Philosophers

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Citation Formats

General Reference

Philosophy Atlas. "Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-philosophy.interactiveatlas.org/philosophers/samuel-taylor-coleridge.

APA Style

Philosophy Atlas. (n.d.). Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-philosophy.interactiveatlas.org/philosophers/samuel-taylor-coleridge

BibTeX

@misc{philosophyatlas-samuel-taylor-coleridge,
  author = {Philosophy Atlas},
  title = {Samuel Taylor Coleridge},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-philosophy.interactiveatlas.org/philosophers/samuel-taylor-coleridge},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

English Romantic poet, literary critic and philosopher (1772 to 1834), co-founder with William Wordsworth of English Romanticism through Lyrical Ballads (1798). Developed an influential distinction between Reason (intuitive, spiritual insight) and Understanding (empirical, discursive reasoning), drawn from German Idealism, chiefly Kant and Schelling. That distinction, set out in Aids to Reflection (1825), reached the American Transcendentalists through the 1829 American edition with James Marsh's introduction, and shaped Ralph Waldo Emerson's own thought directly.

Facts

Birth Date

1772-10-21 1

Notable Publication

Aids to Reflection (1825; American edition 1829) 1

Death Date

1834-07-25 1

Tradition

English Romanticism, shaped by German Idealism (Kantian and post-Kantian) 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

In Branch

Metaphysics

Reason versus Understanding is a metaphysical and epistemological distinction as much as a literary one.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Influenced

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson read Aids to Reflection in the 1829 American edition and adopted Coleridge's Reason/Understanding distinction as his own working vocabulary for intuitive versus discursive knowledge.

Source Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995)