Abstract

After briefly summarizing the various events of Coleridge's life also as a writer, firstly we analyze the positive opinions of the philosopher-poet of Cambridge on Kant and Schelling, the less positive ones on Fichte, and the negative ones on Hegel. Within this historical and theoretical context, we describe the ideas of Coleridge on the three central faculties in the Kantian philosophy, i.e., on sense, on understanding and on reason. With a patient theoretical and philological reconstruction, we show Kant's "heritage" in Coleridge's conceptions of sense and understanding, focusing the attention on the Treatise on Logic, with many quotations of some texts of the Kritik der reiner Vernunft. Concerning reason, it is shown that Plato has influenced his thoughts on theoretical reason, and Kant has influenced those on moral reason. However, Coleridge accuses Kant of not having understood, on the contrary of Petrarca, the most genuine meaning of the concept of love