 A fol-
lower of both Kant and Fichte, Schelling contemplated the universe as
a single reality-the Absolute. In this conception, the world or Nature,
unlike Fichte's stance, is not the instrument of the law of Reason but

' The subsequent description of Kant's idea of the will follows John R. Silber, "The Ethi-
cal Significance of Kant's Religion,"introductory essay to Religion within the Limitsof Reason
Alone, by Immanuel Kant (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), lxxix-cxxxiv. See also Gary M.
Hochberg, Kant: Moral Legislation and Two Senses of "Will" (Washington, D.C.: University
Press of America, 1982).
12 For a
helpful primer on Fichte's philosophical thought, see Frederick Copleston, A His-
tory of Philosophy,vol. 7, Fichteto Nietzsche, Bellarmine Series 18, Edmund E Sutcliffe, gen.
ed. (Westminster: Newman, 1963), pp. 32-93. One of the most valuable sources in under-
standing Fichte's system and notion of will is Giinter Z611er,Fichte'sTranscendentalPhilosophy:
The Original Duplicity of Intelligenceand Will, Modern European Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. pts. 3 and 4.
1• It seems that Coleridge was always discriminate in his use of Fichte but found many
valuable elements in his philosophy. In December 1804 Coleridge employs Fichtean
thought against Hartley on the acts of the human (The Notebooksof Samuel TaylorColeridge,
Bollingen Series 50, ed. Kathleen Coburn [New York: Pantheon, 1957-], 2:2382; hereafter
cited as CN). Though his later reliance on Fichte diminished, Coleridge still believed, as in
a September 1818 letter to J. H. Green (1791-1863), that Fichte's conception of the Will
was at points "far nearer the truth than Schelling" (CL, 4, 1145).
14On Coleridge and Schelling, see Nicholas Reid, "Coleridge and Schelling: The Missing
Transcendental Deduction," Studiesin Romanticism33 (1994): 451-79; Gabriel Marcel, Cole-
ridge et Schelling (Montaigne and Paris: Editions Aubier, 1971); Raimonda Modiano, Cole-
ridge and the Conceptof Nature (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1985), pp. 138-
206; Copleston, pp. 94-148.

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
the "immediate manifestation of the Absolute."15 For Schelling, freedom
arises out of the polarity between good and evil; in this act of freedom,
the self or consciousness emerges: "By freedom the ideal self is immedi-
ately opened to infinity, as surely as it is cast into confinement by the mere
objective world.... That freedom is at every moment limited and yet at
every moment again becomes infinite, in respect of its striving, is what
alone makes possible the consciousness of freedom, that is, the contin-
uance of self-consciousness itself."'6 Coleridge was particularly familiar
with Schelling's Systemof TranscendentalIdealism, which served as the
source for several chapters in the BiographiaLiteraria(one of the foremost
cited passages of so-called plagiarism). But at some point, perhaps once
he had the opportunity to read more of Schelling's works, Coleridge be-
came less content with this system. Certainly this shift is clear by 1817
when letters and notes reveal a more critical stance."7 Nevertheless, Cole-
ridge never ceased to interact with Schelling's philosophic ideas.
Many other writers could rightfully be included in a work devoted to
Coleridge's sources. One of the most important, though less well known,
is Erasmus Darwin.18 Darwin, reliant on a form of evolutionary biology,
is particularly important for Coleridge's notion of volition.19Also the Uni-

'15Copleston, p. 94.
16
E W.J. Schelling, Systemof Transcendental Idealism(1800), trans. Peter Heath (Charlottes-
ville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), pp. 177-78. See also, Alan White, Schelling:An
Introductionto the Systemof Freedom(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), pp.
93-145.
17 Whereas in September 1816 Coleridge intimates that writers such as Fichte and E H.
Jacobi (1743-1819) must answer to Schelling's work (CL, 4, 1024; cf. CN, 3:4265), by Decem-
ber 1817 he writes a letter to Green that is respectfully critical of the philosopher: "Schelling
is too ambitious, too eager to be the Grand Seignior of the allein selig-machende Philoso-
phie [Grand Seignior of the only beatifying philosophy], to be altogether a trust-worthy
Philosopher. But he is a man of great Genius: and however unsatisfied with his conclusions,
one cannot read him without being either whettedor improved" (CL, 4, 1089). Later, on
September 30, 1818, Coleridge remarks to Green that even "I myself was taken in by it
[Schelling's transcendental Idealism], retrograding from my own prior and better lights"
(CN, 4:1145). Muirhead also points to 1817 as the earliest apparent point of disillusionment
(John H. Muirhead, Coleridgeas Philosopher[London: G. Allen & Unwin; New York, Macmil-
lan, 1930], p. 55).
18 Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin (1809-82), was a British physician, scientist,
and poet. For more on Coleridge's relationship to Erasmus Darwin, see John Beer, Cole-
ridge'sPoeticIntelligence(London: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 50-57, 74-77; Ann Loades, "No
Consoling Vision: Coleridge's Discovery of Kant's 'Authentic' Theodicy," in An InfiniteComplex-
ity: Essaysin Romanticism,ed. J. R. Watson, University of Durham 150th Anniversary Series,
1832-1982 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), pp. 97-98. Beer calls E. Darwin
"arguably the most challenging and exciting intellectual figure of Coleridge's time" (p. 50).
19 Although Beer and others attempt to explain Coleridge's notion of volition, references
to this faculty are perhaps best associated with the lowest (evolutionary) forms of choice
and freedom as found in E. Darwin's work on vegetables, animals, and the development of
the "form."

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The Journal of Religion

tarian "heroes" of Coleridge's youth-David Hartley (1705-57) and Jo-

seph Priestley (1733-1804)-served as pivotal interlocutors on human
freedom.20 Finally, the work of Benedictus de Spinoza, the Dutch Jewish
philosopher whose work was essentially pantheistic and deterministic,
was among the most important thinkers for Coleridge before his acquain-
tance with Kant's system.21

III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF WILL IN COLERIDGE'S WORKS

Understanding Coleridge's addiction to opium is central to discerning

the evolution of his conception of human freedom. For most of his adult
life, Coleridge's addiction sapped his physical strength and poetic genius.
His body was in a constant state of anguish-one letter concludes hope-
lessly: "O God, save me-save me from myself."22Though he called on
God for strength, it is clear in this period that he believed that his own
Will was strong enough to overcome his addiction: "I have strong hopes
that I should emancipate myself altogether from this most pitiable Slav-
ery."23Moreover, Coleridge believed that although the opium had dra-
matically affected his volitional powers, it had left untouched both intel-
lect and Reason. A letter on April 26, 1814, reveals this masterfully as he
compared his struggle to that of physical paralysis: "My Case is a species
of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the Voli-
tion, & not of the intellectual Faculties-You bid me rouse myself-go,
bid a man paralytic in both arms rub them briskly together, & that will
cure him. Alas! (he would reply) that I cannot move my arms is my Com-
plaint & my misery."24Coleridge eventually moved in with some friends
and, in 1815, endeavored to redeem his public image, which had lately
been marred by rumors of his condition, by producing several new works.
With the help of his friend John Morgan, who served as his amanuensis,
Coleridge was able to dictate his ideas and found some accountability in
curbing his opium use.25 It was during this time that Coleridge wrote the
BiographiaLiteraria.

20
Both Hartley's associationalist psychology and Priestley's Necessitarianism are deftly
treated in Basil Willey, Samuel TaylorColeridge(New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 31-41.
21
Ibid., pp. 76, 86-87; Willey calls Spinoza's work the "'Great Alternative' in all Cole-
ridge's pre-Kantian and pre-Christian thought."
22
Circa December 19, 1819; CL, 3, 909.
23
Late December 1815; ibid., 4, 987; cf. 3, 875.
24
Ibid., 3, 919. Here, as previously noted, it appears that Coleridge implies a rather mea-
ger volitional will since he distinguishes the volition from the other, unaffected, intellec-
tual faculties.
25 Of course, this
accountability also led Coleridge to take doses of laudanum (opium
extract) secretly, which brought him a great amount of guilt (December 1815; CN, 3:4273).

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom

Biographia Literaria
In the BiographiaLiteraria,Coleridge's notion of the Will follows Kant and
Schelling quite closely. On one level, this work is the "Preface" that he
had planned, but never wrote, for LyricalBallads (1798), the Romantic
revolution of poetry that he published with his friend William Words-
worth (1770-1850).26 On a different level, this work is Coleridge's attempt
to introduce his readers, "to the statement of my principles in Politics,
Religion, and Philosophy, and the application of the rules, deduced from
philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism."27 Here, Will, as with
Kant, is simply another human faculty that can be distinguished from the
act of choice. Although Coleridge presents his ideas in a somewhat
unique fashion, it is clear that he is heavily indebted, as is Schelling, to
Kantian principles and terminology.28
A careful reading of the BiographiaLiteraria demonstrates Coleridge's
reliance on Kant and Schelling. In chapter 12, Coleridge takes issue with
Wordsworth's conception of the Imagination and lists the human facul-
ties: "These (the human faculties) I would arrange under the different
senses and powers ... the will, or practical reason; the faculty of choice
(Germanice,Willkiihr) and (distinct both from the moral will and the
choice) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to include
under the head of single and double touch."29 Coleridge follows Kant's
faculties of the Will as Willeand Willkiirbut also includes his own unique
notion of volition. Volition here, possibly under the influence of Darwin,
implies an instinctual will that is connected with the physical senses, par-
ticularly touch.30
Coleridge also highlights the Will as "Self" in the BiographiaLiteraria.
Following Schelling, the individual will, a self-conscious spirit, is com-
pletely free.3"Further, the free will of the individual is given primacy and
is "co-extensive and co-present" with the divine.32At this point, Coleridge
resists Fichte's interpretation, as Engell and Bate attest: "Whereas Fichte

26 The extensive literary history of the BiographiaLiterariaand its

relationship to the Lyri-
cal Ballads may be found in the introduction to the CollectedWorks(BL, pp. xli-cxxxvii).
27 BL, pt. 1, p. 5.
28 For more on Coleridge's theology in relation to Kant, as well as a brief discussion of

will, see Loades (n. 18 above), p. 115.

29 BL,
pt. 1, p. 293.
30oWhat Coleridge means by "single and double touch" is a point of great inquiry. Beer
offers a psychological explanation based on infantile experiences of warmth on the skin,
affection, and dreams. This argument has recently been expanded in Jennifer Ford, Cole-
ridge on Dreaming:Romanticism,Dreams, and the Medical Imagination, Cambridge Studies in
Romanticism, 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 24-26, 116-20.
3
BL, pt. 1, p. 280.
32 Ibid., p. 114.

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The Journal of Religion
sees this absolute or pure self as supra-personal or even divine, C wants to
emphasise the free agency and will of the individual human being while
expressly avoiding the naming of God Himself by any form of 'I' or 'ego,'
even if modified by 'pure' or 'absolute.' "33 Still, Coleridge's reluctance to
equate God with a Self cannot easily be reduced to a wholehearted em-
brace of orthodox theism; it is, rather, Coleridge's attempt to reveal the
ground of all knowledge: "We begin with the I KNOW MYSELF, in order to
end with the absolute I AM. We proceed from the SELF, in order to lose
and find all self in GOD."34Thus, in 1815, Coleridge resists expressing the
concept that the Will is divine, favoring instead the primacy of the free
human agent.
By 1816, Coleridge realized that it was not within his own ability to
conquer his addiction to opium and that his friends lacked the strength
to remain firm. In a letter to the poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) on April
10, 1816, Coleridge described his condition and its effect not only on his
body and, according to his understanding of its most primitive form, his
volition, but also on his moral Will: "The interval has been passed in bed
with a physician or medical attendant almost constantly at my side.... I
refer to the daily habit of taking enormous doses of Laudanum which I
believed necessary to my Life, tho' I groaned under it as the worst and
most degrading of Slaveries-in plain words as a specific madness which
leaving the intellect uninjured and exciting the moral feelings to a cruel
sensibility, entirely suspending the moral Will."35Five days after this let-
ter, Coleridge took residence at Highgate, where he would live the re-
mainder of his life under the care of a surgeon named James Gillman
and, at least partially, began to manage his addiction.36 The result of this
dramatic change is an extensive production of literature, mostly on philo-
sophical and religious subjects. It is also during this period that Cole-
ridge's writing reflects his changing attitude toward Kant's idea of the
Will. One can only imagine that Coleridge saw his own incapacity to con-

33 Ibid., n. 4.
34 Ibid., p. 283. Orsini (n. 3 above) argues that this passage is evidence that Coleridge
resisted the pantheism he later became convinced resided within Schelling's
system (pp.
209, 212); see also Gerald McNiece, TheKnowledgeThatEndures:Coleridge,GermanPhilosophy
and the Logic of RomanticThought(New York: St. Martin's, 1992), pp. 17-39.
35 CL, 4, 1001.
36
Notably, Coleridge continued his habit of secretly procuring extra doses of opium
throughout his stay at Highgate, much to the shock of the Gillmans who, apparently, did
not know of his deceit (CL, 6, 1640, and note). See also Willey (n. 20 above),
pp. 174 ff.;
E. L. Griggs, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Opium," Huntington
LibraryQuarterly17 (August
1954): 376-77; Robert C. Wendling, Coleridge'sProgressto Christianity:Experienceand Authority
in Religious Faith (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1995),
pp. 158-87; and Rich-
ard Holmes, Coleridge,vol. 2, Darker Reflections,1804-1834 (New York: Pantheon,
1999),
pp. 521-22, 541-42.

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom

quer his addiction as an example of the insufficiency of Kant's Willkiir

that he had so enthusiastically espoused in the BiographiaLiteraria.

The Statesman's Manual

Coleridge's first Lay Sermon,called The Statesman'sManual, or TheBible, the

Best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight(1816), reflects his growing ortho-
doxy and retention of a Kantian worldview. This work affirms the author-
ity of the Bible but emphasizes its particular value as a guide to the moral
law. It is in this sense that Coleridge claims that the "humblest and least
educated" individual can, through personal experience, recognize "the
sufficiency of the Scriptures in all knowledge requisite for a right perfor-
mance of his duty as a man and a christian.""37
At the end of this sermon, Coleridge includes an appendix that is es-
sentially a long apology for his distinction between Reason and Under-
standing. In this appendix, the faculties of the human person are de-
scribed as a Trinity of Reason, Religion, and Will. Not only does the Will
take on a unique anthropological role, but Coleridge also makes a unique
connection between the human Will and the Divine. For Coleridge,
Christianity is different from all other religions because it asserts that all
people have equal means of ascertaining truth through the Redemption.
The person who recognizes sickness and spiritual slavery must ask how
redemption is brought about: "Am I at one with God, and is my will con-
centric with that holy power, which is at once the constitutive will and the
supreme reason of the universe?"38Here, the reader immediately recog-
nizes that spiritual slavery is equated with separation from God. This sep-
aration is not merely one of legal status as a sinner but, instead, reflects
on the need for rehabilitation in the Will of the individual through the
atonement. Coleridge felt the weight of his own physical sickness and had
begun to see his addiction in terms of its effect on his own moral Will. As
a result, primacy is given to Divine grace and not the human elements
in freedom.
Coleridge is clearly writing in interaction with his contemporaries at
this point. Though Fichte believed that following the law of reason signi-
fied a truly free will and Kant had argued that evil stems from a failure
of the Willkiir to discriminate between moral and nonmoral motives,
Coleridge found his "Self" unable to make any truly free choices. As a
result, the Lay Sermonpoints to Coleridge's belief that a human will en-
slaved by sin was unable to make any free choices and thereby described
it as a lack of conformity to the supreme Reason of the universe. In the

37 LS, p. 7.
38 Ibid., p. 55.

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The Journal of Religion

BiographiaLiteraria,numerous faculties were listed, from the senses to vo-

lition. One year later, these other faculties are now subordinate to and
incorporated within his understanding of Reason, Religion, and the Will.
Coleridge's metaphysical inquiries were greatly enhanced during this
period as his progress to Christianity advanced. The English poet John
Keats (1795-1821), in a letter to his brother and sister-in-law dated April
16, 1819, describes his first meeting with Coleridge on a walk toward
Highgate.39 Keats explains that during their short two-mile walk, Cole-
ridge spoke of"a thousand things." Although the young poet, nearing his
untimely death just two years later, cites the topic of metaphysics, he does
not highlight any mention of the distinction between Reason and Under-
standing nor the differences between the Primary and Secondary Imagi-
nation and Fancy. However, one topic during this brief walk that Keats
does recall is "the difference explained between will and volition." Al-
though Coleridge did not record the events of his first meeting with Keats
until many years later without recording the content of this discourse,40
one short manuscript serves as a unique portal through which we can
observe aspects of Coleridge's thoughts on Will around this same time.

"Onthe Will"
"On the Will," which appears to have been the result of Coleridge's early
collaboration with his disciple J. H. Green, is important because it is an
early attempt, before Aids to Reflection,to prove the viability of his distinc-
tion between the Absolute and finite Wills in language similar to Schel-
ling's. Coleridge begins by asserting that even if he could prove the exis-
tence of the Will, he could not constrain another individual to hold the
same opinion. He concludes that all he can do is demonstrate that "noth-
ing secondary can be the Will."41 Coleridge then reveals a maxim that
serves as the basis for the remainder of the manuscript: "The Will is es-
sentially causative of its own reality."42Clearly, Coleridge has in mind a
project quite like that of Schelling, who maintained, "Asthere is nothing

39John Keats, "To the George Keatses, 16 April 1819," in The Letters of John Keats,
1814-1821, vol. 2, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1958), p. 88. It is worth noting that on the same day as Keats wrote this letter, Coleridge
wrote a notebook entry that reflects on both the relationship between the skin and volition
and the destructive effects of opium on the nervous system in "men of feminine Constitu-
tion" (CN, 4:4512).
40 Coleridge's account of this same meeting can be found in TableTalk, vol. 1, ed. Carl

Woodring, Bollingen Series, 75, Kathleen Coburn, gen. ed. (London: Routledge, 1990),
p. 325.
41 SW&F, I, p. 776.
42 Ibid., p. 777.

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
before or outside of God he must contain within himself the ground of
his existence."43
Coleridge goes on in this manuscript to argue that every word in the
phrase, "The Will is essentially causative of its own reality,"is necessary
and "endures no substitute."44Thus, if one were to say that the Will were
only that which is real, the element of cause would be lost. Likewise, if
one claims that the Will is causative of reality alone, the contradiction
may arise that though it is relative to others it is not a Will in and of itself.
Thus, Coleridge believes that the Will is not an abstraction, but a form of
Being from which nothing can be abstracted without presupposing the
primacy of the Will.
At this point, a useful connection, essential to his ultimate conception
of the Absolute and finite Wills, is made. Coleridge asserts that two kinds
of reality are conceivable: "Those which could not indeed be without the
will but neither could the will be without them, the second those without
which the will would still remain conceivable & perfect though they could
not possibly have been without the Will."45The former class contains God
and Eternity and should be understood as the Absolute. In the latter class
are Time and Creation or the finite. Coleridge concludes from this that
in the realm of the eternal exists the Absolute Will of God, for God could
not exist without the Will nor could the Will exist without God. Likewise,
in the realm of the finite, human Will and existence are dependent on
the Absolute since the finite is unable to cause itself.
At the heart of this essay is Coleridge's desire to distinguish between
the Absolute and finite wills without falling into Schelling's error of sug-
gesting that evil finds its origin in God. The origin of evil for Schelling is
inevitably found in the Absolute;46 he writes that human self-will is "op-
posed to reason as universal will. . .. But this will becomes one whole with
the primal will or reason when, in the progressive transformation and
division of all forces, there is totally revealed in light the inmost and deep-
est point of original darkness, in One Being."47Further, since the human
subject contains both "the deepest pit and the highest heaven," self-will
can choose to identify itself in either the universal or particular will.48In
contrast, Coleridge's approach to the Will in this essay attempts to make
a clear demarcation between the Absolute Will and the finite, or those

43 E W.J. Schelling, Schelling:Of Human Freedom,trans. James Gutmann (Chicago: Open

Court, 1936), p. 32.
44
SW&~E I, p. 777.
45 Ibid.,
p. 779.
46
Consider the helpful presentation of freedom by Laurance S. Lockridge, Coleridgethe
Moralist (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), chap. 1, passim.
47
Schelling, Schelling:Of Human Freedom,p. 38.
48 Ibid., pp. 38-40.

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The Journal of Religion
realities "without which the will would still remain conceivable & perfect
though they could not possibly have been without the Will."49
What this essay lacks in clarity, a letter in December 1818 elucidates.
Fearing that some would misunderstand certain portions of his newly
reedited version of The Friend (1818) and charge him with pantheism,
Coleridge writes, "By the bye, at my first leisure I will transcribe for you
a paragraph to be inserted at p. 263-and unfortunately omitted-it's
[sic] being to preclude all suspicion of any leaning towards Pantheism, in
any of it's [sic] forms. I adore the living and personal God, whose Power
indeed is the Groundof all Being, even as his Will is the efficient, his Wis-
dom the instrumental, and his Love the final, Cause of all Existence."50
When this contemporary letter is placed alongside "On the Will," Cole-
ridge's object is more easily identifiable. Nevertheless, "On the Will" re-
mains incomplete as a refutation of Schelling's notion of freedom, though
it is an essential part of this narrative. It reveals that although Coleridge
had expressed serious concerns over the viability of Schelling's system as
early as 1817, by 1819 he still stood in the German philosopher's shadow
looking for a more theistically oriented means to express the true nature
of the Will.
Though Coleridge's notes and letters record very little on his struggle
with opium during the years between 1818 and 1820, it is safe to say that
he still faced a daily, painful battle. One note written in 1820 or 1821
suggests that he still hoped to wean himself off the drug that he had
previously called "the Death."'' What is more important is that Coleridge
had now, more than ever before, come to espouse Christian beliefs. He
had already rejected pantheism and embraced the need for Atonement,
but the task of synthesizing the useful elements of German Idealism with
Christian thought remained.

The "Essayon Faith"

The "Essay on Faith," written in July 1820 with the help ofJ. H. Green,
advances Coleridge's understanding of the Will by explicating his notion
of faith. Above all, the essay argues that "Faith subsists in the Synthesis of
the Reason and the Individual Will."52Yet, it is at once clear that Cole-
ridge intends to return to what he considered the strengths of Kantian
thought; in the first paragraph, he posits the "categorical imperative" as
the rule of life by which individual actions are held as if they were the
Law for all rational life. Certainly, from this point forward in Coleridge's

779.
49
SW&F, I, p.
50 CL, 4, 1160.
51 CN, 4:4788.
52 SW&FW II, p. 844.

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
life, it is apparent that he had recognized that no other German Idealist
could match the genius of Kant's system. But Coleridge nevertheless at-
tempts to advance Kant's system, both in this "Essay on Faith" and later
in Aids to Reflection,by focusing on a more deliberately Christian notion of
human freedom developed in three areas heavily reliant on metaphysical
premises: the distinctions between God's Will and human Will, human
conscience, and what can best be characterized as sin.
The distinction between God's Will and human Will is central to the
thesis of the "Essay on Faith" as a presupposition to the idea of con-
science. Coleridge distinguishes between the "+ will" and "- will"; the
former is the personal, individual, or finite will that allows people to make
decisions as free agents, while the latter is the "Reason" or quality of arbi-
trating that separates humans from animals. It is based on this terminol-
ogy that Coleridge derives his notion of human conscience.
Human conscience is a faculty that parallels the character of God. Cole-
ridge argues that just as the character of God is distinguished by the
"coinherence" of the Absolute Will and the Divine Reason, so too in hu-
mans one finds the synthesis of individual Will and common Reason. The
unity between the + Will (individual Will) and - Will (common Reason)
testifies to the presence of conscience and human likeness to God. In effect,
the conscience demonstrates the possibility of the self-subordination of
the individual, finite Will to Divine Reason or the Will of God (Absolute
Will). When the self fails to subordinate the finite Will to Divine Reason,
the fallen condition or sinful nature of the person is revealed.
The notion that sinfulness results from the failure to subordinate the
finite Will to Divine Reason reveals the essential character of Will in Cole-
ridge's system. The "Essay on Faith," after distinguishing between God's
Will and human Will and positing the existence of conscience, lists five
ways that faith is revealed in the human agent by highlighting the effect
of the failure to subordinate individual Will to Divine Reason. First, Cole-
ridge claims that the objects of Reason are "wholly alien from Sensation."53
As such, Reason is supersensual and can be contrasted to its opposite,
Appetite. Coleridge correlates the objects of this appetite with "the Lust
of the Flesh."54Similarly, the second aspect maintains that "Reason and
its Objects do not appertain to the World of the Senses, outward or in-
ward ... Reason is supersensuous."55 In this sense, the antagonist of Divine
Reason is the "Lust of the Eye." Third, Understanding or "Faculty of the

53 Ibid., p. 839.
54Throughout, Coleridge relies on 1 John 2:16 as the basis for these human, "sinful"
desires: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world" (Authorized Version).
55 SW&FJ II, p. 839.

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The Journal of Religion

Finite," though able to work with Reason by organizing the forms appar-
ent to the Senses as objects of reflection, should not be used as the basis
of truth; rather, Understanding should work "in the service of Reason."56
When the individual fails to prioritize the faculties as such, a pride of
power occurs; Coleridge later calls this "the unsubordinated understand-
ing," "the pride of the Understandingas opposed to the infinite,"or the
carnal mind standing against Spiritual Truth.57A fourth form of faith is
found in human recognition that the Divine Will is above the finite Will;
its antagonist is consequently called the "Lust of the Will."58Finally, the
"Essay on Faith" points to a fifth aspect, highlighted as a corollary point,
that recognizes in Reason the Love of God above all others. Coleridge
argues that the one who loves creatures better than God has failed to
subordinate individual Will to Divine Reason.
Thus, the "Essay on Faith" (1820) marks a pivotal point in this narra-
tive of development. By distinguishing between God's Will and human
Will, elucidating the presence of conscience, and highlighting the conse-
quences of a failure to subordinate the finite Will to Divine Reason (evi-
dence of the absence of faith), Coleridge creates a polarity between the
Divine and self-Will that does not collapse the two, in pantheistic fashion,
but instead distinguishes them and demands subordination of the finite
to the Absolute. At this point, it is important to recall Schelling's idea of
freedom; although Schelling did acknowledge the difference between
self-Will and universal Will, he failed, unlike Coleridge, to subordinate
the finite to a personal God: "This self-will of creatures stands opposed
to reason as universal will, and the latter makes use of the former and
subordinates it to itself as a mere tool. . . . In him [the One Being] there
are both centers-the deepest pit and the highest heaven. Man's will is
the seed-concealed in eternal longing-of God."59 Coleridge's "Essay on
Faith" also re-forms Kant; though he initially draws upon the notion of
the categorical imperative, it ultimately becomes clear that the only moral
imperative lies outside of the human senses (Understanding) and resides
in the Absolute Reason of God's Divine Will realized through the subordi-
nation of human will to Reason.60
After 1820, Coleridge continued to work with Green on projects like
the "Essay on Faith." But the years Coleridge worked on Aids to Reflection,
1821-25, were particularly difficult ones. As already noted, although he
clearly desired freedom from his addiction, he continued to take more

56 Ibid., p. 840.
57 Ibid., p. 844.
58 Ibid., p. 841.
59Schelling, Schelling:Of Human Freedom(n. 43 above), p. 38.
60For more on the relation between Absolute Will and Kant, see Mary Anne Perkins,
Coleridge'sPhilosophy:TheLogosas UnifyingPrinciple (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), pp. 289-304.

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
than Gillman's scheduled allotments by secret association with a local
chemist named Thomas Dunn.61 There can be little doubt that Coleridge
became more assured than ever that the finite, human Will was unable to
yield any true freedom. In a note written on August 19, 1825, Coleridge
describes the pain he suffered from an apparent attack of jaundice. The
resultant pain and sadness caused him to reflect on the state of his fac-
ulties and his need for Divine Redemption: "The Will of my Life is
poisoned.-I seem to see that for every finite moral Will, fir jedem end-
lichen Ich,62 there must a Suppositum, in a Life, which in fallen Man is a
blind tho' plastic Appetence, which may and too often does undergo a
yet deeper corruption into a Lust, but cannot rise into Love."63But his
addiction was tempered by maturity and increased faith, having reached
his fiftieth year in 1822, and in 1825 he saw what would become one of
his most influential writings published, Aids to Reflection.64

Aids to Reflection
Aids to Reflectionfinds its earliest roots in marginal annotations to Arch-
bishop Leighton's Genuine Workswhich contained not only Leighton's
commentary on 1 Peter, but his complete literary remains.65 In time, the
text, directed at an audience of "the studious Young at the close of their
education" and "more particularly to Students intended for the Ministry,"
grew into a longer exposition, while retaining its original form, that inves-
tigated many of the philosophical and theological issues that Coleridge
faced throughout his life.66 Notably, in this work that can be called one
of his most exemplary expressions of the idea of the Will, Coleridge was
now arguing, quite carefully, against Kant'sReligionwithintheLimitsof Rea-
son Alone (1793) for a more decidedly Christian conception of human
freedom.
Coleridge's literary method of long quotations and his use of tradi-

61 Compare CL, 5,
1381. See also Rosemary Ashton, The Life of Samuel TaylorColeridge:
A Critical Biography,Blackwell Critical Biographies, 7, Claude Rawson, gen. ed. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1996), pp. 355-56.
62 "For
every finite moral Will"; see Coburn's explanatory note to this passage, CN (n. 13
above), 4:5235.
63 Ibid.
64
It is important to realize that, on the one hand, his addiction left him in constant pain;
yet, with the encouragement of others, Coleridge wrote some of his most memorable prose
of all. In fact, two notebook entries, dated to October 15, 1823, reveal that on the same
day
that he took opium to assuage his pain, he had written a "thought" that would later become
the basis for the famous "Aphorism XXV" of his Aids to Reflection: "He who
begins with
loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his Church (or Sect) better
than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all three" (CN, 4:5026; cf. AR,
p. 107).
65 Archbishop Robert Leighton (1611-84) was the Anglican archbishop of Glasgow.
66 AR, p. 6.

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The Journal of Religion

tional religious language hid his critical engagement with Kant from most
readers.67 Central to this premise is the work of Elinor S. Shaffer, who
carefully excavates the rich soil of Aids to reveal the unique manner in
which Coleridge shapes Kantian thought and, further, maintains a more
radical (and Augustinian) notion of will by positing the necessarily evil
nature of all humans.68 Shaffer claims that Aids "is a major contribution
to the idealist effort to found and justify a mode of thought that will be
aesthetic and moral without sacrificing rationality."69 Further, Coleridge
believed, against Kant, that the "religion of reason" had to promote reli-
gious devotion. Above all, one's assessment of the Absolute and finite Wills
described in Aids to Reflectionmust keep in mind Shaffer's skillful critique.
Absolute Will is defined early on in Aids. At the conclusion to the "In-
troductory Aphorisms," Coleridge distinguishes between the three facul-
ties of human nature that he will address in this work: "Thus: the pruden-
tial corresponds to the sense and the understanding; the moral to the
heart and the conscience; the spiritual to the will and the reason, i.e. to
the finite will reduced to harmony with, and in subordination to, the rea-
son, as a ray from that true light which is both reason and will, universal
reason, and will absolute."70Here, Coleridge is no longer content to sug-
gest that the human, finite Will is the central focus of moral action as he
had suggested, in Kantian terms, in the BiographiaLiteraria.Neither does
Coleridge suggest, as in The Statesman'sManual, that the relationship in-
volves only an alignment of Wills. Instead, the finite Will of the human,
following the "Essay on Faith," is not self-determined but placed in sub-
jection to the Absolute Will of the Divine; it is "reduced to harmony with,
and in subordination to, the reason.""7This idea is also found in Cole-
ridge's marginal note in Luther's ColloquiaMensalia, written June 26,
1826, where he claims that neither Luther nor Erasmus had the idea of
free will right; lacking the insight of Kant's Critique,Luther "confounds
Free Will with efficient Power-which neither does nor can exist, save

67 Even James Marsh (1794-1842), the New England educator and editor of the first
American edition of Aids to Reflection (1829), seems to use Coleridge's work as if it were
"Cliffs Notes" to Kant. In Marsh's letter to Coleridge on March 23, 1829, he writes, "I am
indebted to your own writings for the ability to understand what I have read of [Kant's]
works and am waiting with some impatience for that part of your works which will aid more
directly in the study of those subjects of which he treats" (James Marsh, Coleridge'sAmerican
Disciples:The SelectedCorrespondence ofJamesMarsh, ed. John J. Duffy [Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1973], pp. 79-82).
68 Elinor S.
Shaffer, "Metaphysics of Culture: Kant and Coleridge's Aids to Reflection,"Jour-
nal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970): 199-218. See also David
Jasper, Coleridgeas Poet and
Religious Thinker,Pittsburgh Theological Monographs, new ser., no. 15 (Allison Park, Pa.:
Pickwick, 1985), pp. 116-43.
69 Ibid., p. 199.
70 AR, p. 42.
71 Ibid.

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 Coleridge's Notion of Human Freedom
where the finite Will is one with the Absolute Will."72In the third apho-
rism on Spiritual Religion, Coleridge further reveals the primacy of the
Absolute and compares its relationship to the finite Will as the rule of a
monarch: "It is the glory of the Gospel Charter and the Christian Consti-
tution, that its Author and Head is the Spirit of Truth, Essential Reason
as well as Absolute and Incomprehensible Will. Like a just Monarch, he
refers even his own causes to the Judgment of his high Courts."73Here,
once again, it is not human understanding or a Kantian categorical im-
perative that structures moral choices and the Gospel, but God's Abso-
lute Will.
In contrast, the finite Will is understood in opposition to the Absolute.
It is only when the finite Will is in submission to the Absolute Will of the
Divine that the Good is realized. Coleridge maintains throughout the
work that whatever "springs out of 'the perfect Law of Freedom,' which
exists only by its unity with the Will of God ... is GOOD."74 Coleridge
further argues that whatever desires separation from the Divine Principle
"proceeds from a false centre in the Agent's particular Will" and is evil.75
This is the source of Original Sin; since evil cannot originate in the Divine
Will, it must reside in the finite Will of the human.76 It is especially im-
portant to recognize that the act of choosing the Good is not self-
determination, as for Kant. Self-determination is really only a delusion
of the finite Will; true freedom is found only when the finite human Will
is subordinate to the Absolute by clinging to Reason.77
Thus, the description of the Absolute and finite Wills in Aids to Reflection
highlights the final stage of the evolution of Will in Coleridge's prose
works. Clearly, there still exist strong similarities and language pointing
to Kant, Schelling, and others; but the forms which he had originally

72 The CollectedWorks of Samuel TaylorColeridge,vol. 12, Marginalia, pt. 3, ed. H. J. Jackson

and George Whalley, Bollingen Series, 75, Kathleen Coburn, gen. ed. (London: Rout-
ledge, 1992).
73 AR, p. 148.
74 Ibid., p. 294. The
equation of the Will with the Good, which stems from a rich classical
tradition not explored here, reveals the neo-Platonic influence on Coleridge that remained
during the 1820s. Compare CN, 4:5076; Douglas Hedley, "Coleridge's Intellectual Intu-
ition, the Vision of God, and the Walled Garden of 'Kubla Khan,'"Journal of the Historyof
Ideas 59 (1998): 123-30.
75 AR, p. 294.
76 Barth (n. 7 above) argues that Coleridge's solution to this
problem is "profoundly Au-
gustinian: man is free only when he chooses the good" (pp. 110-11); cf. CN, 4:4998.
77 The redemptive nature of this subordination is paramount. Shaffer
argues that this
change is part of faith: "Grace, then, is, indeed, prevenient: it has come, it is there, it pre-
cedes us. We have only to cease to reject it, in short, to cease to hold to our finite will, which
exists incapable of everything but the continued rejection of the return to unity with God
which is offered to it" (p. 214). See also Anya Taylor, Coleridge'sDefenseof the Human (Colum-
bus: Ohio State University Press, 1986), pp. 169-94.

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The Journal of Religion

embraced wholeheartedly were now transformed for a project wholly his

own and far more orthodox.

IV. CONCLUSION

This article contends that Coleridge's mature notion of human freedom

as a personal, theistic, Absolute Will reveals both his utilization and trans-
formation of German Idealist thought. More particularly, by examining
several prose works after 1815, one sees that although Coleridge em-
ployed much of the language of the Idealists, especially Kant and Schel-
ling, his own conception of the Will developed over time, culminating in
his mature formulation found in Aids to Reflection.Further, it is clear that
his understanding of human freedom changed, to a great degree, in con-
gruence with his own struggle to conquer his addiction to opium during
this same period.

594

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