The Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Mystical Disposition : Including An Argument for the Psychedelic from Encounter

Arthur Williams, The College of Wooster

Abstract

In Part One of this project, I attempt to convey the masterful explication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s philosophy as proposed by Mary Anne Perkins in her book, Coleridge’s Philosophy: Logos as Unifying Principle. Without this seminal work, Coleridge is left to be remembered only as a brilliant poet and not also as a brilliant philosopher, unable in his own time and person to convey the ingenuity and fluency of his theosophical leanings, based ubiquitously in the Word (Logos) of the Fourth Gospel.

Within Coleridge we find the themes of Mysticism, that ancient tradition of spiritual transformation. I suggest that the most significant and useful features of Mysticism, mainly that of the importance of encounter, can be found in Shamanism, and that the most useful feature of Shamanism lies in the ritual psychedelic.