Knowledge and Indifference in English Romantic Prose

Tim Milnes0521810981, 9780521810982, 9780511064364

This ambitious study sheds new light on the way the English Romantics dealt with the basic problems of knowledge. Kant complained that the failure of philosophy in the eighteenth-century to respond to empirical scepticism had produced a culture of ”indifferentism.” Tim Milnes explores the tension between this epistemic indifference and a perpetual compulsion to know. The tension is most clearly evident in the prose writing of the period, in works such as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Hazlitt’s Essay on the Principles of Human Action, and Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria.

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Table of contents :
Half-title……Page 3
Series-title……Page 4
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Dedication……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Acknowledgements……Page 10
ROMANTIC INDIFFERENTISM……Page 11
SERPENT AND LOGOS: CREATION VS. FOUNDATION……Page 16
DISFIGURING ARGUMENT……Page 21
THE NEW FOUNDATIONALISM……Page 24
A KNOWING NOT-KNOWING……Page 26
THE RIVER-BED OF THOUGHT……Page 29
1 From artistic to epistemic creation: the eighteenth century……Page 35
INSPIRATION AND THE SUBLIME FROM PUTTENHAM TO BURKE……Page 37
Crossing Hume’s fork: the problem of value……Page 47
Inner sense: Hutcheson……Page 55
Common sense: Reid……Page 56
Association: Hartley……Page 60
Imitation ancient and natural……Page 64
Innatism: Sharpe vs Young……Page 67
Invention……Page 70
The Scottish ‘Genius’……Page 73
CONCLUSION……Page 78
2 The charm of logic: Wordsworth’s prose……Page 81
CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND THE CREATIVE ARTIST……Page 87
THE HABIT OF KNOWLEDGE: IMAGINATION, ASSOCIATION AND PLEASURE……Page 90
POETIC TRUTH: SPONTANEITY, APPEARANCE AND POWER……Page 100
CONCLUSION……Page 112
3 The dry romance: Hazlitt’s immanent idealism……Page 115
ACTION AND ABSTRACTION……Page 119
REASONING IMAGINATION AND PRODUCTIVE UNDERSTANDING……Page 130
PERCEPTION AND COMMON SENSE……Page 133
ASSOCIATION AND INSTINCTIVE PERCEPTION……Page 136
INNATISM AND THE POWER PRINCIPLE……Page 140
ART AND ORIGINALITY……Page 143
CONCLUSION: POWER AND PREJUDICE……Page 150
4 Coleridge and the new foundationalism……Page 154
KANT AND THE FATE OF THE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI……Page 158
PHILOSOPHY’S RUINED TOWER: BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA……Page 163
ARGUING ‘TRANSCENDENTALLY’ IN BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA……Page 168
ECLIPSING ART: DIALECTICS IN THE FRIEND (1818)……Page 178
5 The end of knowledge: Coleridge and theosophy……Page 186
RATIONALISM AND GLOBAL LOGIC……Page 191
‘REVERENCING THE INVISIBLE’: VOLUNTARISM……Page 200
DIALECTICS AND THE ‘INEFFABLE NAME’……Page 211
CONCLUSION……Page 217
Conclusion: life without knowledge……Page 219
INTRODUCTION: ROMANTICISM’S KNOWING WAYS……Page 226
1 FROM ARTISTIC TO EPISTEMIC CREATION: THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY……Page 230
2 THE CHARM OF LOGIC: WORDSWORTH’S PROSE……Page 239
3 THE DRY ROMANCE: HAZLITT’S IMMANENT IDEALISM……Page 244
4 COLERIDGE AND THE NEW FOUNDATIONALISM……Page 250
5 THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: COLERIDGE AND THEOSOPHY……Page 256
CONCLUSION: LIFE WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE……Page 262
PRIMARY HISTORICAL SOURCES……Page 264
SECONDARY AND CRITICAL SOURCES……Page 270
Index……Page 282