This essay explores Coleridge`s poem “Human Life” from the ontological perspective of Christian Platonism. Subsequent to the development of the biblical view of the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus by Origen and the Cappadocian Church Fathers, the Christian Platonic tradition was accepted by Augustine, the 17th century Cambridge Platonists, and eventually Hegel. Coleridge is also know to belong to the tradition. In harmony with Hebraism and Hellenism, Platonic Christianity uses Platonism as a tool to explain, communicate, and develop Christianity with more clarity and comprehension. In this way, the underlying principles of Christianity are clarified by explaining the concept of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the pattern of asceticism. This essay focuses on the concept of God and its related view of man, among other topics.
The Church Fathers interpreted the Hebraic understanding of God, I AM what I am, to be the Platonic concept of a Being as the foundation on which the world stands. In Platonism, a Being is considered almost identical with an Idea, developed by Plotinus into the One and the Ground of the unity of life. In Christianity, the concepts of the One and the Ground of life are merged into the concept of one transcendental God. Based on these principles, Coleridge himself designates God as a Supreme Being.
From the perspective of Platonic Christianity, man is considered to be a creature imparted with a Being because God made man in His image. In other words our substance only relies on our Being, and anything else is nothing but a shadow. As long as man obeys God`s Will, he maintains his Being. On the other hand, as soon as man rejects God`s Will, he forfeits his Being and turns into nothing, which signifies real death. However, rather than referring to a bodily death, in this context the transformation refers to a symbolical death. Coleridge`s “Human Life” imagines a state in which we case to be. In the first sonnet he uses a number of biblical allusions such as dust or drone in order to represent the state of hollowness or uselessness of our lives were we to lose our Being. In the second sonnet he emphasizes the sense of vacancy and anxiety of our bodily lives. In this poem he tries to warn that, in the absence of a Being, human life including his own is nothing but a shadow, as the subtitle “on the denial of immortality” implies.