Coleridge's Assertion of Religion

Book excerpt: Alternately titled the "Assertion of Religion," "the great work," "Logosophia," magnum opus, and the Opus Maximum, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's philosophical assertion of religion was often regarded as the work that would determine his permanent contribution to the history of ideas. Despite endless preparatory studies, however, Coleridge's plan to develop a unified system, drawing from philosophy, literature, theology, history, and the natural sciences, remained incomplete at his death. Coleridge's Assertion of Religion contains the first collection of original scholarship on the newly published Opus Maximum. While the language of the Opus Maximum is often complex and fragmentary, the essays in this volume open new avenues for future discussion of pivotal themes in Coleridge's writings, including careful analysis of Coleridge's conception of God and the Trinity, the human will, his relationship to Neoplatonism, and his unique defense of the human self through the connection between a mother and a child. The volume thereby contributes to the ongoing assessment of Coleridge's contribution to nineteenth-century Romanticism and his place in the history of ideas.