The Romanticized Plato

This paper argues for a reading of Coleridge that not only claims a philosophical lineage going back to Plato, but also that one which recognizes that Coleridge modified the Platonic epistemology and ontology to yield a philosophical frame for Romanticism. An analysis of Plato’s Divided Line passage in Book VII of the Republic provides a scheme for Plato’s scheme of knowledge and being, and this is shown to lie behind, with modifications, Coleridge’s polar scheme of the mental faculties (1). It is argued that Romanticism is not only a movement with a Platonic heritage, but also that it is a modification of Platonism, the major difference being a new understanding of the imagination more consonant with Plato’s actual use of poetic description, symbol, and myth, followed by the elevation of this imagination to a position above the understanding, Plato’s dianoia. By recasting the Divided Line that harmonizes the faculties into a polar scheme, Coleridge returned a dignity to aisthesis, sensory intuition, such that it could be recognized as the unselfconscious counterpart of reason, able to recognize beauty in the sensible, and to have a sense– although largely without comprehension, first principles, or even logical consistency––of meaning and value