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Being and the Imaginary: An Introduction
to Aesthetic Phenomenology and
English Literature from the Eighteenth
Century to Romanticism
Author: Thomas R. Simons
Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1968
This work is posted on eScholarship@BC,
Boston College University Libraries.
Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009
Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.
Boston College

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Department of English

BEING AND THE IMAGINARY: AN INTRODUCTION TO AESTHETIC
PHENOMENOLOGY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE
FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO ROMANTICISM

a dissertation

by

THOMAS R. SIMONS

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2009
© copyright by THOMAS RICHARD SIMONS
2009
Being and the Imaginary: An Introduction to Aesthetic Phenomenology and English Literature from the
Eighteenth Century to Romanticism (Abstract)

By Thomas R. Simons, Boston College

Committee Chair James Najarian

This investigation outlines and applies what I have termed Aesthetic Phenomenology – a method
of interdisciplinary criticism founded on the intersections of Martin Heidegger’s existential
phenomenology, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and Wolfgang Iser’s literary anthropology. This
study traces the articulation of Dasein’s fundamental ontological structures outlined in Heidegger’s
philosophy. A concern with Dasein and the issue of its Being, specifically in relation to the aesthetic, are
prominently foregrounded in many works of eighteenth-century and Romantic period English literature.
Hence conceptions and investigations of the imagination become central during this period. Yet the idea of
the imagination itself as a faculty is amended and supplemented when it is brought into play with what Iser
terms “the imaginary,” which is conceived as the domain of possible worlds and modes of Being.
In the first chapter, “Aesthetic Phenomenology: A Critical Encounter,” I outline how a
phenomenologically grounded aesthetic must account for the interplay of the domains of the artist, artwork,
and recipient in what I call an “aesthetic equation.” The second chapter, “Between Fundamental Ontology
and the Imaginary: A Genealogy of Aesthetic Phenomenology,” traces the principle landmarks defining the
topography of our investigation. “The Aesthetics of Insein” deals with how Being is projected and
articulated in regards to Heidegger’s conceptions of “understanding,” “interpretation,” and “worlding,” as
well as his distinction between the “real” and “reality.” “The Aesthetics of Attunement” is concerned with
the opposition between everyday and authentic Being and the quality of aesthetic experience as both
Erlebnis and Erfahrung. The aesthetic functions as an analogue to Heidegger’s conception of “conscience”
as a “call” which leads to Being becoming “resolute” and taking up the path to its “authentic,” ownmost
self and returning to its “there.” In “The Undiscovered Country and the Mortal Bourne: There Be
Monsters,” I delve into the potentially negative side of the imaginary and discuss the implications of, and
dangers inherent in, the transgressive qualities of the aesthetic.
The writings of Samuel Johnson are explicitly guided by the ontological and moral issue of the
choice of life. The first part of the chapter measures Johnson’s “ontological surveys,” which address
Dasein’s range of possible attunements, specifically as conducted in the poems “London” (1738), “The
Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749), and “On the Death of Doctor Robert Levet” (1782). In “The
Temporality of Idleness: Aesthetic Ramblers, Adventurers, and Idlers and the Issue of Authenticity,” I
consider both the negative and positive aspects of idleness as attunement, which recurs in Johnson’s
periodical essays. The next section, “The Domain of the Aesthetic in Johnson’s Criticism,” posits that for
Johnson the aesthetic provides a realm wherein a range of possible projections of Being are disclosed. The
final section, “The Devouring Imaginary and the Struggle of Resolution,” investigates the obverse side of
Johnson’s relationship to the imagination and the imaginary.
As the leading philosopher of the imagination in England during this period, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s poetry and prose is directly engaged with the issue of Dasein’s ontological projection and the
disclosure of horizons of Being. “The Imagination vs. the Imaginary,” deals first with what I term the
“voluntary imagination” as it is revealed in Coleridge’s so-called “conversation poems” as a form of
Erlebnis. The obverse side of the voluntary imagination is the “compulsory imaginary,” which in a form of
experience conceived as Erfahrung, the contours and consequences of which are drawn out through a
readings of “Fears in Solitude” (1798), The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798 / 1834), and “Kubla Khan”
(1797-1799?). The awareness of the failure of the imagination to order experience and life becomes
evident in Coleridge’s “Black Period” poems: Dejection: An Ode (1802), Constancy to an Ideal Object
(1804-7), Ne Plus Ultra (1811), and Limbo (1811). Here the imagination as creator and site of joy is
replaced by the abyss of the imaginary. Coleridge’s imaginative failure eventuates his pursuit of what I call
the “Philosophic Imaginary” – a process initiated in the Biographia Literaria (1817). The Coleridge
section concludes with a consideration of the philosophic imaginary’s legacy as revealed in essays about
Coleridge by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and Arthur Symons.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

At the end of a long undertaking, when one pauses to recollect the entire process from a
perspective of (at least momentary) completion, it is fitting to acknowledge those without whose
participation the project itself would have been impossible – so here I pause to recognize those without
whom this dissertation would never have been completed. First, I thank James Najarian for his
participation in my oral exams and stepping up to take on the responsibility of directing my dissertation
after the passing of Father J. Robert Barth – and especially for his timely efforts traversing hazardous
bureaucratic seas when a committee crisis struck. Next I would like to thank my two readers: Dennis
Taylor for his careful reading of the manuscript, his encouraging comments, and his insightful connections
between the main foci of my dissertation and its wider religious implications; and Jeffrey Hanson, who
emigrated from the Philosophy department and brought a true philosophical rigor and understanding (as
well as a copy editor’s eye) to his reading. My wife Junko for conscientiously proof-reading the final
manuscript – Junko, who nine years ago (and seemingly only yesterday) left all she had known behind and
risked everything by trusting her heart and coming with me from Wisconsin to Boston, has done so much
for me that any outward show of appreciation is but a pale shadow of my true obligation. Finally (though
hardly least), I thank Professor John. L. Mahoney, who exemplifies in the highest degree what Dr. Samuel
Johnson holds forth as the proper “Character & Duty of an Academick.” From my first day at Boston
College, Mr. Mahoney has fathered me through my doctoral career; and I am happy and proud to have him
as a mentor, colleague, and friend.
i
IN MEMORY OF
J. Robert Barth, S.J.

DEDICATED TO

Junko, my wife

Without whom everything would be nothing:
Like the wind through winter trees,
Or a new moon in the midnight sky...

i i
CONTENTS

I. Aesthetic Phenomenology: A Critical Encounter … 1

II. Between Fundamental Ontology and the Imaginary: A Genealogy of Aesthetic
Phenomenology
a. The Aesthetics of Insein
i. Dasein and the Articulation of Being … 25
ii. Aesthetic Worlds: The Real and Reality … 38
iii. Imagination and the Imaginary … 49
b. The Aesthetics of Authenticity
i. The Busy-ness of the World and its Discontents: Everydayness
and the “They” … 76
ii. The Aesthetic as Erfahrung: The Call and the Moment of Vision … 94
c. The Undiscovered Country and the Mortal Bourne: There Be Monsters… … 120

III. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
a. Ontological Surveys: The Dilemma of Attunement … 133
i. Aesthetic Appropriation and London: A Poem in Imitation
of the Third Satire of Juvenal (1738) … 148
ii. The Orbit of Being and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) … 163
iii. An Axis of Being and “On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet” (1782) … 179
b. The Temporality of Idleness: Aesthetic Ramblers, Adventurers, and Idlers
and the Issue of Authenticity … 183
c. The Domain of the Aesthetic in Johnson’s Criticism ... 209
d. The Devouring Imaginary and the Struggle of Resolution ... 234

IV. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
a. The Imagination vs. the Imaginary ... 259
i. The Voluntary Imagination: Erlebnis and the “Conversation Poems” ... 268
ii. The Compulsory Imaginary: Erfahrung and Exile
1. The Influx of the Imaginary and “Fears in Solitude:
Written in April 1798, During the Alarm of an Invasion” (1798) ... 278
2. Con-versions in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798 / 1834) ... 283
3. The Experience of the Imaginary As Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:
“Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream” (1797-1799?) ... 306
b. The Pains of the Aesthetic: The “Black Period” Poems ... 320
i. The Measure of Stasis and the Void Within: “Limbo: A Fragment” (1811) and
“Ne Plus Ultra” (1811, or later) ... 325
ii. Rejection, Dis-illusion, and Dissolution: Reading “Dejection: An Ode” (1802)
Against “Constancy to an Ideal Object” (1804 [1828]) ... 340
c. The Philosophic Imaginary ... 352
i. Philosophic Bildung in the Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of
My Literary Life and Opinions (1817) ... 363
ii. The Concealed Storehouse: The Philosophic Imaginary
and Coleridge’s Legacy ... 399

V. Aesthetics as Self-Con-frontation: Coming Home to Ourselves ... 406

WORKS CITED ... 425

ii i
ABBREVIATIONS

Act R Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U Pr., 1978).

AR Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, ed. John Beer, The Collected Works
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 9 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1993).

ASJ Walter Jackson Bate, The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (New York: Oxford U Pr., 1961).

BL Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, eds. James Engell and W.
Jackson Bate, 2 vols., The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 7 (Princeton:
Princeton U Pr., 1984).

BPP Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstader (Bloomington:
Indiana U Pr., 1988).

BT Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco:
Harper, 1962).

CL Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie
Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1956-1971).

CM Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Marginalia, eds. George Whalley and H.J. Jackson, 6 vols., The
Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 12 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1980-2001).

CN Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, eds. Kathleen Coburn
and Merton Christensen, 5 vols. (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1957-2002).

C Phil. Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and
Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana U Pr., 1999).

DSM-IV American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.
(Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

FCM Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans.
William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana U Pr., 1995).

FI Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins U Pr., 1993).

Friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, The Collected Works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge 4 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1969).

IM Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven:
Yale U Pr., 1987).

J Works Samuel Johnson, Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 18 vols. (New Haven: Yale U Pr.,
1958 - ).

J Lives Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford U Pr., 1905).

iv
Lects 1808-1819 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature, ed. R.A. Foakes, 2 vols.,
The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 5 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr.,
1987).

Lects 1818-1819 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures 1818-1819 On the History of Philosophy, ed.
J.R. de J. Jackson, 2 vols., The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 8
(Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 2000).

LS Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lay Sermons, ed. R.J. White, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge 6 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1972)

N Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, trans. David Farrell Krell, 4 vols. (San Francisco: Harper, 1991).

OWL Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper, 1971).

P Wolfgang Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins U Pr., 1989).

PLT Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York:
Harper, 1971).

PH Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley:
U California Pr., 1976).

PW Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poetical Works, ed. J.C.C. Mays, 3 vols., The Collected Works of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 16 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 2001).

RB Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. Nicholas Walker,
ed. Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge U Pr., 2002).

SJ Walter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (Washington D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998).

SW&F Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shorter Works and Fragments, eds. H.J. Jackson and J.R. de J.
Jackson, 2 vols., The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 11 (Princeton:
Princeton U Pr., 1995).

TM Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald
G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1998).

TT Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, ed. Carl Woodring, 2 vols., The Collected Works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge 14 (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1990).
v
I. Aesthetic Phenomenology: A Critical Encounter

Throughout the eighteenth century and into the advent of Romanticism (to the re-evaluations of
late Romanticism and beyond), numerous literary works display overt concerns with Being as it is
projected and reflected through an aesthetic medium, and thus focus on the ontological dynamics and moral
dimension of the aesthetic. Hence during this period, we see conceptions and investigations of the
imagination as the capacity of aesthetic projection; and therefore, we find at the same time the imaginary
and the sphere of potentialities-for-Being, becoming central. Yet the very idea of the imagination itself is
transformed when the imagination as a more or less voluntary faculty is subsumed by the imaginary, which
is conceived as a realm of possible worlds and modalities of Being as yet unrealized. I have accordingly
chosen to investigate what I see as central figures illuminating distinct moments and developments of
aesthetic Being during the historical period under consideration: Samuel Johnson and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. I have also chosen figures who are both artists and philosophers, since such a dual orientation
demands a marked degree of aesthetic self-consciousness and self-reflection from its practitioners, and
thereby also provides us with a clearer line of sight and arena for our investigations. This co-operative
“union of philosophy and literary and aesthetic criticism” conceived as “a direct and vital reciprocity
between these disciplines,” in the view of Ernst Cassirer, first emerges during “THE eighteenth century” –
a period which “is very fond of calling itself the ‘century of philosophy,’” while “it is not less fond of
calling itself the ‘century of criticism.’” In fact, “The two phrases are only different expressions of the
same situation,” and thus this “union … is evident in all the eminent minds of the century”1 – a tendency
which continues, if not noticeably strengthens, into the Romantic Period.
Being and the Imaginary at the same time seeks to outline a program for an aesthetic
phenomenology as a method of aesthetic, and more specifically a literary, criticism. It is primarily founded
on the individual philosophies of, and the intersections between, our principal precursors: Martin
Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and

1 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C. A. Koellen and James P.
Pettegrove (Princeton: Princeton U Pr., 1979) 275.
1