Matter and Life in Coleridge, Schelling, and Other Dynamical Idealists (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées #253)

By: Peter Cheyne

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Synopsis: This book, written by renowned historians of philosophy, literature, and science, provides a distinctively interdisciplinary work on matter and life in early-modern Germany and Britain (1600–1850). It interrelates key theories of matter and the life sciences from Jakob Böhme, Ralph Cudworth, G. W. Leibniz, Anthony Cooper (Shaftesbury), Immanuel Kant, J. W. Goethe, Novalis, Friedrich Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, S. T. Coleridge, and Arthur Schopenhauer. Schelling’s centrality in the philosophy of nature is highlighted but also Coleridge’s role in importing and adapting German philosophical and scientific insights into the domain of British science runs through the book. At the core of this original project is an interrelated and interdependent analysis of Cambridge Platonism, German idealism, and British romanticism. Under the umbrella term of ‘dynamical idealists’, the editor of the volume refers to investigators of the vital energy of nature who characteristically combined the tradition of early-modern speculative idealism with enquiries into an experiential study of nature involving mysticism, chemistry, and empirical accounts of physical matter. Significantly, several chapters concentrate on the relationships between human will, agency, freedom, and God, shedding light on modern conceptions of subjectivity and selfhood. All of the above makes this book of great value to historians of philosophy, literature, and science.