Coleridge is presented as a two-level theorist of the innate powers of mind in Chapter 11, which argues that Coleridge distinguishes (1) a transcendental, Kantian sense of the a priori principles of human discursive cognition (comparable to Plato’s mid-level diánoia), from (2) the noëtic, Platonic a priori principles of intellectual intuition (or nóēsis, a higher-level intuitive cognition of ontological, theological, and ethical truths). Drawing on Logic and Opus Maximum, the author demonstrates that Coleridge characterizes Kantian a priori principles as ‘subjectively real’, finite-mind-dependent rules of sense-experience and cognition, and Platonic a priori principles as ‘objectively real’ principles of knowing and being that are dependent upon ‘the transcendent and unindividual’ reason (i.e. God, ‘the absolute Self, Spirit, or Mind’). This ‘two-level’ theory is framed in terms of Coleridge’s Kantian ‘threefold division’ of the human cognitive capacities into sense, understanding, and reason, and their respective a priori operations and contents.
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