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![]() Transcendental Roots![]() Emerson and ColeridgeBryan Hileman, VCUSamuel Taylor Coleridge served as Emerson's primary guide to German philosophy. The philosophy of Coleridge, as it came to America in his popular works, combined "elements of Fichte, of Schelling, and of others superimposed upon Kant" basic distinctions." (Cameron, 92) Coleridge was the most important influence
on Emerson in his pre-Nature years, for "Coleridge is pre-eminent
among the teachers of Emerson." (Cameron, 78)
The Friend These notions culminated in the poem Gnothi Seauton, and later, of course, Nature. These primal ideas, mixed with others of Coleridge and a splash of native practicality, formed Emerson" "First Principle," the true genesis of what was to come. Emerson drifted away from Coleridge and
towards Carlyle during the middle 1830", partially because the latter
had been far more personally magnetic during Emerson" 1833 visit.
This meant drifting farther away from Kant, for Carlyle was not so great
an expositor of Kant as was Coleridge. Shortly before the publication of
Nature,
Emerson returned to Coleridge and to his Biographia
Literaria.
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