Coleridge's Politics of Enlightened Understanding

Coleridge's Politics of Enlightened Understanding

"This paper explores Coleridge's politics of epistemology, with special attention to his use of understanding and enlightened understanding in The Friend and The Statesman's Manual. Appropriating the Kantian tripartite distinction of sensibility, understanding, and reason in his discussion of politics in The Friend, Coleridge raised these mental faculties to an ontological status and connected them with the evolution of three distinctive political systems. Aligned with the moral rule of Burkean prudence, understanding became a synecdoche for British Constitutionalism which it initiated and maintained. As the historical context shifted to the post-Napoleonic period, understanding was dismissed as mechanical and immoral in The Statesman's Manual, and was blamed for the social unrest and conflicts harassing Britain. Instead of directly accessing the reason, the enlightened understanding resorts to imagination for the source of its passion and ability to idealize the worth of the nation. Grounded in the political status quo with its emphasis on moral duty, Coleridge's approach to empirical idealism refers to a type of conservative politics of amelioration, with its ideal vision of a Christian nation founded on the interests of the landed aristocracy, who address social problems from the perspective of the spiritual rather than the material."