Coleridge's Philosophy of Faith

Joel Harter reconstructs Samuel Taylor Coleridge s intellectual project as a philosophy of faith that anticipates modern philosophical hermeneutics, challenges reductive notions of reason and personhood, and illustrates the progressive potential of the biblical tradition. His central claim is that Coleridge s definition of the symbol is his attempt to reclaim an allegorical vision in response to modern alienation. The symbolic imagination affirms meaning through ongoing interpretation and informs Coleridge s various efforts in literature, philosophy, theology, and cultural criticism. Harter examines Coleridge s complex appropriation of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schelling, and clarifies the relationship of symbol to allegory and irony. Harter also responds to later postmodern challenges to meaning and transcendence. In a discussion that includes Paul Ricoeur, David Tracy, and modern theologies of symbol the author concludes that Coleridge s understanding of the symbol reconciles reason and revelation and that creative imagination is necessary for critical philosophy and theology.