Samuel Coleridge was born in Devonshire, England, the son of a clergyman. He is known most widely as a romantic poet, but he was also an influential and important political theorist and philosopher. As a philosopher, he was an idealist who was influenced by the German thinkers Kant and Schelling and the British idealist Berkeley. As a political critic and theorist, Coleridge wrote extensively on the foundations of political theory, on the connections between church and state, against utilitarianism, and on the role of the intelligentsia, as well as contributing to the major political debates of his time.

Coleridge's philosophy is theological. It is premised on the idea that our access to reality and our knowledge of the world are connected to and mediated through God. The fundamental role of religion in his thought is made clear in the Kantian distinction he draws between reason and understanding. The latter is the category in which he places all knowledge and awareness based on our senses. This is the knowledge of empirical sciences. Reason is a higher category of knowledge containing not only the a-priori truths of logic and mathematics, but also religious, aesthetic, and poetic truths and ideals. In this way, Coleridge intends to secure the epistemological and metaphysical status of religious belief by reserving a faculty for its apprehension and arguing for its superiority as a mode of knowing. With these premises in place Coleridge goes on to provide innovative accounts of the will, self-consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Most particularly, Coleridge brings into philosophical focus the metaphysical and epistemological role of language and the imagination.

Coleridge's contribution to philosophy and social criticism is contained in a number of essays in the periodicals the Watchman and the Friends, his Lay Sermons, and his only book on political matters, The Constitution of the Church and State. Coleridge was also a frequent contributor to newspapers on issues of contemporary importance, such as the Reform Bill of 1832. In On The Principles of Political Philosophy, Coleridge argues against two systems of political justice. In the first, fear is the foundation of legitimate authority. He rejects this Hobbesian view as "baseless" in either history or our own experience. He also rejects a second view in which justice is based on the calculation of what is expedient. This approach is a view "under which the human being may be considered, namely, as an animal gifted with understanding, or the faculty of suiting measures to circumstances." Coleridge sets out his own understanding of political justice by arguing that it must be based on the proper application of the laws of reason rather than the faculty of understanding.

In The Constitution of the Church and State, Coleridge argues toward two important conclusions: first, that a system of land ownership and aristocracy is crucial for the moral well-being of the state--he claimed that commercialism, while important for the progress of the state, nonetheless would undermine it without the restraint and moral foundation provided by the aristocracy; second, that a national church and the establishment of a clerisy would attend to the moral welfare and advancement of citizens. He makes a distinction between civilization and cultivation, where the latter signifies the development of individual moral self-understanding, and the former the material and political progress of society. He says that first we must become men and only then citizens. It is the task of the clerisy and the national church to attend to and promote the cultivation of individuals.

Coleridge's work taken as a whole, including his poetic work, marks him alongside Bentham as one of the leading intellectual influences of 19th-century England. He contested the prevailing empiricist framework by bringing forward idealist and romantic arguments and insights to the debate on human knowledge and political justice.

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