The Role of Philosophy

The role of philosophy in literature is an important underlying theme of the book. This is not unusual since the book was first published in 1817 before knowledge was divided into different schools of thought or disciplines. Most of human knowledge was contained in what was called philosophy, with science being a separate branch of knowledge. University education of the time such as Coleridge and others received, consisted of studying philosophy. Philosophy, therefore, was a natural starting point for Coleridge's study in Biographia Literaria. The approach taken by Coleridge in his examination of poetry and the brilliance of the poet begins with an examination of philosophers like Des Cartes, Spinoza an Leibniz and how the mind works. What is the source of the imagination of the poet? Where does the brilliance of the poet come from and how does the use of language elicit the proper...