Coleridge Philosophy and Religion

Coleridge''s relation to his German contemporaries constitutes the toughest problem in assessing his standing as a thinker. For the last half-century this relationship has been described ultimately as parasitic. As a result Coleridge''s contribution to religious thought has been seen primarily in terms of his poetic genius. This book revives and deepens the evaluation of Coleridge as a philosophical theologian in his own right. Coleridge had a critical and creative relation to and kinship with German Idealism. Moreover the principal impulse behind his engagement with that philosophy is traced to the more immediate context of English Unitarian-Trinitarian controversy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book re-establishes Coleridge as a philosopher of religion and as a vital source for contemporary theological reflection.