Abstract

This chapter traces the evolution of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s references to and affinities with the Cambridge Platonists, in order to lay the groundwork for a thorough comparison of ideas. Both the Cambridge Platonists and Coleridge modified a strongly dualistic philosophical legacy, the former responding to Descartes, the latter to Kant. Indeed, Coleridge’s study of More, Cudworth and Smith took place in parallel with his engagement with German thought, which helps to explain his portrayal of Schelling and other Naturphilosophen as ‘imitators’ of the Cambridge Platonists. The chapter analyses Coleridge’s direct, argumentative comments on the Cambridge Platonists; his use of images from Cudworth at different stages of his career; his engagement with Cudworth’s concept of ‘plastic nature’; and his use of Cudworth’s thought on the origin of evil, the ‘seniority’ of mind over world, and the Trinity. It concludes with a brief consideration of the theme of the pre-existence of the soul. Despite the apparently radical nature of Coleridge’s transition from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism, it emerges that his maintenance of interest in the historical scholarship of Cudworth and the poetry and philosophy of More reflects the longstanding consistency of his intellectual concerns.