The notion of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ constitutes one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ... more The notion of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ constitutes one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most enduring contributions to aesthetic discourse. Setting aside the usual understanding of this phrase as a shorthand for the mental experience of readers engaged with fictional narratives, this paper presents a more philosophical and systematic interpretation drawing a sustained parallel with twentieth-century phenomenology. By tracing the intellectual genealogy of suspension through a diverse spread of Coleridge’s writings in the early nineteenth century, it becomes clear that its various iterations play an important role in the formation of his literary-philosophical theory. In addition, this genealogy will be supplemented with an extended comparison to the process of phenomenological suspension developed by Edmund Husserl. This comparison will be used to illustrate the systematic potential contained within Coleridgean suspension, as well as to highlight its salient philosophical claims and assumptions.
The term ‘double touch’ occurs only once in the published work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fact... more The term ‘double touch’ occurs only once in the published work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fact which belies the notable philosophical attention it is shown in his notebooks and letters. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of double touch which examines the concept alongside the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This analysis frames double touch as a concept which engages with the lived experience of embodied consciousness and cognition, operating at the threshold between affective sensation and active practical volition. In this capacity, it will be shown how Coleridge makes use of the concept to challenge the deterministic model of human volition put forward by necessitarianism. The overall aim is to show how the concept of double touch functions as a bridge between Coleridge’s epistemic interests in sense experience and his moral philosophical concerns about the notion of human free will.
The notion of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ constitutes one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ... more The notion of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ constitutes one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most enduring contributions to aesthetic discourse. Setting aside the usual understanding of this phrase as a shorthand for the mental experience of readers engaged with fictional narratives, this paper presents a more philosophical and systematic interpretation drawing a sustained parallel with twentieth-century phenomenology. By tracing the intellectual genealogy of suspension through a diverse spread of Coleridge’s writings in the early nineteenth century, it becomes clear that its various iterations play an important role in the formation of his literary-philosophical theory. In addition, this genealogy will be supplemented with an extended comparison to the process of phenomenological suspension developed by Edmund Husserl. This comparison will be used to illustrate the systematic potential contained within Coleridgean suspension, as well as to highlight its salient philosophical claims and assumptions.
The term ‘double touch’ occurs only once in the published work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fact... more The term ‘double touch’ occurs only once in the published work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fact which belies the notable philosophical attention it is shown in his notebooks and letters. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of double touch which examines the concept alongside the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This analysis frames double touch as a concept which engages with the lived experience of embodied consciousness and cognition, operating at the threshold between affective sensation and active practical volition. In this capacity, it will be shown how Coleridge makes use of the concept to challenge the deterministic model of human volition put forward by necessitarianism. The overall aim is to show how the concept of double touch functions as a bridge between Coleridge’s epistemic interests in sense experience and his moral philosophical concerns about the notion of human free will.
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Papers by Tom Marshall